#like this goes everywhere from boys being conditioned to not read 'girl books' (books w female protagonists) on

[becomedog]

its so sad to me when people aren't interested in engaging with stories where they don't "identify" with the protagonists

[mergguest]

Post Election 2016

Post Election 2016 – What Do We Do Now?

A sermon by Meredith Guest

Delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Petaluma on December 11, 2016

 Luke 6:27-36

 If the recent election of Donald Trump was anything, it was a slap in the face to every progressive, liberal minded American. And make no mistake, it was an intentional slap in the face; that was a great part of the man’s appeal to those who voted for him. And so we, like the cast of “Hamilton,” the diverse Americas who are alarmed and anxious that [this] new administration will not protect the hard-won rights of the last 50 years have been intentionally slapped upside the head with a 2x4 branded with the name of Trump. With our ears still ringing, our eyes still smarting, our values run down like so much road kill, what do we do now?

 In the passage from Luke I just read, Jesus says, if someone slaps you upside the head, you are to willingly offer up the other side for equal treatment. But like so much of the Bible – most of it, actually – this isn’t to be taken literally. What he means is: you are to be the one where the violence stops; that’s why you turn the other cheek. What I have to decide now is: Will I be the person who chooses to let the violence stop with me? And what you have to decide is: Will you be the one who willingly and freely chooses to have the violence stop with you.

 It goes without saying, this is not our default setting. When slapped upside the head, we are programmed to fight or flight, and unless you plan to leave the country, there’s really nowhere to run; this guy is president. But I must remind you that fight or flight is also the default setting of a gerbil, and if being human means anything, surely it means we are not limited to the default setting of gerbils. It’s one thing to hold to the principles of Unitarian Universalism when YOUR guy holds the reins of power, but what about when evil is at the gate? What do we do then?

 1. For one, start looking for ways to make peace.

 Mark Lilla in the NYT writes: “But the fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indifferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life.” (Mark Lilla, NYT, 11/18/16) The only remaining slur acceptable in polite company is “redneck;” and if children are not present, it is often accompanied by an expletive.

 The poet Adrienne Rich has said, “When someone with the authority of a teacher describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing.” This quote used to apply to me and to others in the LGBT community. But not anymore. Now our faces are everywhere you look, while the faces of working class Americans, those faces that used to be THE face of America, are disappearing, rendering them anonymous and their lives invisible.

 I once had a child in my class with severe cerebral palsy. She was my student in 4th, 5th and 6th grades. Her name was Johanna and she was a wonderful student. One summer just before the beginning of school, Johanna’s mother recommended I meet with an occupational therapist that they had been seeing. I agreed, and in our meeting he asked me to describe the classroom and Johanna’s place in it. After I did so, he looked at me and said, “This child’s not a member of your classroom. She’s little more than a fixture. No meaningful interaction happens between her and the other members of the class…” This was a “take no prisoners” kind of guy, but I took his words to heart and came up with a plan. I cleared it with the mother and soon after school began, the class did a group challenge. Privately I gave Johanna information that the class had to get from her without the assistance of her aid or any other adult. Only when they got this information would they be allowed to go to recess. It wasn’t easy, but they got the information, went to recess and after we did a few similar things, pretty soon I saw students interacting with her in ways they never had before.

 It seems to me we, as a nation, have a similar group challenge. While the well educated, well connected and well endowed have enjoyed the fruits of the modern economy, Donald Trump has sounded a take-no-prisoners wake-up call for those with ears to hear and eyes to see that a whole group of others have been left behind. While technically part of the country, they are like the handicapped kid in the wheelchair who nobody ever talks to and everybody tries to ignore. But in this case, a lot more than recess is at stake.

 One of my sources for this talk is the book Deer Hunting With Jesus by Joe Bageant. I’ve also drawn from interviews with J.D. Vance as well as his book Hillbilly Elegy. I have read both, and I highly recommend Deer Hunting with Jesus. Bageant grew up in a small town in Virginia. After high school he went off to college, became a successful journalist and lived for many years in New York City. When talking to his many liberal friends, he would often be asked why rural southerners so often voted in ways that were contrary to their self interests. Finally, toward the end of his career, he moved back to his hometown and set about trying to answer that question. Deer Hunting With Jesus is the result.

 When Bageant interviews his old classmates, one of the things he discovers is that none of them knows a liberal. Their own thoughts, their own views and opinions are constantly being reflected back to them and little or nothing to the contrary has a chance to get through. Their lives and the milieu in which they live are insular.

