For those of you who have not had a chance to see the documentary “Raw Faith,” the film will screen at the Columbia Gorge Film Festival tonight (Friday, August 20) at 7:00, at the Vancouver Convention Center at the Hilton Hotel, 301 W. 6th St., in Vancouver, WA.  The film will be preceded by 3 short films.  The screening is free and open to the public.
 

Marilyn, Jimmy, and I were snatched from our home in Cincinnati and taken to the South after our mother beccame ill and couldn’t care for us. We grew up there with our father and our paternal grandparents, Big Papa and Granny. The following excerpt is written in my voice at age seven or eight:

     “The backyard down the steep steps is my favorite place to play when I’m home alone. The back is for gathering eggs, feeding the rabbits, picking green apples, gathering figs for preserves before the birds peck them apart or playing a game of ‘horse’ on the dusty basketball court. A couple times a year Big Papa shows up with one of Mr. Blanton’s horses to plow the garden to plant tomatoes, musk melons, beans, peas, and squash.

     Unless it’s killing day.  On that day my kind grandmother turns executioner to fill the freezer with hens and fryers.

     Some of the chickens are my pets, dyed bitties colored blue, green and pink I get for Easter.  They have names, but I don’t know which ones are mine after the colors wear off.

     When the water gets to boiling real fast under the wood fire, Granny goes out to the hen house to catch a squawking chicken.  After she runs one down with her apron blowing up to her waist, she sits by the fig tree and throws its neck ’round and ’round while that chicken flaps and claws and yells, blood flying everywhere.  When it gets good and still, she hangs the dead chicken on the clothes line, then one at a time sticks them in boiling water so the feathers are soft and easy to pull out.  “Donna, get your old clothes on and come help me pluck these chickens.”

     “Are you through with the killing?”

     “Yes, Baby.  I’ll put the step stool here so you can reach the clothes line.  Now grab me one of those fryers.”  Scalding chicken feathers is a smell you never forget.

     I view my granny different after that first killing in the backyard.

Several people have asked for the quotation which appears on the paper taped to the top of my desk in the scene of “Raw Faith,” where I am packing up to leave the church.  I saved that piece of paper when I moved to our new home, and so will take the opportunity now to quote those words, which sustained me each day in my work and in my life:

“Markings in dry clay disappear

Only when the clay is soft again.

Scars upon the self disappear

Only when one becomes soft within.”

                                   –Deng Ming-Dao

I find that I must guard against hardness, which comes of course from not acknowledging the more tender feelings of sadness, grief, and fear.  I think we feel vulnerable when we permit this inner softening, but in this world we need to bend, to be pliable, and we begin to see that rigidity of person is not helpful, either in affairs of the world or in affairs of the heart. 

During my meditation time, I’ve been experimenting with contempletive prayer.  The basic idea is to sit quietly, remaining open to God’s presence and leading.  Today I thought I would share with you some of Thomas Merton’s guidance about this spiritual discipline:

“What is the purpose of meditation in the sense of the ‘prayer of the heart’?  We seek . . . to gain a direct grasp, a personal experience of the deepest truths of life and faith, finding ourselves in God’s truth.”

“We return to simplicity and sincerity of heart.”

“We wish to lose ourselves in <God’s> love and rest <in God.>” (Note that I have changed the masculine pronouns referring to God to the noun “God.”)

“We wish to hear <God’s> word and respond to it with our whole being.”

“We aim at purity of heart, an unconditional and totally humble surrender to God, a total acceptance of ourselves and our situation.”

“<We renounce> all deluded images of ourselves, all exaggerated estimates of our own capacities.”

“What am I?  I am myself a word spoken by God.  Can God speak a word that does not have meaning?”

“Does God impose a meaning on my life from the outside, through event, custom, routine, law, system, impact with others in society?  Or am I called to create from within, with <God>, with <God’s> grace, a meaning which reflects <God’s> truth and makes me <God’s> word?”

“We wish to embrace God’s will in its naked, often unpenetrable mystery.  I cannot discover my “meaning” if I try to evade the dread which comes from first experiencing my meaninglessness.”

“. . . my life and aims tend to be artificial, inauthentic, as long as I am simply trying to adjust my actions to certain exterior norms of conduct that will enable me to play an approved part in the society in which I live.”

“. . . we should let ourselves be brought naked and defenseless into the center of that dread where we stand alone before God in our nothingness, without explanation, without theories, completely dependent upon <God’s> providential care, in dire need of the gift of grace, mercy, and the light of faith.”

“When we seem to possess and use our being and natural faculties in a completely autonomous manner, as if our individual ego were the pure source and end of our own acts, then we are in illusion and our acts, however spontaneous they may seem to be, lack spiritual meaning and authenticity.”

“Meditation implies . . . a permanent disposition to humility, attention to reality, receptivity, pliability.”

“If our hearts remain apparently indifferent and cold, we should at least realize that this coldness is itself a sign of our need and of our helplessness.  We should take it as a motive for prayer.  The waiting .. . itself will be for us a school of humility.”

The ruling by Vaughn R. Walker, the chief judge of the Federal District Court in San Francisco, that Proposition 8, banning gay marriage, is illegal is having reverberations around the nation.  Appealed immediately, of course, the ruling is destined to go all the way to the Supreme Court, which means that the highest law of the land and every citizen of the land will be involved.  Those who previously were looking on from the sidelines can do so no longer.  This is as it should be, for the kind of discrimination LGBT folks have experienced should be lifted up and looked at in the clear light of reason, for once and for all. 

Some of the excerpts from Judge Walker’s decision (NY Times 8/5/10) are telling.  He wrote:

“Proposition 8 cannot withstand any level of scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause.  Excluding same-sex couples from marriage is simply not rationally related to a legitimate state interest.”

“Proposition 8 was premised on the belief that same-sex couples simply are not as good as opposite-sex couples.  . . . . this belief is not a proper basis on which to legislate.  The Constitution cannot control private biases, but neither can it tolerate them . . . .”

“Tradition alone . . . cannot form the rational basis for a law.”  (italics mine)

Consider all of the various ways that “tradition” would continue to oppress huge classes of people, had not the law intervened, backed by years of protest, and often written in blood:  slavery, child labor, denial of property rights for women and people of color; denial of the right to vote; denial of due process. 

Tradition is simply patterns of behavior which have evolved.  Some of these patterns are useful and nurturing of person and of community: holidays and holy days, birthday parties, memorial services, the 4th of July, for example.  Others tie us to our ancestors in ways that remind us where we came from, or what we believe: we may go to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, or fast on Yom Kippur; we may have a special dinner every Thanksgiving, or go hunting for deer as soon as the season opens. 

But some traditions divide, some say, “We’re different, and we’re better, and we deserve more.”  This attitude, Judge Walker reminds all of us, is not a rational basis for law–and is downright unAmerican.  May I remind us all of the following Declaration: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all <persons> are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

One of the finest ways of pursuing happiness is falling in love and choosing a life partner and declaring your love before all the world in a public ceremony called “marriage.”  It is a promise worth making, and a declaration most holy.  Why should it be denied to anyone who loves?