Resistance and Resilience

“Joy is a revolutionary force. We need it as much as we need anger because it is joy that will help keep us in these bodies long enough to enact justice.” While we usually can identify the joy in our lives, don’t we struggle a bit with guilt about it since suffering surrounds us? Don’t we think that joy and suffering are opposites of each other? That is a mistake in logic. I learned a long time ago from the poet and mystic William Blake that “Joy and woe are woven fine, a clothing for the soul divine.”

Stamina can be built from such cloth. Life-sustaining joy will take us safely through the ruthless fire of this world. It has before, and it will again. And it is in community, in remembering the complexity of this community and in learning from communities other than our own, that we might develop stamina muscles for our work of renewal and our aspirations to battle injustice. 

Last weekend was my weekend off. Instead of spending Friday writing a sermon, I rested. And my rest included three days of glorious music, sung by none other than my daughter Helen. On Friday, I went to a bar, drank an adult beverage, and listened to her folk-rock band, including an amazing rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground.” Her long-time collaborator even re-wrote the words to “Kansas City, Kansas City, Here I Come” in anticipation of the Buffalo Bills Game in, yes, Kansas City, and yes, we lost but Buffalo is used to that and there’s always next year. 

Hope springs eternal. It has to, when you’re from Buffalo.

On Saturday, I sat at the local PBS station while the women of Sotto Voce, the opera company Helen sings with, recorded a concert. She performed several duets, as well as solo arias from “Dido and Aeneus” and “Carmen.” I will very proudly pass along links when the show is aired. And on Sunday, I went to church. I got to sit in the congregation, the burden of inspiration on my beloved colleague who was not sure what to say on the Sunday following the first week of the attempt to overthrow the federal government of the United States. After this second week of destruction, you know I am not exaggerating. But the service was inspiring, and so was my daughter singing a deeply soulful version of John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

I have long been “audience” to musical performance of many varieties, and not only because I am proud of my musical daughter. Music fills me, from the heart-center out to my extremities. It is another language, another physical resonance, a respite from other words ringing in my head—words of pain and anger, shock and confusion, horror and outrage. Music gives me joy. My daughter singing gives me joy. Music in church, as a form of worship, of worth-shaping, gives me joy. Music reminds me to lean into joy. Music is a way to practice joy. And boy, do I need joy in my life these days. How about you?

I need joy in my life, and so I am commemorating Black history month with you in Canada, even though the US federal government has tried to make it not exist.

I am celebrating Black people, in Canada, in the US, everywhere in the world for the beingness that makes for part of the glorious diversity of this one Universe, this one world of which we are a part and never apart from. Elon Musk might steal my mother’s social security check today, her only source of income, but I will deal with that tomorrow, because today I am leaning into joy. Today is Ground Hog Day, and I am celebrating Punxsutawney Phil—he’s the one in Western Pennsylvania, brought by German immigrants—whether he saw his shadow or not, I didn’t check, whether the winter will last 6 more weeks or end sooner or later. I am leaning into the joy of picturing the scene in Punxsutawney this morning and of watching Bill Murray and Andie McDowell in the movie and sharing a meal with my daughter and husband. Maybe we will play cards. My little slice of future remains open.

Now you may wonder—is all this “leaning into joy” really a bunch of nonsense, Rita getting a bit unhinged because the auto industry is about to shut down—did the tariffs go into effect last night?—and her mother’s only source of income is about to disappear, her only cash reserves about to be swallowed up in the price of eggs and Canadian maple syrup? The answer is easy—no, not nonsense and I am very much “hinged” in this moment, my leafs joined through the knuckle with a pin—those are hinge parts, if you are wondering—fastened firmly to the swinging door of shifting reality and the jamb of my values and commitments. That door is not getting away from me.

But don’t take my word for it. Consider the steel drum. Developed in Trinadad and Tobago in the mid-1900s out of the bits and pieces, even any trash, available, the steel pan is related to the talking drums of many African cultures, instruments used long before enslavement and infusing the diaspora with ancestors and history and significance. Drumming a means of community and communication. A way for people to remain connected when languages and customs were deliberately destroyed by the enslavers. A form of joy that is also a form of resistance, the joy in the act of resisting through the drums, the objects of resistence and the means to keep resisting. And every time a method was destroyed, a new one emerged, finally from oil drums which become today this beautiful complex and sophisticated instrument, filling us—from our heart-centers out to our extremities—with joy.

I ask for, I lean into joyful awareness, not frenzied oblivion. I require joy and hope to meet the devastation of these times, my times and yours, not optimism and positivity gone toxic. “Life is complicated and uncertain. And gorgeous with some things we can count on. It has seasons of struggle and seasons of delight, and sometimes the two blow in and bloom simultaneously. Like now. Maybe always.” Something terrible and something wonderful has always been happening, somewhere, everywhere. There is no golden perfect past. I assume no such future either. The reality is of joy and woe woven fine, and whether or not I am fine with that, that is the reality, and I will remain engaged, hinged with it. But thanks goodness, “we are here together, [opening] our hearts to the abundance of creation that surrounds and sustains us.”

Yesterday was the celebration of St. Bridget and of Imbolc, one of those delightful mash-ups of Christian and Pagan holy day, that mash-up one of the ways pagan beliefs and ideas persisted when the Christianity tried to kill them.

Always an attack, always a resistance, always the resilience to gather in community to celebrate that which is sure—the changing of the seasons, the cycles of life and death from which we do not escape, and why should we. Imbolc means “in the belly” or “Ewe’s milk” depending on one’s sources, a focus on the womb of our animal beings, on the earth as a womb where seeds germinate and get ready to send out tender shoots of newly growing life. The shepherds were no fools, mind you. They knew the wolves could eat the sheep, the cold could take the tender lambs—no denial of that from them, but they also trusted in a cycle of life-giving and life-sustaining natural events, celebrated joy with dance, a necessary adjunct to the challenges of living at the mercy of reality—whether that be the forces of death within life or the oppressions wrought by latest empire.

“Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else. But we enjoy our lives because that’s what [the Universe, the nameless] God wants. Otherwise, the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine,” the snowdrops I can’t yet see but I know are just under the ground will spring forth soon. Otherwise, the music would not be so heartbreakingly beautiful, filling our bodies from the heart outward, moving our feet and our hips, moving our spirits. Hope springs eternal, whether or not you are from Buffalo, for “If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation. We must risk delight.” We must risk joy. “To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the [orange] Devil” and his Nazi sidekick. We are not going to do that, are we?

In this Imbolc time, in the ruthless furnace of this world, “May we take time to nurture our seed dreams, listening closely and choosing wisely. May we create with patience and with love.”

May we gather strength and commitment to “guide our hearts in service to a greater good, [a good] that holds all living things in its holy embrace.” May we say Yes to life, truth, and love even when the way seems too hard, in this life complicated and uncertain, and gorgeous with things we can count on—music, community, food and love shared, examples of resistance, ways to persist. May it ever be so.

And now let us be joyful with our bodies, together, as Ellen Newman leads us in “The Shepherds’ Dance.”

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

https://cuups.org/Mid-Winter-Traditions-for-UUs

https://otherworldlyoracle.com/imbolc-foods/