Advent 3

It may not prove particularly thought-provoking, but here's my Advent reflection for this week.

Actually, I'm abruptly changing directions. I'm not going to write about what I sat down planning to write about. I suddenly feel inspired to follow a different line of thought. Here goes...

When I started these Advent reflections a couple weeks back, I quoted D&C 88:63, "Draw near to me, and I will draw near to you." Dating back to the time I was a kid, I can say that part of what's fascinated me about the Nativity story is the various worshippers—shepherds, Magi, etc.—having to travel to the Christ Child. My family used to have a single long rope of tinsel that we would wrap around our tree in a helix from top to bottom, and as a kid, I would edge around the tree over and over, following the trail of tinsel from the base to the top, making up little stories about the Magi winding through the landscape of our ornamented Christmas tree until they reached the top, where the star led them to the Christ Child. I'm remembering another year, when I was in grad school the first time around, when I drew individualized Christmas cards for my parents and each sibling, each with a different scene from the Nativity story. I don't recall now all the scenes I created, but the ones I remember showed people on their way to Bethlehem, not actually there gathered around the manger.

I could go on, giving other examples. But my point is, for a long time that aspect of the Nativity story has called to me: the aspect of having to travel to Christ. This is the "Draw near to me" portion of the promise from D&C 88:63. And what unexpectedly popped into my head as I sat down to write this reflection was an anecdote from my LDS mission that I think embodies what it means to draw near to Christ in the real world—in a tangible sense.

Near the end of my mission, I started giving away a lot of my possessions—bike, clothes, etc. Among the things I wanted to leave behind were a collection of toys my parents had shipped me over the course of my mission to use when interacting with children: those little puzzles where you arrange shapes into what look like origami animals, some powerful little magnets, that kind of thing. I decided I was going to bequeath them to the children of a couple let's call Aricelis and Leo. Leo was a musician, and unfortunately the only place he'd been able to find steady work was playing at a nightclub in a tourist town out on the other side of the island, whereas Aricelis and the kids lived in Santo Domingo. This meant that Aricelis became, essentially, a single mother except for during the occasional weekends when Leo could come home to visit. It was a clearly stressful situation for the family, compounded when one night someone broke into the house while Leo was away, woke up Aricelis, put a knife to her throat, and demanded money. The local ward rallied around her, ward members started staying the night with her, etc.

So one night a couple weeks before I went home, my companion and I stopped by Aricelis' place. When we walked up to the house, I could hear her inside screaming at the children. The moment we knocked on the door, everything went silent inside, and she said in this meek voice, "Who is it?" "The missionaries," I said, and when she opened the door, looking sheepish, I grinned and said, "We are here to save you." My companion and I bustled inside, we sat the kids on the floor, I spent the next fifteen minutes or so unveiling one game after another. The magnets were the big finish: they stole the show hands-down once the kids saw how you could make all the silverware in the house stick together.

So once the kids were off on their own figuring out what in the house was magnetic, my companion and I sat down with Aracelis. I said, "How are you?" in a tone of voice intended to convey that this question was not a pleasantry, we really wanted to know... and she spilled, much more than I had intended, actually, to the point where I quickly began to feel I was in over my head. Problems with Leo, problems with the thief's family (she'd identified him on the street and had him arrested, and now the thief's family were harassing her), problems with a relative over ownership of their house. And of course, there was nothing I could do about any of these problems except listen—well, that, and give her a few toys that she could perhaps use to bribe some obedience and peace out of her children.

When she was done, I pulled out the hymnals we always carried with us to sing during discussions, and the three of us sang one of my favorite hymns, the pre-1992 Spanish translation of "Abide with Me." (The more recently correlated translation sucked all the poetry of it for the sake of making the translation more literal, a sin for which I hope someone is made to sweat very hard in the next life.) It was one of the most beautiful moments in my mission—the tangible peace afterwards. We prayed and left.

