I am going to skip the pleasantries of coming back to my blog after taking a break for over a year. I think the best way to begin is just to start practicing again. Mary Oliver is a tremendously popular contemporary poet. She died just last year. I am not a critic, and I’m not a theorist, and I’m not a poetry expert. I am just appreciating her poetry so much this year, and I took some time to process some of the poems that particularly struck me. Lately I have been reading the collection Devotions, so the poems are selected from across of her previous works. The first one is called “Of the Empire.” Here is the text:
We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
***
She puts things so well. She writes about how we will be known when we are only remembered – as a society, a culture, a people. (She is from the United States, so I consider her words to refer to our country broadly.)
We “feared death and adored power.”
Death and power are opposed, according to her wording. I have thought of death as akin to power. It wields power as it threatens the world. The way it keeps us running away… But I see her point. Because we fear death, we grasp onto whatever makes us feel in control. Holding power makes you feel a certain kind of alive, I suppose, though I have never had a taste for gaining power in the typical sense. I like to control my days, my time, my self. Political power is much sought, much coveted, much abused.
We “tried to vanquish insecurity for the few,”
which to my mind translates pretty well to “tax cuts for the wealthy.” Should we really try not to make politics personal? The personal is political, yes.
We “cared little for the penury of the many.”
With the masses of people in poverty, why didn’t we care more? Who is “we” if there are so many encompassed in this penury? They are not part of the collective voice, I assume.
We “taught and awarded the amassing of things,”
and as I write, none of this is in the past tense, actually. This is my time, and people think that we should pursue comfort, wealth, some sort of luxurious life that constantly eludes because it is ultimately unreachable when made into an ideal.
We “spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people (other people), for dogs, for rivers.”
Quality of life is possibly the guiding principle by which people make personal decisions. Yet other people’s quality of life is not considered when Individual A is making decisions for their own life. Quality of life for the animals that inhabit the same world, or quality of life for the world itself, are only beginning to be really valued by anyone in a collective sense because their very existence is threatened by the climate crisis.
Oliver is holding up the mirror, and I hope that glimpsing our own ugliness from time to time can lead us to make changes. I hope it makes us reflect, which we are reluctant to do (by which I mean we just won’t most of the time). Reflection these days seems to require words such as “detox” and “retreat” and involve an intense process that few are likely to engage with or have the privilege to encounter. It’s really simple and can be done in bits and pieces every day.
On the whole, self-interest, individualism, and bootstraps theology (upheld by Christians who seem to be reading an alternative Bible) are the bedrock of our social values. Welfare is a word that first meant “health, happiness, and good fortune; well-being…prosperity” (according to my dictionary). It meant all this before it was used to name social programs. Welfare is thought of by some as a dirty word. The same people are often quite patriotic – for a country where we claim to value “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Perhaps we actually mean that those who are viewed as having earned their rights (based on race or socioeconomic status) are entitled to such life, freedom, and happy prosperity. Even the later definitions of welfare are nothing that should produce the ire and knee-jerk judgments that it provokes from some conservatives (often Christians). The dictionary is helpful again here: “financial or other aid provided, esp. by the government, to people in need…Receiving regular assistance from the government or private agencies because of need.” People in need should elicit compassion from us (esp. Christians who seek to follow Jesus). The knee-jerk reaction of contempt comes, I think, from the idea that somehow the majority of people receiving government assistance are taking advantage of the system in some way.
That narrative was fed to the country years ago by President Reagan. I wonder how many of the people who react negatively to the idea of welfare simply repeated in their minds and in their opinions what Reagan chose to capitalize on as he cultivated white America’s fears about poor black folks. Author and historian Jemar Tisby made me aware of this origin story in his book The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism. Tisby writes:
Reagan was also known for popularizing the term welfare queen, which became an oft-used phrase by the president. He told the story of a black woman from Chicago with ‘80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards,’ who gamed the social support system for $150,000 in annual tax-free income. The ‘welfare queen’ became a stand-in for the president’s criticism of an undeserving class of poor people, especially inner-city black women” (Tisby, 169).
