no sign

 

As Confederate Generals descend from their pedestals, and our nation rethinks what it has held up as worthy of secular reverence, I've been thinking. About symbols, but not just of civil religion.

The church I frequently attend has a big crucifix above the altar at the front of the church. What if instead we had something else? A Good Shepherd window perhaps, or an icon of the Trinity.

To me the crucified Christ depicted above the altar was the one who lived and died and rose again on our behalf, whose life was filled with unwavering integrity and absolute obedience to the point of accepting even betrayal at the hand of a friend and execution by the authorities.

To someone else it was a dead Jew, a man pursued and tortured and executed, not a redeeming work at all.

What if something else were at the front of the room? If another symbol focused our worship?

On a break during a conference on the 21st century church some years ago at Washington National Cathedral, I sauntered into the gift shop, where the author of the article cited below told me she was looking for a Trinity symbol, one she could wear. There were plenty of crosses. Helpfully I suggested where she might find some: Irish import stores. Maybe so;  a friend wears a Newgrange Trinity symbol ball cap. But her purpose was not to affirm Ireland, as you can read for yourself. What she was looking for was similar to my inquiry above: what if we went with a different symbol, or no sign at all?

Jesus said, according to the gospel of Matthew (12:39), no sign will be given this generation except the sign of Jonas. Thomas Merton wrote about ‘traveling in the belly of a paradox’, that is, to be in a place of not-seeing, not-knowing, but still moving forward in that divine darkness.

The Sign of Jonah

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, ‘Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.’ But he answered them, ‘An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was for three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.  

What if that is the sign we need?  

To set aside our ideas of what is what and to look again and be open, and let ourselves see what is not there. And what is.

And what, out of that darkness, is being borne into the light.

Barbara Brown Taylor, "How my mind has changed: Finding God outside the church walls", The Christian Century, July 9th 2020. https://www.christiancentury.org/article/how-my-mind-has-changed/finding-god-outside-church-walls

retrocessional

 

Give it back. That was the caption of my drawing showing my suggestion for a new flag for D.C. - the 17th-century heraldic banner of arms of Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore. Look familiar?

The Washington Star ran a contest back in the 1970s: it was time, they said, for a new flag for the District of Columbia. 

I thought of representation, of ‘taxation without representation’, and of “DC : The Last Colony”, and wondered, if it were not time to make sure that residents of the federal city had a vote.

Hence my suggestion.

From the first days of our republic, the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 17) provided for a district set aside for the federal government, to comprise a territory not exceeding ten miles square. So the founders picked a place, straddling the Potomac River, with some land ceded by the states on either side, Virginia to the south and west and Maryland to the north and east.

But from 1801 the residents of that district no longer had a vote in federal elections, as The Economist points out (“DC history: Without representation”, August 8th 2020, 23). And by 1846 the people on the Virginia side had had enough, and by an act of retrocession recovered the franchise, and the Old Dominion its territory. 

So the orphaned voters were only on the northern side. But they need be orphans no longer. 

It is time for the residents of the Capital city to have a voting representative in Congress. The question is how.

Before the Senate languishes a House resolution to grant the District statehood. They could pass it, and send it to the Resolute desk for signature. That would do it. 

But perhaps ticklish Senators will seek a compromise. And that could come another way: by retrocession of territory to Maryland, reserving for the seat of government a federal district comprising the Capitol, the National Mall and Memorial Parks, and the President’s Park (White House), all now national park land and with no permanent residents.

Washingtonians would gain voting representation in both houses of Congress; but they would become residents of Maryland, perhaps of a new county, called Potomac or Columbia.

It may not fly. But hey, why not run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes?

https://www.heritage.org/report/the-constitution-and-the-district-columbia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Maryland

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/08/08/residents-of-washington-dc-could-once-vote-for-congress

yesterday

Yesterday for the first time since June 5th we put the dogs in the car and drove up to the top of Mount Lemmon. The last time we drove up Mount Lemmon was the day before we watched lightning strike the western slopes of Pusch Ridge. That was the beginning of the Bighorn Fire, which burned 120,000 acres before the first big monsoon rain finally put it completely out. As the fire began to ebb into embers and ashes, and the many crews of firefighters, weather service, deputy sheriffs, and game and fish officers, could pack up, the conversation began around how to recover, or what is next. The forest service has something in place: a Burned Area Emergency Response plan. 

What we saw yesterday was much the same, for awhile, until we got up to where we had picknicked two months before and saw from the edge of the road the whole mountainside to the north down to the next valley scorched and covered with ashes. As we descended from the ski area above Summerhaven we could see how close the fires had come to the mountaintop telescopes and the edge of the road. And we could see the first small green sprouts as new growth began on the ashen slopes of the mountain faces.

And so this local disaster, which occupied our minds and feelings for over a month, as the smoke, the helicopters and airplanes, and on many days the flames, occupied our senses, began to release its hold on us. In the middle of the fire month of June I had listed our common anxieties in order of longevity - and perhaps in reverse order of attention. 

1. The Bighorn Fire

2. The Coronavirus Pandemic

3. The Presidency

4. Climate Change

The Bighorn Fire began June 5th in the Catalina Mountains and ended a little over a month later. (Fire season is far from over in the Southwest, but see below under #4.) 

The Coronavirus Pandemic began sometime last December in southern China and has far from peaked, though there is hope that with proper precautions at the individual, social, national, and global levels, and the efforts to develop and distribute a vaccine, it can become another endemic disease, like the flu or the common cold, rather than the fourth scourge alongside tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS. 

I'm skipping one. 

Climate Change began 250 years ago and will have its effects for the next millenia. It causes things like our wretched summer of excessive heat as well as the more extreme weather events and the more frequent droughts, fires, rainstorms, floods, and mudslides that are piling on top of each other.

The Presidency will, according to The Economist, nine chances out of ten be handed over to the opposite party in January. 

After the Bighorn Fire the Burn Area Emergency Response plan goes into effect. Shall we re-seed as we did after the Aspen Fire? After the fire in the Big Bear area some years ago, Giant Sequoia were planted. Will we see planting of indigenous species? After the Oakland Hills fire of 1989 people built back, better one hopes. After the second Great Earthquake and Fire of San Francisco, the one in 1909, the City came back, different but greater.

We talk about the new normal. We talk about before, during, and after. We talk about building back better. 

But I can tell you, since the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November four years ago, an obsession has gripped many minds. And so we when we begin to talk about what is next what we talk about is the disaster continuing. But nine chances out of ten less than ninety days from now there will be an election that begins to overturn the current situation, political but not climate or health, and people have NO IDEA what that will look like. I hope the prospective next president has some people on board who do see a future with hope. Too many are too obsessed with the present to look ahead.

And yet the future is where we will live. At least the next generation, and many of us, will live in it.

We will not see again what we had before. But we can begin to build what we can become, indeed what we are called to become, as individuals, as citizens of this nation, and as creatures on this planet. 

We have to. For we will survive, and it is our duty.