On which our hero drives through the rain and the night only to come to a dawn that is going backward
We
were late to church again yesterday. The preacher had already begun her sermon.
(In our defense, that comes early in the short early service. We weren't as late as it may sound.)
Her topic was light and darkness,
or the reverse really: what a dark year this has been, do we continue to
believe in, believe toward the light?
How are we children of light, if we continue not only to live in but
participate, live toward the
darkness. She had particularly in mind the systemic racism that both blights and governs the way we live our lives
together - or less together than huddled into angry clumps, the chips on our
shoulders pointing outward like the quills of a porcupine.
She is a good, faithful woman. As they
say in Alabama, I’ve been knowin’ her a long time, so I know that. She’s good, and she’s faithful, and she
continues to hope. The light is coming;
indeed, it is already here – if we could only pay attention and live as if we
actually knew what forgiveness was.
The
problem, as I see it – my seeing, not hers – is that we don’t; we don’t know forgiveness, we don't have a
clue about it. Then, the light isn’t here for us in any real, palpable, helpful sense. And here
comes (again) my ongoing problem with the faith; it turns out to be always
about – it relies necessarily on – its hopes for the future. For it cannot
realistically deny that 2000 years later, the present remains completely
effed-up. So, hope! – better to live in tomorrowland (or apocolyptostan) than here, now.
I don’t
despise hope, but I'm convinced that it gives us too much wiggle (out) room.
Over on Go Around Back, my political side, I wiggle. Find some of my fonder (meaning more foolish) hopes for 2015 there.
Over on Go Around Back, my political side, I wiggle. Find some of my fonder (meaning more foolish) hopes for 2015 there.
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