Stations of the Cross/Presence and Silence

i am in a year of service program with faith as one of the tenants. i am teaching theology. and never have i felt more unsure of what it means to talk about god. or if god is even a "who" or a "what." or if god even is.

this is scary. and sometimes sad. i think i am grieving the loss of the security i once knew in my faith.

so, when i attended a reflection on the stations of the cross, led by some other community members, i found myself becoming angry and sad. one source of these emotions was the sheer sorrow of the stories my community members were telling: jesus is stripped of his garments in the young man who refuses to go to school because he was shot at the day before. jesus falls the first time in the young woman who weeps as she discovers she is unexpectedly pregnant with no resources for this new life. jesus meets falls a second time in a man suffering from severe physical disabilities and grappling with a language barrier, trying to file for social services to assist him. jesus is nailed to the cross in ms. shirley, a wheelchair-bound woman experiencing homelessness, passed by daily by thousands in downtown chicago. the other source of this anger and sorrow was the realization that theologically, there was more i disagreed with or questioned in what my community members were saying than there was that i agreed with. i was not angry with them. i was just angry and sad. so i wrote "god," who/whatever that is, a short note of frustration, and then i let it go and focused back on what i was hearing.

then i was able to hear redeeming part of this evening of reflection. it came in the common theme that was woven throughout all the stories.

presence and accompaniment.

most of the stations deal with minute details: a small conversation, a gesture of kindness, a gift of a helping hand, small acts of persistence.

in reflecting on last night's events in connection with this week's theme, the good news of good speech, i propose the following:

-what if the good news of good speech is actually all about silence and presence?
-good words have meant nothing to me if the speaker isn't someone i first trust with silence and presence
- perhaps i am just afraid good speech will elude me when i need it most, so i feel safer offering presence and silence
- maybe the core words of good speech are, "you are not alone," and that is enough

Last week's theme...

I've been working on a collection of essays and poems about the year I spent working on Hamlet and playing Ophelia.

I find myself listening to this before I sit down to write or edit those pieces.

Songs of the Moment

From last week's theme, these are songs that I find myself putting on repeat in the last few weeks:

• The Walkmen - New Country
• Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam - In a Black Out
• Chad Valley - Shell Suite
• Spoon - WhisperI'lllistentohearit
• Spoon - Out Go the Lights
• Spoon - Can I Sit Next to You?
• Maria Taylor - Xanax
• Radiohead - Bones
• Assi El Helani - Ya Teyr
• Ya Zarif Attoul
• George Ezra - Barcelona

I find these comforting, distracting, and enthralling all at once.

The Good News of a Reader's Response, 4.4.2017

Some time back I received the succinct response from Fred Zweig after he read The Book of Mev–

“Mark, I finished reading your book yesterday.  It has it all:  a beautiful love story, heroic idealism, clarity.  It is awesome in many respects.  I am 93 years old and consider myself pretty tough-minded but it is the only book I remember reading that made me cry!  Congratulations on your achievement.

With great appreciation,

Fred”

Gaza Graduation; Mary Kate MacIsaac

The Good News of MLK, 4.4.2017

Fifty years ago today at NYC’s Riverside Church, Martin Luther King delivered a powerful, prophetic indictment of U.S. war-making in Vietnam: “They ask if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.” 

Martin Luther King and Thich Nhat Hanh

Music that gets me through. Short list.

Dont carry it all, the decembrists
Shelter from the storm, bob dylan
Ill with want, avett brothers
Common sentiment, typhoon
Sunday bloody sunday, u2
Rockin in the free world, neil young
Coal war, joshua james
I do my fathers drugs, joe pug

The Good News of Rereading, 4.2.2017

Tasha Rutledge and I had class together when she was a freshman at SLU in 2007. We read The Book of Mev in that class, and many years later she told me she reads it once a year to re-instill a sense of urgency in her life.