"Today God gives milk/and I have the pail:" some words on Easter

On Good Fridays when I was a little girl, we came home from school, ate a hasty dinner, and put on our dressy clothes to go to church, all of which was bad. The church was too quiet and scary dark, and that was bad too. The songs we sang were slow and bad. The preacher used his baddest voice and told us everyone of those bad things those bad men did to Jesus because we we're all so bad, even if we don't always seem that way. It made me sad. We filed up to the front of the church for Communion. This is body of Christ, broken for you and for many for the forgiveness of sin. When I was very, very small I knelt beside my parents and big sisters with my lips pressed tight together while they received the Elements and I watched with big eyes. This is the blood of Christ, poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sin. Jesus' blood came in little clear plastic cups and smelled like grape juice, and there was a funny, bad feeling along my ribs and all up the back of my neck. On the car ride home, I always asked what made Good Friday good, and my mother's answers never satisfied. Some bad men were mean to Jesus and he died and now grownups ate and drank him up like monsters, and there was not one good thing about all that.

And then, three days later, it was Easter. My sisters and I ran across the dew-wet ground in bare feet and nightgowns, looking for the eggs my parents had hidden while we lay in our narrow pink beds. The grass was cold and sent small, thrilling aches up my legs. Then I put on new white shoes and new white socks stood up on my tippy toes to sing in my loudest voice up from the grave he arose/with a mighty triumph o'er his foes at church. I was so happy that Jesus wasn't dead anymore, that he was out and about on a pretty spring morning and walking through walls and cooking breakfast for his friends who were all so happy to see him once they figured out who he was, and I was happy that I was wearing a blue dress with a wide, lace collar. I was happy because I knew the bad parts were still there but I knew they were somehow made okay on Easter morning.

This year on Easter Sunday, my friend Melissa said a friendly "how are you?" I told her I was great--and I told her everything I've written here in some frenetic burst. Easter, I said, is my favorite holiday because it's the only one that really makes me feel that sort of happy, childlike way the people who make Hallmark cards say we're all supposed to feel periodically. Easter, I said, is the thing that I believe in. She smiled and I smiled, and we sat down and opened up our hymnals to sing the first song of the morning.

five years ago

In the spring of 1989, I was seven years old. My parents had a scratchy blue couch, and I was sitting on it. I was wearing a tee shirt that used to be my older sister's; it was covered in puffy painted seashells and covered my knees. I should've been in bed, I think, but I was watching the news instead. People were in streets yelling and carrying signs and running. There were people with guns and angry faces. Everything looked jumpy and strange. One of the cameramen dropped a camera and someone else picked it up and kept filming. I was afraid and got up to stand, half-hidden, behind the couch. I put my cheek against the rough upholstery and kept watching.

I was seven years old. I knew about wars. I had been to a Civil War battlefield and felt the buzzy boom of cannons in the bones of my chest. I knew my ancestors had fought in the American Revolution. I thought wars were fought for good reasons and to keep people safe. I never knew that governments did bad things, that they could send soldiers to shoot at teenagers for running through the streets carrying signs. I thought governments were like my parents: benevolent makers of sometimes mystifying rules. Watching the tanks roll into Tianamen Square was this terrifying moment in which I realized the world wasn't the mostly-good place I'd always believed it to be.

In the spring of 2003, I was twenty one. My parents had a beige, over-stuffed couch then, and I was perching on its arm. I was wearing my teeshirt with the firetrucks on it and watching the invasion of Iraq with a sick feeling in my stomach. I kept thinking about that day years earlier and kept thinking, over and over, you can not sign my name to this fucking bad idea; you can not sign my name to this.

I love America. I do. With the same kind of love you might have for your chainsmoking anti-Semitic grandparents: I know its flaws and faults, but somehow it's a relationship that goes deeper than those things. I think about the way gray highways stretch out toward the horizon and about my great-great-grandmother cursing and spitting at yankee soldiers. I think about corn dogs and tap dancing chorus lines and the Bill of Rights. I think about blues and rock and roll and Richard Avedon's In the American West. I think about Zion National Park, Mother Jones, and the maple trees I grew up climbing, and I find myself in the arms of a fierce and unexpected devotion.

