banana states

The people will waken, and listen . . .

- "Paul Revere's Ride"

I want to talk about other things, but I have to say this first.

I'm walking on the grounds of a retreat center in Ohio. I'm one of the first to get here. I have the garden to myself. The trees are gone brown, and most of the leaves have fallen. The garden has a brick wall but I do not feel enclosed, for the garden is on a slope, and I feel uplifted toward the hills around us. It is so, so quiet. How we can be so tucked away from flight paths and interstates I do not know, but of course I still have airplane ears -- the ringing silence that comes from decompression and partial recovery. Perhaps there is background noise that, in my stunned condition, I do not hear.

Ah yes, there is a nearby railroad. The sound of the train is very clear. It comes and then it goes.

We are gathering -- clergy of my disorganized faith -- as we do each November to draw each other out of ministry's prosaic miseries. We distract ourselves from the miseries by studying some question, chosen at the previous year's retreat. A year ago we chose Dystopia. We had no idea what our subject would mean when its day came around. One of us noted that now the day's newspaper would serve as dystopian literature.

The Heffalump will take power. His closest advisor is a white nationalist. He has promised to jail the opposition, to punish journalists who don't sing his song, to send occupying armies into communities of color, to send brownshirts after those who speak freely, to wall the nation off from the world, to impose religious tests on citizenship, to wage trade war against the markets into which we sell, to abandon European alliances while bombing the excrement out of any region of the world from which danger may come. These are the Heffalump's promises, recorded for history. I take him at his word. If he doesn't do these things, the Heffalistas will have his Heffahead.

From each of us our parish, our flock, our clients and colleagues demand comfort. But we have none to give. We are punched in the gut, gasping for breath and uncertain how long the oxygen will last. Grief work takes a while. And it begins with telling the truth. There is no emergence from grief without knowing that you will never be the same.

There can be no more dystopian novels. I and my country are living a dystopia. The country I have loved as a child, or rather a super-empowered minority of my country, have chosen to reverse the moral progress of the last half century, and they vow to uproot my country's foundational values.

I'm the kind of kid who knew how you are supposed to fold the flag when you put it away. I'm the kid who memorized the Gettysburg Address, the Declaration of Independence, the preamble to the Constitution. I could sing all four verses of "The Star Spangled Banner." I knew the story of the virtuous war: I could tell you all the battles, the years and the places. I can still perform "Paul Revere's Ride" from memory, and when I come to a particular line at the end, my throat catches.

But the people are not woke. They think they have wakened, but there are dreams within dreams, and they have emerged only into another delusion -- that by killing the messengers they can prevent the danger. If the Heffalump keeps his promises, it will not turn out well for them. As a child I pledged allegiance to the United States, not the banana states, of America.

I've said it. I'm not important, and my statement has no historical value. I say these things not to change the world, but to clear my throat. Now I can move on.

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