The Women Are Not Pious; They Understand Grief and Loss

I went to church on Good Friday. There’s something about the day and the season, about meditation, about sorrow and joy, death and rebirth. It’s always been one of my top – if not my top – holidays. Even for my advanced ADD, it helps to have a special frame and place where I can focus, if only for a few minutes at a time. Today, we were invited to sojourn and visit among artistic representations of the stations of the cross. And I could only make it to three of them before I was overloaded. One thought I had in particular centered around the station known as Jesus meeting the daughters of Jerusalem:

A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’

Luke 23:27-29 NIV

Pietro Lorenzetti’s fresco of women following Jesus on Via Dolorosa, Assisi, 1320 via Wiki

I think of the mothers in my community who have lost and continue to lose their children to the state violence of the Prison Industrial Complex. I think of how overfilled Cook County Jails is, of mothers grieving the loss of their children to a system that chews them up and spits them out as a means of maintaining a permanent underclass. Most of our incarcerated are political prisoners, like Jesus, and mothers grieve for their loved ones.

The incarnate was incarcerated, died the death of political prisoners. And what is prison if not death – if not a ripping from economic, familial, social, psychological, intellectual, communal life?

The sin that Jesus bore on the cross was not the sin of intentions and “impure thoughts”. It was the sin of the world – which is to say that what killed Jesus was Empire. Empire’s sins – of control, domination, abuse, purposeful poverty, incarceration – of throwing lives away and deeming entire populations worthless.

These are the reasons Jesus died. Christians picking up their crosses is not about piety. It is about identifying with the most oppressed and marginalized. This is the message of Good Friday through Holy Saturday.

And it drastically effects how we interpret Easter and afterwards as well.

Being as an Act of Political Defiance

The other day, biking home from a late night show downtown, I was able to travel most of the time outside of the downtown region on a bike path. For a few blocks, the road was completely torn up and I reluctantly traveled slowly on the sidewalk. Waiting for the light at a major intersection three miles from home, I decided to reward myself with the remnants of dinner, a coconut doughnut from DD. But the car full of doodbr0s (of which at least one was a d00d-t00tsie?) behind me wasn’t having it. In a bike path section which at this section doubles as a right turn section for motor vehicles, I was expected to get out of their way.

And go where? I do not know. It’s not that I couldn’t have squeezed somewhere else, but this was my space. I got there first and I was merely waiting for the light to change. They could not bare the thought of being blocked from their next batch of beer by a guy on a twenty pound bicycle who would not bow down immediately to the mighty car and the mighty bros who wielded such power. And so they made it abundantly clear that I did not belong on the road. They honked. They yelled and cursed at me to get out their fucking way and get off the fucking road. Repeatedly. I responded but never gave them the satisfaction of turning around. After all, the road is mine too and I shouldn’t have to suffer abuse because some drunk people think my existence is an inconvenience.

It wasn’t the first time that someone tried to run me off the road or what little space is accredited to me and other bike riders. Traveling home from work one day, I had a car of young dudes nearly run me off the road. In this case, since there is no bike path on this road, I was already as far to the right as I could get, but that still wasn’t enough. They honked fiercely and I moved further and further to into parked cars, fearing for my life. Then when they got right in front of me, they vocalized their dissent at my existence. “Get the fuck out the way.”

These two incidents in combination with daily interactions with cars and vans that come just a bit too close for comfort on roads and bridges remind me that bicycle riding is not safe because, despite what the government says, roads are not made for bicycles. Sure, Augusta Ave has a bike path while Pulaski Ave doesn’t. But neither are really for bicycles. I travel down one route all the way because finding acceptable bike paths adds an extra four miles, and much of that territory despite being labeled “bike-friendly” is anything but friendly to me or my bicycle – completely ripped up roads, a bridge without traction, stretches set apart on the map but not in reality, and really, really foul stenches. Even bike paths are just afterthoughts. The roads are made for heavy, fast-moving vehicles and bicycle use and bicyclists are merely an addendum. Our existence isn’t really welcome, and I see that and recognize that.

Bicycle Race – Toby Gaulke via Flickr

I’ve already noted some parallels between how I’m treated being a cyclist for commuting purposes and how a White/Cis/Hetero/Capitalist Class/Able-Bodied/Neurotypical Supremacy culture treats marginalized and oppressed people who buck the system. But what should be noted is that the roads aren’t made for us. They may make concessions, but at the frame of convenience, they will let you know who is in charge and who does not really “belong” in the routes of power and currency.

It seems that drivers will not recognize us until we speak up and loudly. Until we take their aggression back on them. Until we mobilize. For if they only see a few of us, they can run us off the road .

And yet, we are told that we are too loud, too abrasive, too much, too wonky, too naked. Whether or not we obey rules of the road that were not made for us and do not accept us, we are demonized and pushed to the margins.

So, what to do besides give up? Because existence for many is a means of political resistance to the dominant powers. We scream and make our presence known from the margins of the road that we are here, that we are not sacrificial lambs, that we are worthy of respect, safe spaces, rights, justice. Our collective anger is justified – as is our collective joy. We rally, we network, we write our lawmakers, we push, we embody and demand space on these roads. And our “complaining” (as some are wont to call it) is an act of prophecy and justice seeking.