 But that’s not just true of conservatives.

 During the election I saw a FB post in which a person demanded, “Anyone voting for Trump, please unfriend me.” Pretty soon, we’ll all be living inside intellectual and ideological gated communities where the only people we talk to and hear from are those who think like us.

 One of the best things about being a financial failure as an author is that economic necessity forced me out into the world. Had I been successful, I would have sequestered my big old queer self in my cozy little study and spent my days happily writing lies. As it is, I have to work, and so, at least 3 days a week, I substitute teach in schools all over Petaluma from grades 3-12. As a result, hundreds of children get to rub shoulders with a real, live, breathing transsexual who, unlike the ones they see in the media, is not rich, famous or sexy. And whenever I can, I make it a point to interact with the kids in their Mossy Oak camo sweatshirts, because I am likely to be the only transsexual person they ever get a chance to be around, and I want them to know I think they matter, and that I care about them. They don’t always warm up to me. They certainly don’t all like me. They can be cruel. But this is what I can do. I can reach across the divide and offer myself in friendship.

 And so can you, but to do that we’ll all have to:

 - Stop having a litmus test for who is and who is not worthy of conversation. We need to be talking with racists. In the Nov. 26 issue of the NYT, there is an op/ed piece entitled “Why I Left White Nationalism” by Derek Black. Mr. Black grew up in a white nationalist family — David Duke was his godfather, and his father started Stormfront, the first major white nationalist website — and he was once considered the bright future of the movement. What changed him is – and I will let him speak for himself – “ I began attending a liberal college where my presence prompted huge controversy. Through many talks with devoted and diverse people there — people who chose to invite me into their dorms and conversations rather than ostracize me — I began to realize the damage I had done. Ever since, I have been trying to make up for it.

 - We need to stop policing speech like English teachers police grammar. It just shuts people down.

 - We are going to have to engage in forbidden conversations, e.g. immigration, abortion, gun rights, religion. And when we engage in these conversations, we must do unto others as we would have them do unto us; which is to say: listen, be curious, be open to their side of the issue, and be prepared to alter or change our own views, and look for any and all common ground. There IS common ground there, but we’ll never find it if we don’t talk to one another.

2. We need to be more critical of our own thinking and aware of our biases.

 Under the best of circumstances, even for well educated people, it is hard to be aware of and critical of our own presuppositions and the presuppositions of our group.

 I remember on day saying to a little boy in my class, When you meet the right girl… and later, I thought to myself, how do you know he’s not gay? It’s so hard to see those heteronormative presuppositions, but once I did, whenever I had cause to say something similar, I would say, When you meet that special person…It was easy to fix, once I recognized the unconscious presupposition.

 Being an educator, I’m especially aware of the presuppositions and prejudices that guide so much of our thinking about school.

 The poet, thinker and social prophet, Wendell Berry has said, “A powerful superstition of modern life is that people and conditions are improved inevitably by education.” (W. Berry, What Are People For, pg. 24) (I know a high school principle who puts a quote by Oscar Wilde at the end of her emails: You can never be overdressed or overeducated.) He then goes on to tell the story of Nate Shaw, the pseudonym for a black farmer born in Alabama in 1885. When he finishes paying a moving and eloquent tribute to this remarkable man, he asks: So do you think Nate Shaw would have inevitably been improved by education? Clearly the answer is no. And there are all sorts of successful people, some of whom have made tremendous contributions, who have not been well educated. Would they have inevitably been improved by education? That’s not a given. In fact, as Berry points out, if life on the planet is destroyed, it will almost certainly be by the college educated.

 One unfortunate, even dangerous, consequence of this superstition about education is it has led to the denigration of physical labor and the people who do it.

 When I went from being a school bus driver to being a substitute teacher, I realized just how differently people see those two occupations and the people who do them. Never mind that, as a bus driver, I made more money and had more authority over the children in my charge, my movement from a blue collar worker to a white collar worker was initially viewed with considerable suspicion by many “white collar” teachers.

I recently saw one of those inspirational posters hanging on the wall of a middle school classroom. It began: “I can be…” then went on to list a slew of possible occupations that were colorfully inscribed on a black background in the shape of a light bulb, symbolizing, I assume, that these were occupations of the enlightened or occupations that would bring enlightenment – or, probably, both. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the occupations listed: software developer, doctor, meteorologist, airplane pilot, anthropologist, microbiologist, epidemiologist, astronaut, cartographer, network analyst, medical scientist, computer programmer, veterinarian, zoologist, geographer, archeologist, architect, conservation scientist and so on down to chemist. I found it ironic that nowhere on this classroom inspirational poster did I find the occupation of – teacher.

