From the moment you put a piece of bread in your mouth you are part of the world. Who grew the wheat? Who made the bread? Where did it come from? You are in relationship with all who brought it to the table. We are least separate and most in common when we eat and drink.
Thomas Merton
Again I will encourage all who read this to deeply think about our interconnectedness with one another and the world of nature around us. We truly are but a breath - but a glorious breath. Our time is short here and we may as well take this life in as deep as we can - breath deep, eat deep, look deep into the eyes of others. All truly are one - naturally, not just contrived from a religious dogma. We eat therefore we are one.
In my second breath...I encourage you to check out Bread For the World and the Farm Bill. If you have concerns for people any where at anytime the Farm Bill will touch on it! It deals with food, hunger, agriculture, nutrition, and developing nations.
I planted corn today! May 9th. My grandpa always said plant on the 10th, so I guess I'm making sure it gets done in case I keel over tomorrow.
A few quotes from my theology reading of the day - from the civil rights movement:
“Black Power is the spirit of Christ himself in the black-white dialogue which makes possible the emancipation of blacks from self-hatred and frees whites from their racism. Through Black Power, blacks are becoming men of worth, and whites are forced to confront them as human beings.”
James Cone the first black Liberation Theologian:
“It means that the slave now knows that he is a man, and thus resolves to make the enslaver recognize him. I contend that such a spirit is not merely compatible with Christianity; in America in the twentieth century it is Christianity…The Church not only preaches the Word of liberation, it joins Christ in his work of liberation…”
The Incarnation is a major building block to Liberation Theology. The logic is if Emmanuel (God with us) was with us in a particular time, place, ethnicity, and socioeconomic struggle for justice and the church continues that movement then, as the Liberation Theologian James Cone wrote,
“Thinking of Christ as nonblack in the twentieth century is as theologically impossible as thinking of him as non-Jewish in the first century.” (p379)
He writes,
“If the Church is a continuation of the Incarnation, and if the Church and Christ are where the oppressed are, then Christ and his Church must totally identify with the oppressed to the extent that they too suffer for the same reasons persons are enslaved. In America, blacks are oppressed because of their blackness. It would seem, then, that emancipation could only be realized by Christ and his church becoming black.”
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Besides the "unplugging" comment, while Carolyn and I visited Duke, I heard another pithy remark.
"When you are baptized, you are no longer white."
I think that's exactly right. Not in the sense of denying my particularity, even the shade of my skin is a gift. But it is right in the sense that being baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is being baptized out of "white-ness" as a social construct - because Christ recognizes no such distinctions, and in him all peoples are reconciled.
Cone is doing good theology here, the Body of Christ is a political reality as much as it is a spiritual reality (how can the two ever be divided?) If my brother or sister, one whom God loves, is hurting and hungry, and I see them as part of the Body of Christ with me, can I really ignore him or her without slicing the Body to pieces? When the incarnation is our model of justice we begin to think in different ways.
Rather than trickle-down economics that justify our pursuit of wealth by the thought that it is producing more for those further down the economic food chain; rather than the empty aphorism that "a rising tide lifts all ships" which attempts to solve the dire plight of the world's marginalized through unfettered economic growth for the privileged -- the incarnation is kenotic justice.
The incarnation shows us that justice is a relational, social, and domestic (in "home" sense) category before it is an economic or political category. Justice means restoration to community. Justice means "being-with." That identification inevitably has monetary, and structural implications, but justice can never truly come to be where I regard my neighbor as an "other."
Thanks for throwing up these thoughts Casey...
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