React/Psalm 137

On the willows there, we hung our harps

At the end of the first meeting of our art group, the word was plucked from the brown bag. The word was 'react'.  Before we were to meet again, we would create artworks around this word. Because I had been studying the Psalms with the young people of St. Peter's Episcopal in Paris, KY, I had a lot of material rolling around in my brain.  I drove home in the dusk along the gentle landscape of Paris Pike. It didn't take long to determine that Psalm 137 would be the centerpiece of a 'React' triptych.

Psalm 137

Psalm 137

By the rivers of Babylon--
   there we sat down and there we wept
   when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
   we hung up our harps.
For there our captors
   asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth saying,
   "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"

How could we sing the LORD's song
   in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
   let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
   if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
   above my highest joy.

Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites
   the day of Jerusalem's fall,
how they said, "Tear it down! Tear it down!
   Down to its foundations!"
O daughter Babylon, you devastator!
   Happy shall they be who pay
        you back
   what you have done to us!
Happy shall they be who take your little ones
   and dash them against the rock!


The beautiful sorrow of hanging one's harps on foreign trees after being forced from the homeland can be keenly felt. But, who is prepared for the kick in the gut of the last lines?  I checked with parents of the Sunday School class before the discussion about Psalm 137. They gave their okay and I was comforted that several mothers were in the room as I read. The students were engaged.  For our first class, they had created a painting of a tree planted by a stream of water (the first Psalm's firmly rooted imagery). So, they were familiar with the scene. But, as I read the last lines, their heads shot up and they looked to their mothers for assurance. I did, too! How do we get to the point where we are not just angry and terrified by our forced exodus and labor, but willing to see the young and innocent pay the price for our pain?

I reflected back on my drive over to the meeting, earlier that very evening. Listening to the news, I heard Mitch McConnell blurble on about how we needed to take the decision-making on health care away from the Feds and back to more local control, kind of like what the state-wide exchanges were supposed to do. Our Republican governor dismantled the exchange in Kentucky, KYnnect, which was a model program for the rest of the country. 'Oh, man!', I thought, 'I would like to punch Mitch McConnell in the face!'

Black-eyed Deer in the Headlights

Sadly, that was not the first time. I've been struck by how often Mitch McConnell, perhaps the single most influential person in thwarting the work of our previous President so that the path would be paved for the current occupant of the White House, looks dumb-founded, flummoxed, as if he does not understand what happened.

The Majority Leader of the United States Senate does not look all that different from the countless children who appear on the pages of newspapers and evening newscasts. Of course, they have good reason to be bewildered and stunned, being the victims of bombings, never-ending wars and the struggle to escape to better lives. These little ones are 21st century collateral for adult anger and grudges; perpetual reaction.

21st Century Collateral

How do we interrupt the reaction? This is my question for this summer as we are in a hot mess of reaction in our country (we just witnessed history in Charlottesville this past weekend). I envisioned Mitch McConnell as a child, with blond hair and blue eyes and polio (his cure and treatment paid for by the U.S. government).  This made me think about how our country seems to be experiencing a crippling, not from polio, but a crippling of conscience. Taking in the news, I see a lot of pain and we can not react our way out of pain.

An answer arrived in the form of a Facebook urging from my niece to listen to an On Being program featuring Ruby Sales. She said something very interesting and surprising (though I wonder why it should be surprising). Ruby Sales said that there needs to be a white liberation theology. If a white man grows up understanding that his value is all tied up in his special standing as a white person, what happens when that power is diminished? Through what Rev. Sales calls black folk religion, she grew up confident in her love. No matter what anyone else might have thought of her, she understood she was a beloved child of God. She had plenty of love to extend to others. I believe that all of America could use a good dose of liberation theology. We could no longer have to react. We could begin creating again.