In this tine of pestilence, I reread what I wrote twelve years ago. The POTUS 43 was a man of mediocre mind, bumbling in his speech, who had become president through chicanery. His response to the grief caused by the tragedy of the terrorist attack in New York was to tell us to "go shopping." He used the attack to take away many of our rights and liberties, further a police state, get war powers from a Congress willing to give up its constitutional prerogative, and blatantly lying, invaded Iraq from which we have yet not fully extricated. He legalized torture and stripped away the rights of the accused. He was a war criminal. Then came a man in his prime, intelligent, articulate, handsome, and African-American to succeed him as POTUS 44. There was hope. His was the only presidential inauguration at which I wept. He brought dignity and style to the White House if not the changes hoped for; aside from a flawed public health plan, it was business as usual.
Need I tell the unspeakable that followed? We are in the midst of a devastating pandemic such as none living has ever seen before, and the deplorably despicable POTUS 45, profoundly ignorant, pathological liar, disbeliever in truth much less science, arrogant, corrupt, authoritarian, unabashedly fascist belittled the pandemic, responded with too little too late, and the "America" he would "Make Great Again," ineptly and corruptly governed, in the grip of the pandemic is in dire straits to say the least.
The entire world is shaken and changed by the pandemic; as my friend and colleague Deena Metzger has said, "We are suffering a species-threatening disease." (Any apocalyptic pathogen would need to possess a very special combination of two attributes. First, it would have to be so unfamiliar that no existing therapy or vaccine could be applied to it. Second, it would need to have a high and surreptitious transmissibility before symptoms occur.) But the disease is more than a matter of a deadly crowned virus; it is a disease of the soul that has put human life and all life at risk by the very way we have related to the Earth. The hope in this descent into hell is that we learn that our only salvation lies in a fierce love of the Earth, of the life she bears, of one another, and to remake the world that will remain accordingly.
In this time of pestilence, these memories and words of hope from twelve years past:
Holy Saturday
This year, the sun and the moon have ordered their steps such that the Vernal Equinox and the full moon almost perfectly coincide and the liturgical calendar celebrates the ascendancy of the light about as early in the year as it may.
I mark the feast days of the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, and the Christian holy days of my childhood: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday. It has been Lent, the Sunday of Holy week full of an ominous joy, the days that follow, bitter. Indeed a friend has told me that my words recently have been joyless (I, who have always said that joy is the root of our power.) We live in disempowering times — and Holy Thursday, Good Friday are holy days of betrayal, of pain, of torture.
But
Holy Saturday is here, the end of Lent imminent. Since a child, I have
always remembered it as a day yellow with sun, and at noon, at that
time, the church bells would ring, marking the killed god’s harrowing of
hell, the setting free of the souls of our parents Adam and Eve and of
the just, the compassionate, there held. A glorious thing, this triumph
of good over evil, of the light over the darkness, of hope over despair —
and spring is here. A glorious thing, and in the Spanish world, it is
known as Saturday of Glory.The day following is Easter, sunnier yet if that were possible. We woke to the marvel of the eggs we had painstakingly dyed the evening before, to getting into our splendid new clothes we would piously show off in the cathedral at 11:00 o’clock mass brilliant with the rainbow lights that poured though the stained glass windows and colored the smoke of the incense, and, I imagined, the very sound of the choir singing their glorias. Gloria! Gloria! Gloria! The light has triumphed, the god is risen! Gloria! Gloria! Gloria!
That was childhood, young adulthood even, but even yet, this is a time of light, of joy, of hope, even in these dark times. You have listened to, read my words, my dark gifts to you this past week or so, and I would give you on this Easter something more shining, of beauty, of truth, of justice, of compassion, of hope.
Often I wished I could have heard Jesus speaking of justice and compassion and the lilies of the field or advising the well-meaning rich young man, stood rapt among the crowd at the foot of the hill, or followed close in the narrow streets of Jerusalem for the sound of his voice. I imagine having a recording of the Teacher’s voice to give you on this day. But that voice (still winging its way across the universe, science tells us) is now beyond our hearing. Instead, I offer give you another voice, one that echoes the teachings of the Nazarene as I understand them.
When you find, or make, a half hour to give, to take my gift, with a click or two, break the egg shell below. The truth, the commitment to justice, the compassion, the hope expressed are ours — if we choose to make them so.
----------------------------------bless —
----------------------------------------------© Rafael Jesús González 2008
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