On Monday, my daughter
Pickle and I drove down to Five Corners so that we could put our knees on the
gritty pavement for eight long minutes. Afterwards, Pickle remarked quietly to
me, “My knees hurt.”
The symbolic action
still made a physical impression on her, even if it was an easy way to lay our
bodies down for justice.
As we made our initial
drive, Pickle expressed some concern about our mission. She was aware that
protests across the country had become scenes of violence. And she remembered
the last time she stood at Five Corners, on the fifth anniversary of the
Newtown shootings, when someone driving by shouted expletives at the gathering,
the angry words landing right in her eight-year-old face. I explained to her
that I would keep her safe, that we were choosing the safest way to put our
bodies on the line.
Participating in a
demonstration in the midst of a pandemic, after months of social distancing,
made me even more aware of my body and the bodies around me. Staying masked and
keeping a distance was such an unusual way to gather, but also another way to
honor the human body. Standing out in public
with other bodies brings to mind the fragility of our physical bodies. How
easily they are injured. How quickly life is taken out of them. Even watching the
bodies come and go out of the Cumberland Farms store, I saw the bodies of
people I know on this Island who live close to the gritty pavement, or piney
floor of the state forest, the homeless of Martha’s Vineyard. More precious
bodies, out in public, exposed, vulnerable.
Say his name. George
Floyd. Say his name. We say the names of those killed under the shroud of
racism to honor them as children of God and to pull back the covers and reveal
the racism at work in our society. Say their names. He or she was a father, a
mother, a daughter, a son, a brother or a sister. A human being. A sacred body.
For me, my shock, my
outrage, my fear, my grief and my exhaustion at this moment in time, is rooted
in the way black and brown bodies have been denigrated and discarded for
centuries. Bodies extinguished by blatant racist acts or worn down by the
micro-aggressions of systemic racism and white privilege. Black and brown
bodies dying at a disproportionate rate even from the coronavirus, reveal other
dynamics of racism in our country. At times, I muffle my mouth, and try to just
listen and feel what my black and brown siblings are experiencing. I know that
I, too, am part of this racist system, shaped by bias, oblivious to how I may
come across. Complicit. Sometimes it’s hard to know what to say, and so I act.
Throughout my life, I
have chosen to place my vulnerable body before power, as I was shown by Gandhi
and Dr. King, by clergy and moral leaders, and so many others. When words fail
to express our feelings or make change, we use our bodies to demonstrate and
practice civil disobedience. Here on Martha’s Vineyard there are few
opportunities for this form of expression, but I have watched my clergy
colleagues across the country engage their bodies in marches and demonstrations
and nonviolent civil disobedience. I am grateful to them. I honor them.
I have been especially
attuned to the ministry of the Rev. Ingrid C. A. Rasmussen of Holy Trinity
Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, who has turned her church into a mess hall and
medic center. And we have all witnessed how the clergy of St. John’s Episcopal
Church in Washington, D.C., have been thrust into the center of the conflict.
On Monday, after offering hospitality to the demonstrators on their patio,
sharing granola bars and juice with them, they were hit by tear gas and rubber
bullets. I bow to all the leaders who are emerging in this moment.
I am out of words for
now. I don’t know if I have words of wisdom to offer. But as a person of faith,
I trust that God is present in this moment and I know that if I want to join
Jesus at this time, I need to follow him into the places of pain and
vulnerability, the places aching for healing and justice. That is where my Lord
is found. I cling to resurrection hope. For Monday’s demonstration,
the youth who organized it asked white people to think about what they would do
to confront their privilege from this day forward. In my mind, the poster I
raised said, “I will raise my kids to be anti-racist.” But I held another one
as well, “I will lead an anti-racist church.” Won’t you join me?
Guest blogger Rev. Cathlin Baker
is pastor of the First Congregational Church of West Tisbury, MA
Her essay first appeared in the Vineyard Gazette and is printed with permission .
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