Tisby continues with this crucial reminder – crucial because it speaks directly to evangelicals and their lining up behind Trump: “Whatever their intentions, when the Religious Right signed up to support Reagan and his views, they were also tacitly endorsing an administration that refused to take strong stances toward dismantling racism” (Tisby, 169-170). I cannot recommend this book enough, and I can’t stop quoting it. You’ll have to forgive me, though I do hope your interest is piqued so that you’ll read it, too.
The alignment (of Christians with Reagan’s administration) had implications:
“…a stance against welfare led to stereotypes of black people and the poor as lacking in initiative and having no work ethic. As historian James German writes, ‘The welfare state, in the mind of the New Christian Right, undermined the sense of individual responsibility in which public morality rested’” (Tisby, 170).
This alignment also had consequences: these Christians “contributed to the overall perception among black people that Christian conservatives did not care about the concerns of a historically oppressed group” (Tisby, 171). Tisby concludes this chapter (which, by the way, is titled “Organizing the Religious Right”) by stating that it is our responsibility as Christians to “at the very least, consider how the political connections between theologically conservative evangelicalism and conservative politics, namely through the Republican Party, have supported racial inequities” (Tisby, 171).
One of my favorite places to encounter the word “welfare” is in the Bible. Jeremiah 29 is a chapter oft-quoted by various believers for various reasons. Different verses are cherry-picked, whether for decor or quotability or something like a life mantra. In context, it’s a letter from the prophet Jeremiah to all the Israelites that Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. As a prophet, Jeremiah is authorized to speak on God’s behalf. He’s basically God’s messenger – the person through whom God communicates to his people.
Jeremiah writes to tell the people how they should live and some of what is in store for them. They are encouraged to make their home in this unfamiliar land of exile with their enemy, Babylon. He instructs them to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” (Jer. 29:7) Now, I know that I am cherry-picking the word “welfare” here. Yet I think there are things to learn from this verse about how to live as followers of God in a society that was not built with God in mind. We could get caught up in judgment (of the ways that society is not in line with God’s vision for humanity), or we could seek to promote justice and affirm righteousness and seek the good (the well-being, the welfare) of others before our own – even on a societal level.
The idea is that the Israelites wouldn’t have wanted to be friends with the Babylonians. Not only do they differ in their faith, but the Babylonians have captured the Israelites and forcibly removed them from their homeland. I would feel the same way. But God says that in Babylon’s welfare, his people will find their welfare. As they plant themselves wholeheartedly in their new place, in community with the people there, they will start to flourish.
Christians today are individualistic to the highest degree. Even the tendency toward discarding the Old Testament that has cropped up in some segments of Christianity shows a lack of value and understanding for the communal aspects of the Christian life. Yet I think individualism is much more based on and conducive to capitalism than to the faith of the Bible. In this way, Christians are indistinguishable from secular capitalists. And we are supposed to be people of the book – people of the way. Restoration, generosity, and love are our foundation. We leave judgment to the only one who knows all hearts, and we give without expecting anything in return. These are biblical principles to live by. Capitalism values and judges people based on merit, functionality, and essentially a survival-of-the-fittest mentality that seeks and promotes autonomy.
Read Acts or Exodus and then tell me with a straight face that every person must provide for themselves and improve their own lives no matter what circumstances they’re born into. We take passages written to an entire people, like Jeremiah 29, and apply them to specific instances of hope or hardship in our own lives. It’s good to be encouraged by Scripture – that is a wonderful thing. Yet I think in doing so we miss the deeper encouragement and wisdom that is available through a deeper investigation and understanding of the text.
The way that we read is formative. It has implications for how we engage with society and how individualistic or community-oriented we are. These things also make or break our witness to the world around us. The gospel is attractive when people give off the aroma (the vibe?) of Christ, displaying his love and showing up where he would want to work if he were back on this earth: with the humble, without judgment, and full of unconditional love. That is what becomes beautiful and transformative. Jesus changes lives, hearts, circumstances, minds – his love is transformational. Christians who condemn social services or social justice causes are digging an ever-deeper hole, sinking their gospel witness, and making their religion less attractive to the world around them. It’s only a matter of time before the landslide comes and caves it in. I sometimes feel my own religion becoming less attractive…and I’m a believer. I have to return to the pages of the Bible and read the words of God to the world he made and loves. When I do, I find relief, comfort, and truth. God is on the side of justice for the oppressed. He will judge justly, and he will let his love loose on sinners who need him.