Five years ago, Senator Robert Byrd stood in front of Congress and delivered a speech* that said many of the things I'm trying to articulate today:

I believe in this beautiful country. I have studied its roots and gloried in the wisdom of its magnificent Constitution. I have marveled at the wisdom of its founders and framers. Generation after generation of Americans has understood the lofty ideals that underlie our great Republic. I have been inspired by the story of their sacrifice and their strength.
But, today I weep for my country. I have watched the events of recent months with a heavy, heavy heart. No more is the image of America one of strong, yet benevolent peacekeeper. The image of America has changed. Around the globe, our friends mistrust us, our word is disputed, our intentions are questioned.

Instead of reasoning with those with whom we disagree, we demand obedience or threaten recrimination. Instead of isolating Saddam Hussein, we seem to have isolated ourselves. We proclaim a new doctrine of preemption which is understood by few and feared by many. We say that the United States has the right to turn its firepower on any corner of the globe which might be suspect in the war on terrorism. We assert that right without the sanction of any international body. As a result, the world has become a much more dangerous place.
We flaunt our superpower status with arrogance. We treat U.N. Security Council members like ingrates who offend our princely dignity by lifting their heads from the carpet. Valuable alliances are split. After war has ended, the United States will have to rebuild much more than the country of Iraq. We will have to rebuild America's image around the globe.

The case this Administration tries to make to justify its fixation with war is tainted by charges of falsified documents and circumstantial evidence. We cannot convince the world of the necessity of this war for one simple reason. This is a war of choice.

There is no credible information to connect Saddam Hussein to 9/11. The twin towers fell because a world-wide terrorist group, al-Qaida, with cells in over 60 nations, struck at our wealth and our influence by turning our own planes into missiles, one of which would likely have slammed into the dome of this beautiful Capitol except for the brave sacrifice of the passengers on board.

The brutality seen on September 11th and in other terrorist attacks we have witnessed around the globe are the violent and desperate efforts by extremists to stop the daily encroachment of western values upon their cultures. That is what we fight. It is a force not confined to borders. It is a shadowy entity with many faces, many names, and many addresses.

But, this Administration has directed all of the anger, fear, and grief which emerged from the ashes of the twin towers and the twisted metal of the Pentagon towards a tangible villain, one we can see and hate and attack. And villain he is. But, he is the wrong villain. And this is the wrong war. If we attack Saddam Hussein, we will probably drive him from power. But, the zeal of our friends to assist our global war on terrorism may have already taken flight.

The general unease surrounding this war is not just due to "orange alert." There is a pervasive sense of rush and risk and too many questions unanswered. How long will we be in Iraq? What will be the cost? What is the ultimate mission? How great is the danger at home? A pall has fallen over the Senate Chamber. We avoid our solemn duty to debate the one topic on the minds of all Americans, even while scores of thousands of our sons and daughters faithfully do their duty in Iraq.

What is happening to this country? When did we become a nation which ignores and berates our friends? When did we decide to risk undermining international order by adopting a radical and doctrinaire approach to using our awesome military might? How can we abandon diplomatic efforts when the turmoil in the world cries out for diplomacy?

Why can this President not seem to see that America's true power lies not in its will to intimidate, but in its ability to inspire?

War appears inevitable. But, I continue to hope that the cloud will lift. Perhaps Saddam will yet turn tail and run. Perhaps reason will somehow still prevail. I along with millions of Americans will pray for the safety of our troops, for the innocent civilians in Iraq, and for the security of our homeland. May God continue to bless the United States of America in the troubled days ahead, and may we somehow recapture the vision which for the present eludes us.

A few hours after these words were said, the war began. And it continues, with no clear objectives and no clear successes, gleeful presidential proclamations not withstanding. It continues with around four thousand Americans dead and thirty thousand wounded. It continues with more than 80,000 Iraqis dead from violence. It continues as mortality rates continue to climb. It continues as violence escalates in recent days. I cannot sign my name to this tragedy. I will not sign my name to this.