The lesson it occurs to me to take from this anecdote is this. Christ says that where two or three are gathered in his name, he is there. I know—testimony time—that Christ was present during that visit with Aricelis and her children. But Christ drew near to us because my companion and I drew near to Aricelis. We got on our bikes, we rode to her house, we walked up to the front door even when the screaming inside might have given us an excuse to "come back another time," we knocked, we bustled inside, we sat on the floor with the kids, and then we pulled our chairs closer to Aricelis' and asked her how she was in a voice that said we really wanted to know even though we ended up getting more in response than I was prepared for. I cherish the memory of moments like that. I've said in an earlier post that I worry, in fact, that I'm prone to fondle the memory of these moments instead of getting out there and making new moments like this. And the lesson that I'm hearing the Spirit convey to me today is that, yes, drawing near to someone involves taking initiative, taking certain risks, getting out of my comfort zone, lowering some walls. But that's what I have to do if I want Christ to be present with me in the way he was that night at Aracelis'.

La Virgen de Guadalupe

I just got back from a mass in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe held at the local Catholic church. It's the first communal celebration of Guadalupe's feast day that I've participated in since we moved to North Carolina, which I feel guilty about every time December 12 rolls around. Back in Salt Lake, Hugo and I used to go the "Virgin tree" on 700 South each year on the evening of December 12, where people would congregate to light candles. I'd bring my guitar, and people would join in singing traditional Guadalupan songs with us. It was a gesture of solidarity with Salt Lake's growing Mexican population. For me, it was also a way to remember and give thanks for the role that a Mexican Episcopal congregation played in my life during the interim before God sent a storm and a whale to make me realize I couldn't run away from Mormonism.

And, most importantly for me, it was a way to give thanks for the answering of a prayer I once made to the Virgin Mary.

Here's the story: In late 1996, I was lying in bed, worrying about whether I was going to be accepted into a Catholic program I'd applied to in order to get back to the Dominican Republic to do community development-oriented mission work. I wanted very badly to be accepted by this program; in fact, if I didn't get accepted, I had no idea what I'd do with myself after graduation. So as I was lying there, stewing and stressing, the thought suddenly came into my head: "Why don't you ask the Virgin of Altagracia? It's her country, after all."

Altagracia is the designated patroness of the Dominican Republic (as Guadalupe is for Mexico and for the Americas in general). She has a basilica in Higuey, which I visited a few times sightseeing as an LDS missionary. Now, when this still small voice suggested that I pray to the Virgin of Altagracia, I certainly did not believe that the Virgin Mary resides in heaven offering intercessory prayer. At that point in my life, I wasn't altogether sure I believed in God. But I thought, "Okay, I'm game." So lying there in bed, I asked the Virgin of Altagracia to open doors that would get me back to the Dominican Republic. Afterward, I lay there basking in that profound feeling of peace that every Latter-day Saint recognizes as the Spirit. Some weeks after that, I got the call telling me I'd been accepted into the program. And an entirely unexpected consequence of the time I spent with that program is that I began to reconnect with Mormonism as a spiritual heritage.

During a return trip to the Dominican Republic, I made a point of visiting Altagracia's basilica to thank her. In the U.S., I've never lived near a Dominican community that celebrated Altagracia's feast day, or I'd probably participate as an ongoing thanks offering. Instead, I honor the Virgin of Guadalupe's day as a kind of surrogate for Altagracia. Apart from this once-a-year (if that) devotion, Mary plays no role in my spiritual life. If I felt a need to connect with a feminine divinity (which, as it happens, I don't), I'd do it by way of the Mormon conception of Heavenly Mother. But once a year, on December 12, I like to pause and thank the Virgin for opening the door that set me on the path that brought me back to Mormonism. If that statement made you blink, that was the intent.

Kittens update

Walking the dog early this morning, I saw the two surviving kittens down in the gully, climbing a tree with their mother. I hadn't seen any sign of them in so long, I'd been assuming they probably froze to death: we've had some bitterly cold, frozen-wet nights lately.

I feel... I don't know what the best word is... relieved? happy? grateful? that they're alive. I get philosophical whenever I think about it. Living things die all the time. Some survive, some don't. It's just the way nature works. In the grand scheme of things, the lives of these two kittens—or the deaths of their two siblings—have no meaning whatsoever. They're practically random events. The same can be said for human lives. And yet I have faith in a God who proclaims the worth of every human soul, and who is said to observe the fall of every sparrow. It doesn't make sense, and if I were willing to be a more hard-headed, cold-hearted rationalist I might dismiss it all as wishful thinking. But I'm not willing to do that. This is one place where I make a leap of faith.

