The Truth Will Set You Free

Today is Epiphany, or Three Kings’ Day, in which the Christian faith closes out the Advent season by honoring the Three Kings who followed a star into Bethlehem and found Christ incarnate. Ever since my husband and I began a weekly lectionary practice for the Christian year (Bobby Gross’s Living the Christian Year is an excellent book for this kind of spiritual practice) I have found increased spiritual meaning in holidays (and holy days). Yet these last two Epiphany celebrations have been marred by an insurrection that spun off of a big lie. If you live in the United States, you know exactly what I am talking about: the lie Donald Trump spent months planting in the minds of his followers, that the election he ended up losing would be illegitimate and illegal. He had no proof of voter fraud but insisted that it happened. It culminated in an attempted coup on January 6, 2021.

I was preparing for a new semester when I got the phone call from my mother: “Turn on the news. They’ve just evacuated the Library of Congress.” I then watched in shock as people who purported to love the police more than their fellow neighbor fought them to gain entrance into Congress. People with guns and American flags—but no masks—paraded the halls of the Capitol in an attempt to overturn our fair and free election, while our elected representatives locked themselves into various spaces and hoped they would live to see the end of day. As we emerged from the wreckage of that afternoon, I was utterly galled to see people from my own church make statements like, “Well, those weren’t Trump supporters, because Trump supporters don’t behave like this,” “The liberal media is just out to get us,” “Joe Biden stole the election,” and my personal favorite, “That wasn’t Trump supporters. That was antifa.”

In this last year, I have lived and breathed one Bible verse: “And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32, NKJV). Here, Jesus has spoken to people who have believed in Him and noted that He had come to free them of the sin which had enslaved them. I find it remarkable that Jesus is specific in this promise to us: the truth will not make us wiser, it will not make us richer, preserve our friendships, or keep us healthy. But it will set us free from sin.

In the past year, I have come to view the truth as the most valuable treasure we can hold. And learning to accept the truth can be a truly painful experience:

• I spent years of my life believing that racism was dead, because slavery was dead. It took me decades of my own life to understand how I directly benefit from White privilege.
• Once I began to accept the truth of my Whiteness, I learned how to stop crying out of anger and despair and instead hold space for minoritized people who needed a place to vent. I began a lifelong work in anti-racism and learning how to do and be better for the sake of others without direct benefit to myself.
• I spent 35 years with undiagnosed anxiety, and by January 2020, I had stopped sleeping through the night. I could barely function. It took me all day to gain the energy to cook a single meal. Life had lost all of its luster.
• When I accepted that I could not manage my mental health on my own and took medication, I began to understand how my brain chemistry affected everything, including my spirituality. Recognizing that I couldn’t handle my mind on my own changed my profession, my marriage, and my life.
• Like others, I spent the spring of 2020 in shock and hoped and prayed that COVID would be over quickly. As I write this, we are now in a sharp spike of a variant which has ripped through my community. It was hard to accept that I would need to move to virtual teaching, that my life would be fundamentally different, and that I would have to wear a mask in public.
• Learning to accept COVID as a reality meant that I could protect myself and others through simple measures. Wearing a mask, distancing, and staying home were my offerings of love in a time where we could do so little for each other.
• And learning the truth as our understanding evolved meant that I could accept a vaccine and with it, the joy of reconnecting. The joy of physical contact. The joy of preventative measures. The joy of slowly reemerging into a new world.

In the years that I spent loving a lie, I replaced the truth with an idol of my own self-fashioned reality. And that idol took God’s place in my heart. It was only when I became convicted of my own wrongness that I began to heal. The truth did not make me richer. It did not make me healthier (well, okay, maybe it did). But it set me free.

I certainly don’t think it’s too late for us collectively. There are serious conversations each of us need to have with ourselves and our loved ones about what it means to be a person of faith and what it really means to know the “truth.” And there is no set point in time that we attain it—truth itself never changes, but our understanding of it evolves, matures, and grows.

I’m still at a loss for how to approach the divide I see in my church and other spaces where truth has been politicized or those who seek it are gaslighted into doubting it. I really don’t know how to bridge the gap when there are plenty of others willing to love the lie I have eschewed. The truth did not bring me more friends or make me popular. But it has set me free.

Just as the Three Kings saw a star and sought the truth, so I hope that you and I can follow God with a faith as open and wholehearted as theirs. You will know the truth, and it will set you free.