I skipped my Wednesday night class to go to a peace rally. I held a candle close to my chest and stood in a circle that contained more WW II veterans than twenty-somethings. We were silent for a long moment, and I tried to pray. I found myself near tears and unable to formulate my thoughts into a petition.

I cannot escape the conviction, that something's gone horribly, horribly wrong here. And that we've watched this travesty with a sinister breed of passivity from our over-stuffed beige couches. The days after September 11, 2001 were frightening ones. They were. But we've allowed our elected officials to parlay that fear into appalling infringements of human rights of US citizens and of foreign nationals, to parlay that fear into the largely unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, to parlay that fear into the widespread acceptance of ill-conceived, over-blown rhetoric that, at best, could be said to obscure rather than enlighten or inform.

I don't suffer from the misguided notion that the people of the US are ethically or spiritually superior to the people of other nations. But I did, with a childish feeling of familial allegiance, somehow think we could do better than this.

And it's more than time we did. Five years is five years too many. It's time to stop watching the war in Iraq recapped only on the Daily Show during Family Guy's commercials, to stop flipping past another story about a carbomb in search of the comics or updates on our basketball brackets, to stop pretending that none of this is happening. It's time to stop pretending: that girl from your high school debate team drives a Hummer in Iraq; that boy you met (and may've kissed, just a little, after your third gin and tonic) at that party is awaiting orders to ship out; your best friend's exboyfriend's old roommate is finishing up his second tour of duty. It's time to stop pretending: that screaming woman in that documentary you saw looks a little like your aunt without her makeup, and for all intents and purposes, she could be. Incidents of culture or geography do not compromise mutual humanity, and it's impossible to ignore the persistent and seemingly inexorable toll this conflict continues to wreak on Iraq's civilian population. As a nation, we've worked long and hard to ignore these facts and these faces--the grinning faces of the boys we knew from high school and the bloodied faces of families out for groceries when the lady next to them in line exploded in a hail of shrapnel. There's been five years of this. Five years.

Five years means that it is, in a manner of speaking, time to get off our collective couches and take to the streets with signs in our hands. Five years means it time we no longer let our government sign our names to this war. Five years is five years too many.

______________________________________________________________________

Read up:

• http://www.amnestyusa.org/
• http://thomas.loc.gov/home/multicongress/multicongress.html
• http://www.fas.org/man/docs/qdr/
• http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/
• http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10907.htm

Speak up:

• https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml
• http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt
• http://www.onebigtorrent.org/

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*reprinted from salon.com

**big thanks to Josh White, who provided most of these links.

Protestant Easter: Eight Years Old

When he was a little boy
Jesus was good all the time.
No wonder that he grew up to be such a big shot
who could forgive people so much.
When he died everyone was mean.
Later on he rose when no one else was looking.
Either he was hiding
or else he went up.
Maybe he was only hiding?
Maybe he could fly?

Yesterday I found a purple crocus
blowing its way out of the snow.
It was all alone.
It was getting its work done.
Maybe Jesus was only getting his work done
and letting God blow him off the Cross
and maybe he was afraid for a minute
so he hid under the big stones.
He was smart to go to sleep up there
even though his mother got so sad
and let them put him in a cave.
I sat in a tunnel when I was five.
That tunnel, my mother said,went straight into the big river
and so I never went again.
Maybe Jesus knew my tunnel
and crawled right through to the river
so he could wash all the blood off.
Maybe he only meant to get clean
and then come back again?
Don't tell me that he went up in smoke
like Daddy's cigar!
He didn't blow out like a match!
It is specialbeing here at Easter
with the Cross they built like a capital T.
The ceiling is an upside-down rowboat.
I usually count its ribs.
Maybe he was drowning?
Or maybe we are all upside down?
I can see the face of a mouse inside
of all that stained-glass window.
Well, it could be a mouse!
Once I thought the Bunny Rabbit was special
and I hunted for eggs.
That's when I was seven.
I'm grownup now. Now it's really Jesus.
I just have to get Him straight.
And right now.

