A Long Silence

There's been a long silence on Points of Inflection.

Some friends and readers, knowing that I am dealing with terminal cancer, might have been wondering whether I am still around.  For sure, this blog will at some point be shuttered when the cancer wins - or thinks it wins.  Not that it really does win. Cancer is stupid. When it kills me, it kills itself too.  But it is then gone forever: while I await the resurrection at the renewal of all things. It is like a tiny parable of  "the death of death in the death of Christ".

 

For now though the point is, yes, I am still here.  It is not my own death that has shut me up. No, what has really left me speechless is Charlottesville - or, to unpack that a bit (as if I need to), the white nationalism and racial hatred on display there on August 11 and 12, the deadly violence that followed, the nods and winks these received from our man-child president, the turning of the screw of fear on those who don't "look right"; most recently on the "Dreamers".

I am white, and I became an American last year. That makes me a white American (and the "last year" doesn't allow me to evade the weight of that designation).  I can't just keep blogging on and ignore the fact that something odious, done in the name of people like me, has bubbled to the surface.  On the other hand, cancer limits my ability to act, and of what use is it to add my own personal handwringing to the already-plentiful supply of handwringing from the sidelines?

So I have felt blocked. Choked.

Psalm 42:11, in Robert Alter's very literal translation, refers to "murder in my bones".  That could be a description of cancer as it makes its way through my skeleton.  It could also describe how racism, sexism and so on seek to break up the "skeleton" - metaphorically, that which gives structure and shape to life - for those "outside" the privileged group. A life without structure - one continually at risk from random violence or detention - is a life where it is so hard to build. Yet brave people continue to build, in faith.

What has got me through my chokedness is to hear some other recent voices, which I would like to share with you. The first is that of the Theological Declaration on Christian Faith and White Supremacy, TheDeclaration.Net.  Part lament, part confession of sin, part call to Gospel work, this document renewed my hope that the Church of Christ still has a liberating word to say despite its extensive complicity in past wickedness.

The second is that of Ta-Nehisi Coates writing recently in The Atlantic.  His article is titled The First White President. If you are at all like me, you will find it an extremely unsettling read.  But then, there is something extremely unsettling going on in this country.   There is something more than unsettling wrapped around the structures of power, like the cancer wrapped around my bones.  And it seems that we are finally undergoing the CT scan that will reveal it for what it is.

Let's hope, then, there is time for effective treatment.  If not... Remember that I said cancer is stupid? Ta-Nehisi Coates ends up in a similar place:

It has long been an axiom among certain black writers and thinkers that while whiteness endangers the bodies of black people in the immediate sense, the larger threat is to white people themselves, the shared country, and even the whole world. 

I still believe in the renewal of all things, and in the possibility for that renewal to break back into the present.  Coates is an atheist and so can't hold that hope as I can. But for me and other believers I don't want it to be a cheater hope, a "get out of responsibility free" card. There is work to be done. The "Theological Declaration" indicates some directions this work may take.