So you want to talk about civility…

It is November 8, 2020. Four years ago, I watched as my hopes of an ambitious, imperfect, competent woman shattering the highest glass ceiling in the United States crumbled, foiled by masses of white people who shouted “Trump that bitch” and “Lock her up,” who spray-painted swastikas on schools and Jewish graveyards, who proudly waved their Confederate flags and called the police on Black people minding their own business. I’ve spent the last five years being called “snowflake,” “libtard,” and “whiny Millennial” by people from church and school, people who claimed the love of God while arguing that gay people were deviants, that refugees were illegal, and that COVID-19 was not real.

I spent the last four years believing that Trumpism was a fever which would break, especially as the waves of COVID-19 crashed on our shores and swept us up in its devastating wake. I was permanently disabused by this starry-eyed ideal on November 3, when I witnessed Donald Trump’s re-election campaign come too close to reality. He received 8 million more votes than he did in 2016.

This fact is not an accident. Four years ago, a person could reasonably claim that because Donald Trump lacked political experience, he could “shake up the system,” and because he publicly disavowed abortion, one could swallow their personal discomfort and continue the single-issue party-line vote.

No one who voted for Donald Trump can say that now. We know he is a racist. We know he does not care about human life. We know that he is not interested in governing the entirety of the United States, just his crowds of fans. We know that he is not invested in curing COVID-19 by making hard decisions that can still save thousands of lives.

And yet.

He received 8 million more votes than he did in 2016.

His support from White women GREW by 3% over four years.

Apparently, the “listening” and “learning” and blacked out squares this summer were pieces of performance art.

I am now seeing calls on social media that beg us to “set aside our differences” and be “civil” to each other.

Let’s be very clear on one thing: I agree on using civil language, but it must be employed by BOTH of us, in good faith. My civility towards you does not allow you to carry on as you were. Without your invested civility, your plea means nothing.

Further, my civility does not entitle you to my friendship, trust, or respect. I have been convicted by God to not use dehumanizing language, and so I have worked very hard to better my own discourse on Facebook (this is something I am still working on). So when you ask me to be civil to you, I will be polite, because you are a human being, and you deserve to live.

You know who else deserves to live? A refugee child who cannot find her parents at the border. An elderly woman suffering COVID-19 in her nursing home. Your gay child. My Muslim student. Our Black neighbor.

Your call for civility does not allow you to use bigoted language. And it will not protect you from being called out on it. (And no, when your estranged child calls you a racist, it is not on equal footing with you referring to your neighbor by a racial epithet. You can choose not to use demeaning language.)

Your call for civility does not allow you to deny the human rights you deserve to other people. The right to take care of your partner’s end of life requests does not allow you to deny your queer neighbor that same dignity.

Your call for civility does not allow you to disengage. Standing up for what is right is uncomfortable and scary. But if Jesus can flip tables in the temple and call the religious leaders of his day white-washed tombs, then surely you can tell your neighbor to use your nonbinary child’s appropriate pronouns.

If you are interested in being better, as I have been these last 15 years, then let’s talk. My DMs are open to folx who want to learn and grow and make substantive lifelong changes.

My sign for the 2018 Women’s March.

If you don’t want to face your own blind spots, then it means you are not ready for a lifelong conversation and transformation. I urge you to read the words of Jesus. All of them. Ask this Man to enter your heart and help you grow. When I did, I discovered that I did and still have a LOT of work to do. And if you are not ready to grow and show civility to others, you are not yet ready to make that request in good faith.

I am glad to see a call for civility. I can only hope that it’s genuine and sincere and reciprocated. Let us hope it outlives the black squares on Instagram.

What if the miracle comes after?

I have no doubt in my mind that Amy Coney Barrett will be confirmed to the Supreme Court, the second rushed nomination before the American people cast their vote; this, after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared that in an election year, the American people should decide their Supreme Court Justice. He has and will never play by his own self-fabricated rules, and as a result, we are very likely to see the Affordable Care Act overturned by the Supreme Court in the near future.

On Saturday, while in the shower, I prayed to God—fervently—for a miracle. I know many people who have ACA as healthcare. I myself greatly benefit by not being discriminated against for having pre-existing conditions. My mom was able to get BRCA tested, because of the ACA, and not fear lack of future coverage. We are likely to see all of that go away. And in the middle of a pandemic, repealing millions’ of people’s healthcare does not seem like a good idea for caring for the poor, like the Bible repeatedly admonishes us to do. But I digress.

