I was talking with one of my brothers last night and he said to me,
“You know, it seems to me that in your writing a lot of anger comes through. It seems that in your writing I see a lot more of your 'righteous rage' than of your love and grieving… But when I talk with you, when I see you, I never see any anger, only the other side, the love and the broken-heartedness.”
Now there was nothing negative in what he said, he was raising it more as a question or a neutral observation, and even said that maybe it was just in response to the recent entry on Psalm 137. But it's gotten me to thinking…
I think that love and grief and anger are often deeply intertwined.
The thing is this is a journal. Journals tend to reveal internal struggles that never surface. When faced with injustices, especially when one sees one's loved ones abused or worse, rage is a feeling that naturally flows out of love. However, rage is not the feeling that conquers because, ultimately, love means being able to love both the oppressor and the oppressed, even it if that means standing in opposition to the oppressor. You do so not because you hate them but because you recognize that they too have been dehumanized by the acts of violence they have performed. Love desires to break cycles of violence, of sin, and of death, not further exacerbate them. Therefore, although there are times when I write angry words, I believe a grieving love wins out every time because I have never resorted to violent praxis. Nor have I lost hope. It is this oft neglected hope that enables us to continue in love.
Anger is often the first gut-reaction that love produces, hatred and violence do not have to be a part of it. They only become so when we give in to the negative side of anger. As Paul says, “be angry but do not sin”. I find my rage always gives way to tears. If that is not more fully expressed in my journals it is because it is hard to write of grief without sounding melodramatic. I like to think it does, however, fully express itself in my living.
October 2004
Home
I have two friends who, last week on their wedding day, said to me,
“You will always have a home with us.”
Pause.
“We mean that.”
That's all.
There was no need to say more.
I think that it's only those who have been homeless that are able to understand what lies behind such a statement. I never knew what home was until I was without one. Like they say, you never know what you've got until it's gone. Home, one's place of belonging, is not found in physical places but in love relationships.
My friends knew what they were saying. It is rare to find friends who understand love in such ways. I think that I have never been offered a greater gift of love. Indeed, this is the gift of love God has offered to us. To find such love in another friendship is truly marvelous.
Revelation 17
“Apart from the fact that they prostitute their daughters, the Lydian way of life is not unlike our own.”
– Herodotus
Dearest Lydia,
Once again I find myself writing to you.
We have become intrinsically connected. Perhaps there was once an 'us' and 'them', a 'you' and an 'I', but in this mad storm of passion all things have blurred together. I have gone into you, and you into me and we have become one flesh.
And what is this talk of prostituting daughters, Lydia? Slanderous, slanderous! Those who tell me I am blinded by my love… fools! It is my love that allows me to truly see. Let me cast out the one who speaks such words. Let me speak of your beauty, let me speak of the longing the fills me when I am apart from you. I pray that I will never be parted from you again.
“let's grow old
and die together
let's do it now”
– Ani Di Franco
By the Rivers of Babylon
By the rivers of Babylon,
Where we sat down and wept,
When we remembered Zion.
Upon the willows in the midst of it
We hung our harps.
For there our captors demanded of us songs,
And our tormentors mirth, saying,
“Sing is one of the songs of Zion.”
How can we sing the LORD’s song
In a foreign land?
-Psalm 137.1-4
I’m taking a course in Washington that focuses on journeying with people who are oppressed and feel abandoned by society, the church and God.
As part of our program we visited a camp for migrant farm workers where we saw the living conditions and heard the stories of some of the leaders in the community. All the workers were Mexican, and all were illegal immigrants. One man told of his family being kidnapped and held ransom by the smugglers. Another man talked of the farms in California that charge more for rent than they are able to make during a month’s work. A third man told us how his nephew had just been killed in a car accident. He asked for money so that they could fly the body back to Mexico. It’s actually cheaper for them to send their dead back across the border than it is to have a burial in the USA.
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
May my right hand forget her skill.
May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth
If I do not remember you,
If I do not exalt Jerusalem
Above my chief joy.
-Psalm 137.5-6
I understand what the Prof was trying to do – make the stories real, give suffering a human face, perhaps awaken dormant consciences. Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were going about everything the wrong way. It felt more like a peep show than anything else. A quick glance, a hurried intimacy, and then they’re off to the fields and we’re driving back to the classroom.
I’m always left wondering: how do you walk the line between promoting awareness and contributing to the problem? There must be a way in which such things can be spoken of, can be communicated, that does not contribute to the problem. Such things cannot be unspeakable for that only furthers the isolation and alienation experienced by those who have suffered.
I think that being entertained by the suffering of others is a epidemic problem in our culture. Although the emotions such sights arouse in us are not always termed pleasurable it seems that we take pleasure in having such emotions aroused. It is doubly epidemic in our churches where we not only treasure those feelings but then treasure the feelings of sympathy that follow close behind. “Look, I’m crying… I’m such a loving person, such a good Christian.” We think we are loving or compassionate because of our feelings, never realizing that we are apathetic or hateful if such feelings do not result in action.
I can empathize with the grief that causes the Psalmist to conclude:
O daughter of Babylon, you devastated one,
How blessed will be the one who repays you
With the recompense with which you have repaid us.
How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones
Against the rock.
– Psalm 137.7-9
Sometimes it is hard not to resort to violence.