“All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity.”
What can we use for profit? We have created pipelines and drills in the lands and the oceans with little regard for the people, animals, and plants that constitute those environments and rely on them. We have disrupted life cycles and extracted life from the planet (which we term “resources”). The planet continues, enslaved to us, receiving nothing but our ingratitude and continued abuse. We plunder and exploit; oil leaks into the water; smoke surges into the air; glaciers melt because we refuse to slow down. We refuse to accept that our actions have had monstrous consequences.
Do people blind themselves out of self-protection? If what they refuse to believe were true, it would be too devastating to process. So it is much easier to sit up straight behind our desks and emotionally and cognitively act as if that information were either false or nonexistent. People who don’t have to care because they live outside the line of fire simply decide they are not going to care. If one is not personally impacted, then this issue is not important to oneself – it might not even be real. If it is not important to the individual, they have no incentive…nothing compels them to act. But that is the tragedy of life in the United States now. Well, it is one of the tragedies.
“…this structure was held together politically, which it was…”
For one thing, the fossil fuel industry lobbies the government and ignores the humble and human voices of American and Native communities, the advice of environmental experts, and the unfortunate idea that we might have to pursue something other than the most financially profitable outcome.
Our “politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and…the heart, in those days, was small, and hard, and full of meanness.”
Thus ends the poem. It is an indictment full of truth, and it is an exquisite last word. But I am expounding on the poem, so I suppose there will be more words now, for better or worse. The poem as a whole reads like the prologue to a book that tells the story of the end of the empire. People act on their gut impulses and their emotional reactions. Even when people have a certain level of power and position in society, it seems they are no closer to objectivity or nuance or an understanding of complexity than the rest of us. Rationality and reason require a depth of understanding and a constant return to the subject in order to suss out nuance and truth, truth, truth.
These have been decapitated by the need to pursue delusions like the equation of feelings with facts or the idea that I am not accountable to my fellow human beings or the notion that corporations are merely economic actors with no effect on human life. Facts are ignored. Wishful thinking takes over. Demonizing, dehumanizing is commonplace. We ignore incongruent opinions. If they are incongruent with reality but congruent with our beliefs, we stick to them. If they are congruent with reality but incongruent with our beliefs, we reject them. The metric we are using is our subjective position. How very postmodern of even the most conservative of us. If we encounter an opinion or belief with which we disagree, we reject or ignore it because we ultimately think there is no reality in which this belief might be based on truth – even the truth of someone else’s lived experience. I cannot see a way out.
That is why Oliver’s words chill me. The truth is that our hearts are hard and deadened and mean. Carry that out, and it is not a redemptive ending. I understand the existential dread many people are feeling. The only hope seems to come in the form of Jesus in our ancient sacred text. It tells the same truth that Oliver tells about human nature. Stories of self-righteousness, injustice, and destruction abound. And yet, God called all that he made “good.” Still, he sent a savior into this world on which we have wreaked havoc. That person came with unconditional love. He was so patient. He maintained the truth to the end. For the people who ignored the signs; the people who chose hatred; and for the self-justifiers he still died. He died to save all the world, and what he got from the world was a criminal’s shameful, cursed death.
This is the only way things will turn around: self-sacrifice. Love your enemies. Rely on God for your life and your justification and for ultimate justice. The only way out is love, and we hate the idea of loving anyone whom we do not think deserves our love, or our time, for that matter. We base that desert on opinions, politics, or whatever measure of merit matters most to us. We have trained ourselves well in the practice of capitalism, then, and our cold indifference to “(other people)…dogs…rivers,” etc., is the natural result. Christians have the chance to look again at what we believe and to act in love and compassion, extending care and understanding and even love to those we would rather hate. Hate is the easy way in our hearts, but it makes the world a fearsome place to be. Unity can be a sentimental ideal, or it can be a real objective that we fight for with grit and hard love. Are we divided? Are we committed to reuniting? Then we will have to move through that division, face the things that tear us apart, and communicate with our enemies in a spirit of love and gentleness. Are our hearts small, and hard, and mean? Yes. But ask the Spirit, and he can transform them and make them big and tender and kind. We can see that meekness is strength in Jesus. What if we followed suit?
Practice 