The Biblio File March 2018 Essay: “Finders, Givers”
FINDERS, GIVERS
I didn’t know exactly what I was after when I signed up for the Search for Meaning Festival at Seattle University. Perspective, maybe, and guidance on making sense of the current chaos. Fifteen hundred or so searchers, most of us gray-haired and spectacled, attended the event. We milled around the campus, holding paper cups of coffee, asking directions, eager to hear well-known teachers and prophets and priests.
The morning talks were interesting but academic and informative, not moving nor inspirational. I feared I’d leave feeling empty, dissatisfied. Whatever I was after, I knew I hadn’t found it.
My first afternoon session, titled “Artists in the Time of Monsters” was led by activist, author, musician, documentary filmmaker and theologian Reverend Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou. Reverend Sekou is not a tall man. His dreads are the biggest part about him—they hang almost to his knees. But he stands tall in his convictions. He is foul mouthed and funny, full of confidence and vigor. Artists, he says, are people who provide joy and develop community, “honoring those who have not been honored” and “creating space for all.”
Reverend Sekou is accustomed to talking to white people about honoring and creating space for people of color. He struck a good balance between making affectionate fun of us and appreciating what we offer. “You don’t have to understand in order to be compassionate,” Reverend Sekou said, and when I asked him to elaborate, he told us about his grandmother, who didn’t have to understand anybody’s politics or beliefs or current emotional state to ask them, “Are you hungry? Can I get you some food?” He urged us to act rather than just develop empathy, which, he says, “is only training camp.” “And,” he said, “Blacks and other oppressed groups don’t need ‘Allies’. They need ‘Freedom Fighters’.” A Freedom Fighter, he says, will walk up to that police officer on the corner, sitting by the black kid he just handcuffed, and will say, with politeness and curiosity, “Excuse me, Officer. What did this boy do?”
At that moment, I knew I wanted to be a Freedom Fighter. The fact that a bunch of other pale-faced searchers said they too want to be Freedom Fighters, gave me something that felt like hope.
Reverend William Barber, the last speaker of the day, turned out to be a “Powerhouse”, like my southern facebook friend described him. Reverend Barber had been ill and couldn’t fly out, so Taylor Branch interviewed him in his North Carolina home, while we searchers watched the live stream in the campus auditorium.
Reverend Barber is fierce, kind, and prophetic. He has, he told us, re-formed Reverend Martin Luther King’s “Poor People’s Campaign” and is calling for a “Moral Revival” in which our primary purpose is to help the poor and downtrodden. He assured us that we are in the “Third Reconstruction” phase. The post Civil War era was the First Reconstruction. The sixties Civil Rights movement was the second. Viewing the current mess in such a positive way– “The Third Reconstruction”–made me feel hopeful. Reverend Barber paused at least a dozen times to say, “We cannot turn back now.” Or, “It would be a tragedy to turn back now.” Or, “No, we must not turn back now.” Everytime he said it, my heart blipped, and I felt hope.
I left the Festival happy to feel hopeful, but also nagged by doubt. Maybe I should focus more on gritty reality. Would hoping too much keep me in LaLa Land?
A few days later, I indulged my not so guilty lunchtime movie pleasure and watched Things to Come, a French film about Nathalie, a philosophy teacher whose life is suddently altered by stunning losses. In a scene in Nathalie’s classroom, she reads her students what Jean Jacques Rousseau says about “Hope”. It fills a gap, he says, makes us happy, serves us till the real thing comes along. Hope is a “substitute reality”, Rousseau says, a good one, one that spurs us to keep on keeping on till what we’re after appears. Nothing about fooling ourselves or closing our eyes to the horrors around us. Everything about hope helping us hold on.
Reverends Barber and Sekou infused their hope into my veins. In this time of monsters, I hope I infuse some of my hope into yours. We must not turn back now.
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