So even if, scientifically or philosophically speaking, the lives of these individual kittens have no special significance, I'm praying for their survival anyway even as I'm prepared for "nature to take its course," whatever that turns out to be.

Advent 2

My reflection today may not seem to have much to do with Advent, but I'll get to what I see as the connection.

A couple days ago, I was working through some literature on the Christian Right as part of my dissertation project. One of the books I was looking at was Religion, Politics, and the Christian Right by Mark Lewis Taylor. Despite the promising title, it actually turned out to be only peripherally useful for my project, since the primary purpose of the book is to lay out an agenda for the building up of a Christian Left. And for that reason, I ended up reading more closely than I'd expected.

As is often the case when I encounter left-leaning Christian literature, I'm ambivalent about this book. He calls for reconstructing liberalism in the name of a "prophetic spirit" oriented toward liberation and revolutionary expectation. He's interested in religious hybridity as a source of new ways to imagine liberation when a way forward seems impossible. In practical terms, he calls for Christians to join in solidarity with the liberatory projects developed by marginalized people: anti-war veterans, families of people in prison, advocates of slavery reparations, immigrants, indigenous peoples, environmental activists, sexual minorities, socialists. He envisions the creation of what he calls "paragovernmental councils" which will function the way white citizens' councils used to function back during the segregation era, i.e., organizing outside official government to orchestrate a certain vision of society, except (unlike the white citizens' councils) this would be an orchestration for good.

I warm to this vision—there's no question of that. With a couple exceptions, my politics and Taylor's flow in the same general direction. He's articulating a kind of liberation theology—a preferential option for the marginalized, which is something I profess to believe in, a fundamental dimension of the gospel. He's envisioning a way of going about doing what I would call building the kingdom or establishing Zion.

I was about to segue from what I just said above to explaining the Advent connection to all this, but I feel that first I should explain my ambivalence. It's the same problem whenever I encounter a politics that inspires me. I encountered this problem when I was reading for my doctoral exams. I encountered the work of a UNC anthropologist named Arturo Escobar, who works with other Latin Americanists on what's called the Modernity/Coloniality Research Program. I don't want to get bogged down here in explaining this program in detail, but the gist is that these are scholars who want to develop alternatives to globalizing modernity by thinking with intellectual-activists on the margins. When I discovered this work, it struck strong chords, and I ended up entirely revising one of the lists for my exams so I could explore it. I hoped that engaging with this project would help me recover a sense of mission in my scholarship. But that didn't happen in the end, because as I engaged with the project—and engaged with it critically—it inevitably lost its romance (or rather, I become skeptically conscious of its romance). I started to problematize it, to historicize it, to deconstruct it, etc.

The same thing happened as I was reading Taylor, and it happens when I revisit works of liberation theology that I found so inspiring ten years ago. I'm trained, as an academic, to problematize intellectual projects: to notice what they exclude, how they try to naturalize what's actually constructed, how they set up certain relations of power and privilege. So I start to wince; my stance becomes aloof, cool, detached, skeptical; it becomes hard for me to rally behind the project as a true believer. In the case of Taylor's book, I note with a grimace and a little eye-rolling that his "prophetic spirit" just happens to correspond to the thinking of someone who's been reading a lot of contemporary critical theory. I shift uncomfortably when he talks about trusting the agency of marginalized peoples—first, because I sense a kind of reification going on, as often happens in leftist literature the moment they start talking about "the marginalized" or "the oppressed," as if it's a given who's entitled to those labels and as if the people we're talking about weren't internally divided and pursuing various internal power ploys; and second, because as an academic I believe in a kind of intellectual elitism which makes me reluctant to throw my faith behind the ideas and projects of people who lack specialized training.

