"A WORD ABOUT THE STRANGER"

  

Old Mission, Solvang, CA

I was reading the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks about Passover, the Holiday that Jesus celebrated and which, after his Resurrection, became Holy Week for Christians.  I am writing this away from home during Holy Week.  Tonight is Maundy Thursday and tomorrow Good Friday, the day of crucifixion.  

Rabbi Sacks says, 

If there is one command above all others that speaks of the power and significance of empathy, it is the line in the week's Parsha [Passover]:  "You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the heart of a stranger:  You were strangers in the land of Egypt."  Exodus 23:9. 

He continues, " Why this command? . . . Empathy is essential to human interaction generally.  Why then invoke it specifically about strangers?"  Because, the Rabbi explains, empathy is easiest among groups that identify with one another, family, clans, religions, gangs, races.  The weaker the bond with another, the sharper the suspicion and fear.  

"It is very hard indeed to love, or even feel empathy for, a stranger."  Thus we need God's commandment:  You shall not opress a stranger. 

A couple of weeks ago, I also read an article about "Toxic Empathy," a frightening mis-juxtaposition of terms.  We are told by one Christian-Right writer that her new book equips Christians "with research-backed, Biblical truths to dismantle the progressive lies like 'no human being is illegal,' or 'love is Love.'"  The book and the concept, the oxymoronic combination of toxicity with empathy, is a favorite among Trump loyalists.  Elon Musk said that empathy is weakness. 

Dr. susan Lanzoni, on the other hand, says that "The disparagement of empathy is a deliberate effort to set up a permission structure to dehumanize others."  

Yes, we see that.  We see the movement to discredit our capacity to recognize and respond to suffering.  We don't need to list how.  Just look at our homegrown Gestapo that we call ICE (for Immigration and Customs Enforcement).  And the concentration camp that has been set up in El Salvador.  

So here it is Holy Week and our own savior is about to be crucified yet again, as he is every year, every day, lately almost every moment.  We remember that Christ's calls to love thy neighbor and welcome the stranger contained no coda on whom to exclude.  We remember that empathy and love are active, not 'thoughts and prayer.' And whether you read this now or after Easter, or next month, the message is always the same:  Christ did not rise for us to ignore the suffering of others.  To do so would be to ignore his own.  AMEN

 

NEWS OF THE DAY: THE SLAVE SHIP CLOTILDA AND JAMES BALDWIN

The slave ship Clotilda has been found in Alabama, upriver from Mobile near a place called Twelvemile Island, submerged just five feet under water.  There had been a Federal ban on importing enslaved peoples since 1808, punishable by hanging. But a steamship owner, Timothy Meaher, made a wager he could import human beings despite the ban.  In 1860 he brought 110 kidnapped West Africans, men, women and children, to the heart of cotton country where they joined some 435,000 enslaved people residing in the state of Alabama.  The passage took 45 days.  Then, because the transport was illegal, the ship was burned and sunk. 

Some five years later at the end of the Civil War and after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, the Africans established Africatown as a thriving community.  It is moving to read about this town's history and the people who live there today.  Some are hopeful that the discovery of the Clotilda, the last slave ship to reach America, lying now underwater in a few feet of mud, could make the town a history hub like Jamestown, Virginia.  Everyone agrees that validation of the town's oral history is to be celebrated. 

The article I chose to read about this subject is in the New York Times.  But Google News, the Washington Post,  the Daily Mail, news media world-wide are reporting on the finding of this "Ship of Horror." It is a sobering thing.  Last year I went to Birmingham and Selma (Posts: "This is Your Kingdom," 6/25/18, 628/18) and saw the sites where black people were confined and auctioned. I was born in St. Louis and learned early about the Dred Scott case (1857, www.history.com), where the Supreme Court held that no black, free or slave, could be a US citizen or sue for freedom. But I had not heard of the ship Clotilda.  

Why did it bring James Baldwin (1924-1987) to mind? Sometimes we can miss the profundity of those long gone.  I thought of this Baldwin quote,

"You think your pain and your heartbreak

are unprecedented in the history of the world,

but then you read." 

The quote applies to his own work as well.  We may think our pain and heartbreak are unprecedented but then we read Another Country or Notes of a Native Son, Go Tell it on the Mountain or The Fire Next Time.  Or we may need inspiration and turn to these books.  Reading for Baldwin stands for learning, connecting, human heart to human heart.  We learn by listening as well, through stories told to us, or through great music (think Puccini, Madame Butterfly or La Boheme).  There are many roads to connection.  

I haven't read a book about the Clotilda, I merely came across an article in my morning news feed.  Then I researched, not in books but online--a source not available to writers and readers of Baldwin's generation.  It brought up pain and heartbreak.  Imagine the terror of being kidnapped, 45 days in that hold, and the life to follow. 

Baldwin also said, 

"It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most

were the very things that connected me with all the people

who were alive, who had ever been alive.

. . . 

I often wonder what I'd do if there weren't any books in the world." 

I am not comparing the daily news with great literature--although I read insightful and important articles every day.  But we can remind ourselves that knowledge is important for its own sake.  Knowing more, even about the sad history of Alabama, makes our world richer, our minds keener, our empathy for others stronger.  The more we know about things that matter, the more we will think about things that matter.  And the more we ponder things that matter, the greater the likelihood we can better the world in our own small (or large) way. It's a kind of cascade isn't it?  

I hope the ship is raised and displayed if the townspeople want, that it brings notice to the town, that it is used to educate.  Martin Luther King once said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Finding this ship could be part of that arc.  No wonder the world is interested in its discovery.     

              

Nina Naomi