This morning, I was looking in the mirror while brushing my teeth and feeling abject despair. I heard the still, small voice whisper, “Have you prayed about this?” So I spit out my toothpaste, put away my toothbrush, and prayed. Immediately after, I thought, “I am praying for a miracle that I know is not going to happen, but I am praying anyway, because that’s what faith is.”

And then, that still, small voice whispered, “But what if the miracle comes after?”

I have never felt so humbled, so small, in my entire life. What, indeed, if the miracle comes after? Who am I to know what comes next? Is the miracle that we as a people collectively fight for the poor and create better healthcare, better legislation? Is the miracle added safeguards to protect against Mitch McConnells greedily grabbing power to benefit a small portion of the population at the cost of the rest of us? I don’t know any of these answers. All I know is that my faith is too small, and God is much bigger than the disasters and the catastrophes for which we have been bracing.

I don’t know who needs to read this today, but I needed to hear it. Pray. Pray for the biggest miracle you can possibly conceive, and then wonder, what if the miracle comes after?

#CBR10 Review #52

The Pearl that Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi

Before the review, a disclaimer: I decided that a triple Cannonball or greater would not be feasible or even fun with my current workload. I’m working a few jobs and trying to shoehorn research in (on my own time and dime, because adjunct faculty do not get time built into our jobs), all while trying to hold a few church offices. Last year, I had a really hard time reviewing enough books and I have barely made my reading goals the last two years in a row. I thought a slower pace would suit me best, because the whole point of Cannonball Read is to read and fight cancer. So, I find that I am in fact on pace to make my double Cannonball since I reached the halfway point in advance and with a fairly long book!

I’ve heard plenty about Nadia Hashimi’s The Pearl That Broke Its Shell and decided to give it a try to see if it would fit my syllabus for my global literature course. And I’ve come to a decision, which I’ll be more than happy to unpack in my review.

This is the story of Rahima, a young girl in 2007 Afghanistan. She is from a rural area and struggles even to be allowed to go to school with her sisters. Her father is a drug addict, and her mother is in disgrace for only bearing daughters. Thus, Rahima becomes a bacha posh, that is, a girl who poses as a boy, in order to help the family around the house. Her story intersects with her great-great grandmother Shekiba, who was desperate to keep her family land safe from her greedy extended relatives, but suffered many twists of fate. The stories do kind of intersect at some point as Rahima’s life takes perilous turns.

As I noted in my Goodreads review, this book was a mixed bag for me and merited a solid three stars. On the one hand, Nadia Hashimi writes with incredible care of her characters and brings a very different world alive. On the other hand, I’m starting to feel as if we’re getting the “single story” of Afghanistan and other nations who have been troubled by extremist Islam and patriarchal societies where women are property and nothing more. To be clear, THIS STILL HAPPENS AND IT IS BAD. Yet where are the stories of the Saudi women piloting planes and being the change they wish to see? Most stories of Arab and Muslim women that are being accessed to English-speaking readers are of abuse and torture and escape, and I worry that this is presenting a perpetual victim-image to the mind of a Western woman, who treats an Arab or Muslim woman as if she is an object of pity and suffering instead of a person in her own right. I think it’s a real problem to still be telling imbalanced stories without a real sense of nuance or resolution to make better life for women that does not involve them fleeing their homes, Not Without My Daughter-style. I realize that this is not my lane, as a white woman. I’m just concerned about representation and I don’t know what the best depiction should be for Afghan women.

Also, the story of Rahima being made a bacha posh is interesting, but I had already read and reviewed Jenny Nordberg’s excellent journalistic account in The Underground Girls of Kabul, so this did not feel new or original. The writing is workmanlike—not bad, but not outstanding in a way that seeped in my bones like Homegoing.

I’m glad I read this book, but I am hoping it can springboard different stories of Afghan women and not just tell the ones we smug Westerners keep expecting to hear and pat ourselves on the back because “we aren’t like them.” This is (one way) how The Handmaid’s Tale becomes a reality.

#CBR10 Review #51

The Shadow of the Hummingbird by Athol Fugard

I’m developing a “new global literature” online course, which means lots of lovely reading! For each of the literature courses I have developed, I like to implement a variety of genres. Further, since this is global literature, I need to think about several nations or regions being represented that are not European or Western in focus. Finally, since this is “new” global literature, I decided that everything needed to be published after 9/11, as a starting point to thinking about how globalization changed. This is all a very long preamble to my review, but that’s the reason I read a play by South African playwright, Athol Fugard.