 Our life on this planet depends on 6 inches of topsoil and the occupation most directly involved with the stewardship of this vital resource, farming, is not, and will likely never be, on the list of things we want our students to aspire to. But the truth is, we could lose every occupation on that poster, and we’d still survive, but without 6 inches of topsoil and the knowledge of how to farm it, we’re just so many skeletons littering the face of the planet.

We need to recognize that no matter how enlightened we imagine ourselves to be, we are not immune to unexamined presuppositions, biases, prejudices and even superstitions just like those damn conservatives.

 3. “We must be able to imagine ourselves as peacemakers,” the great poet and prophet Wendell Berry writes. “The serious question is whether you're going to become a warrior community and…I think the only antidote to that is imagination. You have to develop your imagination to the point that permits sympathy to happen. You have to be able to imagine lives that are not yours or the lives of your loved ones or the lives of your neighbors. You have to have at least enough imagination to understand that if you want the benefits of compassion, you must be compassionate. If you want forgiveness you must be forgiving.

It's a difficult business, being human.” (Wendell Berry, Sojourners magazine July 2004)

 Contrary to what the pundits say; contrary to the vote talley, there are not 2 Americas; there is only one America, and we are all its citizens. We need to eschew the narrative of us vs them. It is only us; it’s only we.

 There’s a beautiful story of what that looks like, but – trigger warning – I’m going to have to read from the Bible again.

 Luke 19:41 - Jesus weeps over Jerusalem.

 So Jesus climbs to a high place where he can look down on the city of Jerusalem, who’s name in the ancient tongue is “city of peace.” Say what you will about the man, but he was not an idiot. He knew the fate that awaited him there; knew that, short of a miracle, the residents of that city, many who had flocked to hear him in the early days, would turn on him like a pack of hyenas; knew that the leaders would finally succeed in what they had been trying to do for years: kill him. He looks down on the city where he knows he will be murdered; and he weeps for it. Now maybe he wept for himself as well; for his followers who he loved and who he knew would be so heartbroken and bereft without him; maybe he wept for the failure of his vision, his hope, his dream for a different kind of Kingdom. Surely, if only in our imaginations, we can allow him that. But Luke shows him weeping for the city itself: “My people, my people…”

 If we are going to rise above the default setting of gerbils and be the people where the violence stops, this, it seems to me, must become our prayer: “My people, my people…” Not just “our people,” not “those people,” certainly not “you people” – My people. It is in this prayer, it is in this position, this stance, that we become the peace for which we pray. “My people, my people…”

 But that’s not the end of the story, because the next thing that happens, the very next thing…well, let me read it:

 Luke 19:45 - Jesus cleanses the temple.

 This passage requires a bit of exegesis to understand fully. Contrary to what the text would seem to indicate, it is likely that Jesus was not upset with the money changers themselves. The exchange of coinage was essential to the operation of the Temple. When Jesus overturns the tables of the money changers, he is, in effect, shutting down the normal operation of the Temple. Why? Because beginning with Herod and continuing after his death in 6 BCE, the temple was, in addition to its legitimate cultic function, the center of local collaboration with Rome. The temple, which was to be the house of worship of the God of liberation, of justice and mercy had come to be run by officials, installed by Rome, who colluded with the Empire for their own profit. The Empire, in turn, followed the economic rules of the domination system, which, briefly, was rule of the many by the few, economic exploitation, with religious legitimation. In other words, the Temple then like the church now, especially, as we saw in the election, the evangelical church, has become the handmaiden of the Empire, pronouncing divine sanction on the status quo. This is the temple Jesus shuts down. And he’s not exactly peaceful about it either.

 You know those airline miles you’ve been accumulating? You might want to save them. I just gave a bunch ours to Lia so she can attend the Million Woman March in DC on Jan. 21. “I need to do it for my daughter,” she said. You know your bucket list, you might need to dump it out and replace it with direct acts of resistance. You know that vacation you were planning? You might need to be prepared to sacrifice it for something bigger.

 And then, you know what happens next according to Luke? Jesus is found teaching.

 Look, I know you’re not biblical people, but you’ve got to admit, this is not a bad program: grief, direct action, teaching.  But I cannot emphasize enough: it all depends on our willingness and our ability to pray the prayer: “My people, my people…” And I hope you will hold that prayer in your hearts and your minds as we sing our closing hymn: “We’ll Build A Land.”

 AMEN