#SorryNotSorry if you’re worried about what the “right time” is, but my body is not on your time and not yours to negotiate. And still, I ride.

Prosperity & Gospel

Some thoughts about Prosperity Gospel preachers within context of trends I’ve noticed of other Christians – primarily White ones – speaking against them:

1. The theology of the Prosperity Gospel is one of mammon. So, there, I said it. It worships wealth and accumulations. The God of the Homeless Jesus is replaced by the God of materialistic consumption.
2. But so is the typical Western, First World Church. The typical white church of means may not be so bold about it, but that’s because they already have the materials and consumption. They don’t talk about it because they’re good in stasis. Many of the loudest critics of the PG preachers themselves already live in abundance that many of the audience members of those same churches can only dream about.
3. Poor people are allowed to have dreams, too. And here’s the gist: We live and breathe the air of capitalist consumerism. This is what we are taught from birth so why are we surprised when poor black and Latino people also find solace in this? Sometimes, hope is all we have, and a drive to bigger and better things energizes those who have felt trampled all our lives. So we blame materialistic rap for this – but we never blame the Capitalist Consumerist Christian Culture that stomps out the poor in the first place. Sometimes, hope is just a survival technique.
4. We don’t interrogate the White Supremacy narrative that white people get to have the finer things, but get upset when black and brown people desire to have good things.
5. I think I’d rather go to a church that values and speaks from a position of familiarity with the poor and oppressed than to go to a church that ignores them when it doesn’t look down with disdain on them. Even if that first church has the theology wrong – at least I know I’m where Christ is.

Well, to some it may be a disadvantage…

I’m a strong believer in Christian socialism as an end goal. Every person, being made in the image of God (ie, having a spark of the divine – we are all made out of stars and dust as it were) and being of infinite worth and value should be treated as such – having invaluable, immeasurable worth. I believe we should all prosper. But not in materialistic aspects. Not according to the disposable things and trinckets of Consumer Capitalist Culture. Things like flatter TVs and bigger houses and fancier cars of nicer clothes don’t add any value to our lives. They were made yesterday, worn today, tossed tomorrow. That is a waste of good resources and energy for something that will spend hundreds of years on a trash heap, eating up our scenery and poisoning our air and water for a few minutes of vapid pleasure.

But that a human race can prosper due to adequate housing, meaningful work, fresh food, and good health care coverage is, indeed, good news.

I Am Liberation Theologian and So Can You!

What is theology if not the study of the interaction between God (of some sort) and creation (however one defines that)? So why does the word “theology” seem so intimidating? Why do I tend to think of white male professors with scarves around their necks and glasses and stubbish beards… Wait. That’s me! Okay, but why do I – and probably most of us – have this unending feeling that theology is best left to tenured professors at Divinity Schools and that it’s this abstract, conceptual thing?

God, according to the popular notion of theology within Evangelical circles, is above and beyond us. Thus, according to the Barthians and much evangelicalism as preached, theology largely refines this idea. Y’know, cuz God doesn’t change and since God is removed from time, so is our need to reevaluate theology. Besides, most Christians only need to know a few things about God – and they start with the letters T.U.L.I. and P.

But I don’t follow that as a believer in an incarnational God who enfleshed as an oppressed man and died a rebel’s death. I believe that Jesus was murdered for trying to institute an alternative-Empire within an evil empire (Rome’s) and how that was upsetting to the Powers that Be, whether they be governors or religious/social leaders of his town.

So I don’t see God as static. No, that would mean that God is okay with oppression. And that is not how Jesus appears in the Gospels.

Now, I’m not doing anything new here. I’m not saying things that James Cone, Gustavo Gutierrez and a host of other Liberation Theologians haven’t already said better and more in-depth than I am. Yet, I also see myself as a theologian. And I think that anyone who tries to live as a person of faith should see themselves as one as well.

Because theology isn’t separate from the body. It’s not separate from the person or from our experiences. It’s not separate from our world or our policies or our politics (though it SHOULD constantly critique the political structures. Yet for many, it’s almost entirely used to buffer a particular political party). It’s not any of these things because our scriptures and holy texts never were separate from their historical settings and we – as people of faith – cannot neither be.

And while I think there is (or just may be) a necessary place for theology to be at a disconnect from everyday reality and struggle, I believe the best theology is met out in the fields, in the workplaces, in the crossbows of the Empire. I believe the best theology is revealed in praxis – where we practice and dwell and consider and practice and get feedback and dwell and consider and analyze and implement.

And I believe the best theologians are those who theologize in the praxis. For Christians, the best theologians do not ignore but face the suffering. We stand in solidarity with a world full of suffering due to empire-building, capitalism, colonialism, racism, misogyny, tribalism – much of this inspired and codified by our very own religions.

The best theologians learn how to practice their theology in and for creation and stand with a God who stands on the side of the oppressed.