The Shadow of the Hummingbird follows an old man and his grandson over a two-day window of time. The old man is trying to keep his grandson’s innocence alive, even though he and his son had a falling-out over philosophical differences. He ties in Plato’s tale of the cave with the hummingbird shadows he sees on his living room walls as a way to plead with his son over intellectual curiosity and imagination. The play is brief, but packed with lots of dialogue and monologues, with rich ideas being thrown back and forth.

I would bet this play presents great on stage. I have not yet been able to track down a televised presentation, but I may have to deep-dive. Either way, I think this is a great play for college students to read. It’s a short read, it involves a common story, and it breaks down a family relationship with a small cast that really allows you to dig deep with the characters and their motivations. I’ll definitely be looking at Fugard’s body of work as a larger whole.

#CBR10 Review #50

Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich

The Chancellor has June’s book club pick for our friend group, and he chose Future Home of the Living God, much to my enormous delight. I read and reviewed this about seven months ago for CBR 9, so I am going to plunk that link right here and just talk about my response for this re-read. Because I loved it even more than the first time I read it. I think we’re going to have a rollicking discussion this month, because a few of us loved it, and The Chancellor DID NOT.

This time around, the theme of uncertainty really came alive. Cedar does not know what is happening. The news is full of rumor, falsehood, and heresay (sound familiar?). She does not know whom to trust or to turn. The novel is her first-person diary to her unborn child, because she wants to remember the world and so that her child can remember her, whatever the circumstances may be. But Cedar is thrust into a lot of unknowns, and the world-building reflects this idea. I personally really liked that, because Cedar does not know how her own story ends and neither do we. We are living in a dark and scary world at the moment (and reading about the G-7 yesterday filled my stomach with rocks), and we don’t know how this particular story is going to end. Erdrich is very deliberate in ending on an unfinished note, because she wants to remind us that our own stories are being written as we write them, and we can’t know until much later how everything turns out. (there is a very sad interpretation as to why the story ends the way it does, but I won’t discuss it, for fear of spoiling things)

Another thing I liked was the concept of faith or losing one’s faith. Cedar is a newish Catholic, and she’s grappling with the idea of being abandoned by God. This is something that Elie Wiesel tackles proficiently in Night, and something that all people of faith wrestle with when terrible things happen in life. Cedar’s own spiritual struggles and reliance upon writers like Hildegard von Bingen were poignant and powerful.

The book has drawn a lot of comparisons to The Handmaid’s Tale on Goodreads. I can kind of see it (I myself made a few comparisons to Children of Men), but I do think that Erdrich tackles issues of race in a way that Atwood does not conceive of.

#CBR10 Review #49

Arena by Holly Jennings

I had never heard of Holly Jennings or Arena before my library book club assigned it, but that’s the beauty of reading new books and authors you never knew existed. I am also not a video gamer at all, so the content is unfamiliar. Sometimes, I learn a lot, and other times, I learn to gut through a book in order to finish and be able to discuss it with other people. This book, I am afraid, falls into the latter category for me.

Kali Ling is an interactive gamer for a tournament. She’s part of a team which must capture the other team’s tower and take out the other team (cyber killing them) in order to win the match. They lose their first match and get thrown into a Losers Bracket, endangering their management and sponsorships. And then, tragedy strikes the team. Kali is thrust into a world of self-reflection and doubt, even as her team must regroup and she must come to terms with the time she spends in a virtual reality.

Honestly, I spent a great deal of this book being bored. Kali is not a compelling protagonist for a great deal of the book. Rooke is interesting, but he’s there as a plot device for most of the book, which: boo. We don’t spend a lot of actual time in the Arena. And so much of the plot/conflict feels recycled from other books. I do think there is a compelling and empowering message about truth and learning how to be mindful, which is why this escaped a two-star rating. The book does pick up speed as it continues, and the team’s interactions do become more fleshed out. But I don’t know if I would have finished the book if it was not a book club read. I also had Questions about cultural appropriation, and I’m not sure if the author is the right person to write this particular story and character.

#CBR10 Review #48

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan

I’m a sucker for new books, but I don’t often read them, because of time limits, my library tower (graduated from stack), and my enormous TBR list in general. My sister recommended Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach, and I saw it available at my library and put it in my basket on a whim (yes, I have officially gotten greedy to the point of getting basketfuls of books from the library—it’s a new first for me!). It was a great book to read on the airplane from my Florida vacation, and an interesting summer read in general. I have not read A Visit from the Goon Squad, which is Egan’s most famous novel, but after reading this, I need to bump it up on my TBR.

