Reverendly Yours  - Rev. Tom Goldsmith

Every day since the inauguration has felt anxious. Daily tweets fill the air with fetid forebodings. We wonder if reality has abandoned us.

Timothy Egan, an eloquent environmentalist from the Northwest, and New York Times columnist, wrote recently: “Every day brings some fresh affront to decency, some assault on progress, some blow to truth.”

I think that’s why so many of us feel just battered. There’s a certain physicality that punishes the body as we lose freedom, rights, and moral grounding. We’re knocked (literally) off balance by the blows to human dignity.

If you can stand to absorb even more visceral punishment, I highly recommend the documentary, “I Am Not Your Negro.” It’s a brilliant bob and weave of James Baldwin’s commentary on race. It encompasses attitudes portraying black Americans in TV and film, white liberal attitudes about moving the conversation away from race, and an ode to three of Baldwin’s murdered friends: Medgar Evers, Malcom X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. When asked by TV host Dick Cavett some 45 years ago if he had hope for the future of race relations in our country, Baldwin answered no.

For me, the most startling feature of this documentary is that the current situation in our nation, framed by Rodney King, Trayvon Martin, Ferguson, Black Lives Matter, to the latest display of cold ignorance when Trump referred to the abolitionist Frederick Douglas as a current civil rights worker who’s doing a good job, gives credibility to Baldwin’s bleak prediction. But even more disturbing than the persistent struggle of race in our country, was the documentary’s expose of Americans from that time period who undeniably constituted the fabric that has now finally covered America with white nationalism. The contempt for anyone outside the white racist, sexist, xenophobic power wheel (when America was ostensibly great), was etched onto the faces of those who are currently commanding the Trumpian disregard for a common humanity. Each cabinet appointment in the new administration is equal to giving the finger to any illusion of progress held dearly by humane citizens despised as “cultural elite.”

My surprise, at what I considered a right wing fringe somehow emerging victoriously at the last election, is not a surprise anymore. In “I Am Not Your Negro,” today’s embarrassment to the civilized world is less an anomaly (pundits still trying to figure it out), than an evolution of a well-oiled machine of hatred and ignorance. The America which ties knots in our stomachs today, was present all along. We apparently were looking in a different direction, blind to the forces of evil.

My suggestion going forward as a congregation with a history of involvement in social justice is that we realize the issue for what it really is. The last election was not a fluke. It revealed a portrait of America we tried to ignore. Fostering resistance is good, but we are also required to build anew. Strategy will be best designed when we come together as a committed community. All our ideas and voices need to be heard. Our Social Justice Council extends to the entire congregation. Let’s get to work. TRG