Just another Friday morning Letter from Rural America
If you haven’t yet figured out that these are written well in advance. It is shortly after midnight on a Tuesday. April 5th was a resounding success and a fabulous blow to nascent fascism. For three weeks, all I could do was cry. This weekend, though, I have found clarity of purpose; rather, it found me.
Les Allemands étaient chez moi
Ils me dirent, "résigne toi"
Mais je n'ai pas peur
-Leonard Cohen, “The Partisan”
My rifle is my pen. With any grace, I have been writing these past months as you read this. With sufficient grace, I won’t have to be in hiding as I write. But like the man in Cohen’s song, I know better. Do not fall into the complacency of pyrrhic victories. This is not over until we do everything we can to make sure it never happens again.
"Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God."
Genesis 18:19
Noah was a sinner. After the dove found the olive branch, Noah sinned more, in egregious and rebukable ways. But he was a just man, so he walked with the divine.
I finally broke into the prison,
I found my place in the chain.
Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows,
All the brave young men
They're waiting now to see a signal
Which some killer will be lighting for pay.
Into this furnace I ask you now to venture,
You whom I cannot betray.
I fought in the old revolution
On the side of the ghost and the King.
Of course I was very young
And I thought that we were winning;
I can't pretend I still feel very much like singing
As they carry the bodies away.
Into this furnace I ask you now to venture
Lately you've started to stutter
As though you had nothing to say.
To all of my architects let me be traitor.
Now let me say I myself gave the order
To sleep and to search and to destroy.
Into this furnace I ask you now to venture
Yes, you who are broken by power,
You who are absent all day,
You who are kings for the sake of your children's story,
The hand of your beggar is burdened down with money,
The hand of your lover is clay.
Into this furnace I ask you now to venture
Leonard Cohen, “The Old Revolution”
I do not know if the fight for representative democracy will have gone kinetic when this publishes or if we have continued to avoid those traps. I do know that wars are won and lost in the battle for hearts and minds and that the just have always won that battle when they dare to and have always lost when they did not.
I have prayed for Ukraine since they abandoned their nuclear weapons in exchange for our security guarantees. We did not live up to our end of that bargain and Ukraine has paid a steep price for our negligence. We have paid a steeper price.
"He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."
Micah 6:8
Those who claim the mantle of God today are the same as any in history who claimed the mantle of God: full of injustice, hate for mercy, and the hubris to claim they speak for that which we can’t even pronounce. If I ever have such hubris, please rebuke me lest I go too far astray to return.
“I saw some flowers growing up
Where that lamb fell down”
-Leonard Cohen, “The Butcher”
We who were raised with Christian traditions here frequently about the “lamb of god”. There’s a rock band that carries that name. I think I liked that one song ok. This winter, a lamb was born in an ad-hoc birthing pen lashed with bailing twined between two large dog crates. The ewe was a first time mother, her teats swollen with too much milk. She was rejecting the lamb. I grew up with cattle in my life and knew that if the lamb could suckle just a bit, she would feel relief. I tried to hold her still so the lamb could find some milk, but decided it was a two-person job; so I went to buy colostrum in case this lamb needed to be bottle fed. When I got home, my partner had been able to both hold the mama and squirt milk in the baby’s face. The baby nursed. We held the ewe a few more times before she understood that by letting the lamb nurse; she found relief from pain.
Pain is a part of life. From birth to death, pain shadows us. But from pain blooms justice. Like a single acorn can break a coliseum in time, the beginnings of dissent - to paraphrase Tracy Chapman, start with a whisper: “this I cannot abide”. From danger blooms courage. From faith blooms victory, and I know how difficult faith can be to find: but you, dissident, must tend faith like a fragile sprout in a violent hail storm.
The story goes that when Russians tried to take Kyiv, a grandmother (drawing on generational wisdom) started handing soldiers sunflower seeds, telling them that at least some beauty might come from their deaths. That grandmother inspired many around the world. A simple act of defiance, with a lesson in justice for the invaders.
"He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still."
Revelation 22:11
This battle we fight is one older than the Book of Genesis. Our grandfathers fought it. Their grandfathers before them, and so on to when Cain killed Abel (so many millennia before the Book of Genesis).
“In the course of time, Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock.
The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor.”
It may not end in our lifetimes, but it will be won because we fought it. We fought to protect our better nature. We fought to care for the meek who will inherit. We fought demons of our own making and those spawned by others. We fought for truth. For justice. For the power of humility before the first to say “I am.”
One of my biggest problems with the theologies of the modern US Christian Church is the teaching about “None shall enter, except by me.” Jesus is the gatekeeper, but heaping praise on him won’t let you through. You must, as he commanded, “go and do the same”.
“I cannot follow you, my love,
You cannot follow me.
I am the distance you put between
All of the moments that we will be.
You know who I am.”
-Leonard Cohen, “You Know Who I Am”
"Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words"
-Francis of Assisi
By the time of publication, I am preaching the gospel to those who need to hear it the most. They may or may not know it is me who is using the words of the savior they try to impose on everyone against them. Whether 47 or 48 is in the White House does not matter. The desire for dominion will remain for the foolish. The death camp in El Salvador remains a slander on the gifts of the infinite and the minute.
I cried, oh, lady midnight, I fear that you grow old
The stars eat your body and the wind makes you cold
If we cry now, she said, it will just be ignored
So I walked through the morning, sweet early morning
-Leonard Cohen, “Lady Midnight”
“You’re not allowed to give up.”
-Alexey Navalny
By the time of publication, the distance we have to travel will be better understood than it is as I write. Today I wrote, “however bad we think it is, it is worse”. With the divine smiling back at us, I hope it is better than that as you read. If it is not, it will be sooner than those who make us their enemy expect. You are not forsaken, no matter how much doubt you may hold.
“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
-Jesus
Keep calm and carry on.
Psalm 22.