Who are we anyhow?
What do we belong to?
Are we a we?
I think that he rose
but I'm not quite sure
and they don't really say
singing their Alleluia
in the churchy way.
Jesus was on that Cross.
After that they pounded nails into his hands.
After that, well, after that,
everyone wore hats
and then there was a big stone rolled away
and then almost everyone --
the ones who sit up straight --
looked at the ceiling.

Alleluia they sing.
They don't know.
They don't care if he was hiding or flying.
Well, it doesn't matter how he got there.
It matters where he was going.
The important thing for me
is that I'm wearing white gloves.
I always sit straight.
I keep on looking at the ceiling.
And about Jesus,
they couldn't be sure of it,
not so sure of it anyhow,
so they decided to become Protestants.
Those are the people that sing
when they aren't quite
sure.

- Anne Sexton, from Live or Die, 1966 Houghton Mifflin Co.

On Resurrection

Let's play Lazarus. Libby was the pastor's daughter. She was two or three or four years older than me and always wore pink hair barrettes. She had a tight, prissy face, and I did not like her much. All the grownups were inside the church drinking coffee and talking. We were looking for ways to entertain ourselves on the church playground.

How do you play Lazarus?

You're Martha and I'm Mary. She pointed to her brother. Jamie's Lazarus. And Mary, she said to my little sister, you have to be Jesus. You're too little to be anything else. Mary started to complain that she didn't want to be a boy, but Libby glared her into silence.

We took off the little white cardigans we all wore over our Sunday dresses and tied them around Jamie's chest and arms. Dead Lazarus, we'd learned in Sunday school, was all wrapped up like a mummy. Then we considered the snap-together Fisher Price playground. It was made up of a series of primary-colored interlocking panels and slides that could be reconfigured, or, more accurately, disassembled by children who then lacked the strength to reattach the pieces securely. We pulled and pulled and the big yellow tube-shaped slide popped loose.

This is your tomb. Get in.

The tomb was a little muddy inside. Black leaves were stuck to it. Jamie hesitated. Libby gave him a little shove. He kicked at the tube, looked at his sister, and then obediently wiggled inside.

Now we have to roll the tomb. C'mon.

I bent down over the slide and next to Libby. Rolling the tomb made sense somehow. All the pictures in our Bible storybooks showed tombs shaped just like our big yellow slide. And there was something about something rolling away, wasn't there, something to do with tombs.

Our brother's dead. We're really, really sad.

Okay.

We started to push the slide uphill and chant our brother's dead and we are sad boohoo boohoo. Jamie was too heavy and the hill was too steep. So Libby ordered my little sister, who'd been standing off to the side being Jesus, to help us push. Jamie laughed as he tumbled around like clothes in the dryer.

What are you doing? My mother was standing at the playground fence.

Oh. We're rolling a dead body. I thought it was an obvious explanation. Of course three small girls would tie up a boy and roll him across the playground inside a slide and tell everyone he was a dead body. Of course.

You're what? Mom looked shocked and disgusted. I knew I'd said the wrong thing then, that rolling Lazarus up the hill was one of those inexplicable things that must be kept secret from adults. You kids need to come inside. Right. Now. She turned and clipclopped back inside in her shiny black high heels.

We stopped pushing, and Jamie wiggled out of the slide still tied up in our sweaters. He stood there, tied up in sweaters, and grinned dizzily at us all. Jamie was freckled and brown haired and a year older than me. Sometimes I chased him around the church yard and tried to kiss him. Once or twice I caught him and he smelled like Juicy Fruit and soap and mud. He took a step or two and then fell down laughing.

What is Jesus supposed to say?

Shut up. Libby rolled her eyes.

Don't tell her to shut up.

You shut up. Mary reached out her hand, and I took it. We walked through the gate and down the sidewalk toward the church. I looked back at our Lazarus, still tied up in our sweaters and still laying on the ground laughing up at the wide blue sky of fall.