This is getting cerebral—I need to clarify what's at stake for me here, spiritually. The point is this: when I read scholarship that is actively committed to leftist agendas, part of me feels that I should be doing the same. Okay, maybe I'm not ready to put my faith in "intellectual-activists" among poor black Colombians, or rural Maya in Chiapas, or homeless people in New York City trying to organize themselves into an economic human rights campaign. But if I really see my scholarship as a stewardship, shouldn't I be using my specialized know-how to help those kinds of causes? Shouldn't helping those kinds of causes be my primary research and teaching agenda? Because—here's the Advent connection—Matthew 25 tells me that Christ is present in those who are "the least of these": those who are most marginalized, most disadvantaged, most vulnerable. If I'm serious about serving Christ, then I need to be serious about serving those people. To cast this in more clearly Advent-oriented terms: There's a sense in which we're still waiting for Christ to come, and there's a sense in which he's already come and has been among us all along. In calling us to walk in solidarity with the least of these, he calls us to walk with him.

But then I see people who do committed scholarship, and I think: No. They're not living up to certain duties of the scholarly vocation. Our job is to problematize everything. That's how we make new knowledge. In religious terms, it's how we serve as instruments of continuing, progressive revelation—bringing to light things that have "not been revealed since the world was until now" (D&C 121:26). That includes deconstructing our own commitments. But people who use their scholarship to advance their political commitments aren't engaging in that deconstructive work. And they make me nervous, frankly. People who can't convince me that they realize that their own most deeply held ideas are historical and social constructs, and that the projects they're pursuing involve establishing power relations with consequences that are not benign—those people frighten me because they seem set up to practice unrighteous dominion while remaining blissfully blinded to the injustices and suffering they perpetrate.

Then again, I suspect that my penchant for self-deconstruction makes me hopelessly useless politically. There comes a point where you have to take a stand. And when I read a book like Taylor's, I wonder—is God calling me to take a stand here? Is this the moment when Christ says to me: Sell all you have, give it to the poor, and follow me? Let go of whatever academic kudos you think you gain by your stance of critical detachment and irony, and commit?

I don't know. I didn't achieve the clarity or insight I was hoping I might as I wrote this. In fact, I'm embarrassed at how arcane this reflection will probably seem to readers. I'm probably not communicating it well, but these issues are fundamental for me, because they strike at the heart of my identity as an intellectual and as a scholar. I'm investing a lot of time and energy into becoming an academic; and as a matter of my spiritual commitments, I want to use that professional identity to serve, to make a difference. How best do I do that? I don't want to come to the judgment bar in the end, wondering if I spent my career and my life pursuing intellectual projects that didn't really represent the best expenditure of my time and talents.

Advent 1

Today is the first Sunday in Advent. My plan during this season is to write a little each week about a different facet of what it means to me to wait for the coming of Christ, which is what we're doing during Advent—waiting for Christmas, for the birth of Jesus.

This week I feel moved to post the words to a song I wrote several years ago, while I was living in Salt Lake. I wrote it during Advent, drawing from passages in the Gospels and the Psalms. I'd been reflecting that season on the theme of waiting in the context of the latest round of anti-gay legislation in Utah (probably the adoption ban, if I'm remembering the timing correctly). Once again we'd seen equality deferred to the future, which was discouraging... and then it occurred to me. We were waiting. Waiting for justice and equity. Waiting for a transformation, an enlightenment, in public opinion around these issues. As the Latter-day Saints have been doing for 200 years, as Christians have been doing for 2000 years, we as gay/lesbian people and our straight friends are still waiting for the hoped-for day.

I may spend my whole life waiting. I hope not—God, I hope not. But I would hardly be the first person in the history of the world who waited his/her whole life for the coming of something that s/he didn't live to see come. I trust in God's promise of a regime that implements justice and equity; I have faith that the Spirit works through our efforts to build up that regime. But I may never enjoy the fruits. Or, then again, I might. I don't know. That's what it means to wait: to live in uncertainty. But a hopeful, confident uncertainty, if that makes any sense.

Advent reminds me that this hopeful, confident uncertainty is part of the Christian life. We wait for the fulfilment of the promises. We wait for Millennium. We wait for the Messiah.

So here's the song.

CHORUS:
Take ye heed, watch and pray,
for ye know not when the time is.
What I say unto you, I say unto all:
Let your lights burn, and watch.

