white whale

 . . . a voice from the sky, Lady, . . .

. . . Telling us of God being born

In the world of men.

-- Clive Sansom, "The Shepherd's Carol"

 . . . If someone said on Christmas Eve,

“Come; see the oxen kneel, . . ."

 . . . I should go with him in the gloom,

Hoping it might be so.

-- Thomas Hardy, "The Oxen"

I no longer have a problem of belief. I believe. In my way. My way may not satisfy everyone.

I believe these tropes in the way I believe King Lear, Pride and Prejudice, "All the Things You Are," War and Peace, "Paul Revere's Ride," Beethoven's Ninth, "An die Freude," Guernica, Moby Dick, Fences, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed," Beloved, and . . . so on; which is to say I believe them to the bottom of my being. You cannot tell me these tropes are false, for I have gone on road trips with Lear riding shotgun, have traversed meat-markets by the guidance of Elizabeth, have sailed with hunters of White Whales, have applauded the courage of those who lead their beloveds out of slavery but then assault them. .  . . All this in a modest and obscure life. You wouldn't know it to look at me.

That's what the tropes are for, to raise grandeur from the ordinary. Thank the lord I am ordinary, until something comes out that was not in me. In the face of a universe whose enormity only mathematicians can symbolize and none of us can comprehend, there rises through art and faith an opening to act as if my life mattered, and yours. We can speak of inspiration, of synergy, of peak experience, but some poets call it Incarnation, when word is made flesh.

So likewise, don't tell me the tropes of Incarnation are false. I know otherwise. In my time peace has been made where there was no hope of peace. I have shared truth when there was nothing true about me. I have seen lights that can only shine in a darkness that I have walked, knowing that if the darkness had been less the light would not have shined. And I regularly enjoy a blessing that I did not earn.

I work in the face of mortality, pain and grief, and I bring no antidote. I cannot fix these things. And it's worse than that. My complexion is that of the doctors who infected black men with syphilis in Tuskegee. My gender is that of people who have demeaned, abused and assaulted women. A walking cipher of reasons for human suffering, born by cosmic lottery ("thrown"* as Heidegger said) into white and male advantage, I learn how corrupted is my judgment, how twisted are my intentions; and my faith group urges me to apply to myself words once reserved for the Klan, or for predators now exploding and cast into darkness.

Problem is, I have work to do. There is the work of living -- acts of value, relationships of love and justice, protection of the innocent who suffer, and support for virtues that preserve the world from savagery. I cannot do it with a hood on. I must come to you, sibling of color or sister, hoping there is something decent in me. I must assume a competence of compassion, pretending that with attention I can feel something like your feeling, comprehend your need, respect your dignity.

There is also the formal work for which I am paid a salary -- my ministry. I am ordinary, and there is nothing immaculate about me. I am born of and imbedded in structures of cruelty and injustice. I do not with any strictness deserve to do the work many clients would call God's work. My physical form connotes the pain and oppression of many. And yet I am called, and in the time when I respond to that call my faults like Isaiah's** will be swept inconveniently off the table, putting an end to procrastination. I need to do the work, and they need for me to do it, and we play together an old vaudeville, a trope that we might as well call forgiveness. What a mess.

It's the mess of being alive as a human being, not on a seminar table but progressing in bad shoes over ragged terrain as a pilgrim. Though not sufficient, my good intention is necessary. Even if I don't deserve to be good, I must act out my goodness. In showbiz they say fake it till you make it. They say it elsewhere too. And do it.

The poems say that in this season we get a gift from the uncanny. This year people came back to me from more than a life ago, who have done well and present me with their stories, in which I have a cameo. Their gifts were unexpected, but I also receive on a daily schedule.

   I report Good News in a sacred season, meaning not an otherworldly season, but a this-worldly season where, as certain poets say, God has come to us. I believe this as I believe, well, you know . . . I swear it on the mangled carcass of the White Whale.

*"geworfen"

**"Your guilt shall depart/And your sin be purged away" (Is 6:7 [Tanakh])

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