This novel takes place in a few separate timelines and with three major protagonists: Eddie Kerrigan, a down-on-his-luck family man who turns to odd jobs for mob bosses; Dexter Styles, for whom Eddie works; and Anna Kerrigan, our main protagonist and Eddie’s daughter who works in a factory during World War II and aspires to do something more ambitious with her life, while searching for the reason her father suddenly disappeared five years earlier. The three stories weave in and out of each other, which can make timing and sequence difficult to follow, but it does have a real noir sense about it, particularly in the relationship between Eddie and Dexter.

There was one plot point that had me fairly worried, but Egan did a great job with the resolution. She writes a complex narrative with interesting characters and a well-researched setting that was engrossing and also felt original. I am being deliberately vague about this book, so that you can experience it fresh, as I did. I think as little information as possible is the best way to approach this book. The plot structure is a little messy, but it’s an enjoyable read, all the same.

#CBR10 Review #47

When I Was the Greatest by Jason Reynolds

I greatly enjoy Jason Reynolds’ voice in young adult literature. I think his works are necessary to adding diverse literature for young adult readers, and I have liked his novels to this point. Since I read and LOVED All American Boys  and Long Way Down, I think I may have a hard time going back to his first books (case in point: The Boy in the Black Suit was just okay). So I had that in mind when I read When I Was the Greatest, which is apparently trending at my library.

Ali is fifteen and lives in a brownstone in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood (the infamous setting of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing). Ali’s younger sister Jazz is an outgoing and charismatic young woman. His neighbors are too brothers, nicknamed Needles and Noodles. Ali’s mom is a caring but overworked woman, and his dad floats in and out of the picture after time in prison. Needles has a syndrome (we find out what, in the novel). Noodles therefore tries to care for him in the best way possible. But sometimes, fear and bravery live side-by-side, as all three young men are about to find out.

This book was a mixed bag for me. The plotting is a bit slow and predictable. The conflict takes quite a while to unfold, and when it does, the resolution feels both convenient and understated. That said, this is a novel appropriate for younger teens, and Reynolds knows it well. The characterization of the teens is fantastic, and that’s where the novel shines. Ali is an interesting protagonist, and he paints a picture of the neighborhood for his audience with a vivid brush. This is not Reynolds’ best novel, but some of his real strengths as a writer emerge in this novel.

CBR10 Review #46

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

I was trawling the library’s New Books shelves (as you do when the school year is over, and you can easily read a stack of books in a few weeks), and R.F. Kuang’s debut novel The Poppy War caught my eye. I am trying to read more work by women of color, and science fiction/fantasy is not always the easiest to come by. I decided that this book held an intriguing premise, and I was curious to see how it would pan out. I read this book over my Florida vacation (complete with a Sunday morning where my nephew and niece screamed at each other over a 7 am Lego fight), so there are already some parts that are fading in my mind. I don’t think that’s an entirely good sign.

Rin is an orphan and living with foster parents, who are merchants by day and opium smugglers on the side. Education is her only chance to leave her rural town and make something of herself. To win a full scholarship to the greatest military academy in China, she must sit the national exam and ace it, which she does. At school, she is made fun of for her looks, accent, and naïveté. Yet she perseveres, with the help of odd Lore master Jiang. She makes a pledge to be his mentee, and then war comes to tear the land apart. Rin is fated to be a major cog in the war, but she has to realize that her great power comes with enormous consequences that could separate her from her humanity. And, as the book blurb gravely notes, it may already be too late.

Guys, I’m going to be real with you on this one. I loved the first half of this book and HATED the second half. I’m really disappointed about it, too. The school stuff was interesting and engaging: Kuang is frank about race and gender, and Rin was an engaging student to follow. As a teacher, I always find school novels interesting and entertaining (because I’m a nerd, I guess). So it was a shocking shift to get kick-dropped into a brutally violent war narrative in the second half. Like, it’s GRIM. I think there’s a purpose for talking frankly about violence to innocent people and civilians during times of political upheaval, but this book was dark and the descriptions veered into the gratuitous, in my opinion. I’m giving it three stars, because the first half was so interesting, and the second half so unbearable. Your own mileage may vary, but I do feel responsible for adding a trigger warning to the second half.