1. O Lord, be gracious unto us;
we have waited for thee.
Be thou our arm every morning,
our salvation in the time of trouble.

2. I wait for the Lord;
in his word do I hope.
My soul waiteth for the Lord
more than they that watch for the morning.

3. Rest, O rest, in the Lord
and wait patiently for him.
Fret not thyself because of those
that bring to pass wicked devices.

Thanksgiving: Five kernels of corn

It's Thanksgiving morning. Sitting on my desk is the cheap plastic rosary I cherish because I received it during my second mission trip to the Dominican Republic. I dug it out of the box where it's been stored with other keepsakes, so I can use it during my Advent discipline. The idea came to me out of the blue a few days ago: every day between now and Christmas, I'm going to thumb my way through the beads, naming for each bead a person (or group of people) for whom I pray. In Mormon terms, think of it as like compiling a prayer roll. I'm going to try to avoid repetition, which makes it feel like an intimidating challenge: Can profoundly self-absorbed John-Charles think of 60 x 30 different people to pray for? (Can he remember their fricking names?) It forces me to widen my circle of concern, Enos style.

No prayers of thanksgiving allowed—that would make it about me again, whereas the point of the discipline is to focus on others' well-being. But today's Thanksgiving, so a different discipline is the order of the day. When I was growing up, my family did the "five kernels of corn" tradition. You have five kernels on your corn on your plate before you start Thanksgiving dinner, recalling the five kernels of corn that at one point supposedly became the Pilgrims' daily ration. You go around the table, and for each kernel, each person has to name something he or she is thankful for.

Here are my five:

1. I'm thankful for my partner. As of tomorrow (the day after Thanksgiving), we will have been lovers for nine years.

2. I'm thankful that my mother is still with us. And while I want to be absolutely clear that this does not make her illness acceptable, I'm grateful that out of the evil of her illness has come the good of a kind of reconciliation.

3. I'm thankful that we have an incoming government that I'm confident (hopeful) is trustworthy, respects human rights, can move toward (re)building better relations with other governments, and didn't win by hatemongering. Sorry to be partisan, but having that kind of government makes a huge difference in the world. I pray now they can cope with the enormous challenges facing us.

4. I'm thankful for communities that have provided support—here in North Carolina and in the past. As I say that, I'm wincing: Is there anyone out there who gives thanks for my support of them?

5. I'm thankful for the guidance of the Spirit in my life. That's not just a sappy "big finish." I actually paused a good while after writing those words, feeling hesitant about them. I feel I've been guided because I feel like my life has purpose and meaning, which is to say that I feel like my life has a direction, with prospects for accomplishment, for contribution, for service. But what if today it all ended in a senseless tragedy—a car crash, say? Would my life have had meaning? Do all lives have meaning? This reflection has taken an unexpectedly dark philosophical turn—but it's good, I guess, to not be facile in thanksgiving. I feel I've been guided. I feel God is making my life meaningful. I trust he does that for everyone, even though I have some inkling of how improbable that faith is. I give thanks for the meaning I discern. Whether the dead can find it in them to give thanks, or the living who suffer, is a different matter. But I seem to be one of the privileged ones—which isn't something to give thanks for; it's something to try to magnify into a remotely useful (it will never be "profitable") servanthood.

And on that uplifting note, let's go get ready to have a feast, shall we?

This reflection was not at all the uplifting little moment I expected.

Praying for kittens, part 2

I just got back from the dog's night walk. As we were making our way along the fence, I saw the black-and-white cat who recently had kittens eyeing us from behind a cement barrier, and then as we kept walking, I happened to glance down and saw two of the kittens curled up in a nest of leaves just on the other side of the fence from us. Two of the original four—I take it the others haven't survived the cold. I held the dog back, peered through at the kittens, said a prayer for them, and then dragged the dog off on our way.

For several months now, Hugo's been leaving cat food out by the fence. He started after we discovered that one of the feral cats we always saw hanging out around our parking lot and dumpster and underground drainage pipes had had a litter and that the mother looked very malnourished. I think this latest litter is the third generation since then, if I'm not miscounting. Feeding the cats is a little act of charity, though we are aware that once we move away, that will create a hardship for the generations that have gotten used to having a daily meal provided.