shame, lying as hope
It may never go away for me simply because “ever” in +Time+ is where “My friends, life is short, and we haven’t much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us.” I may be trying to flush but honestly I don’t keep trying to figure it out or to condemn or contemn, because born and bred a Southerner in decades when many around me, neighbors, friends and close, beloved relatives, had strong, bitter personal memories and hatreds of Reconstruction after the Civil War and, as I’ve previously written, certitudes were absolute regarding social mores; so in fact, I know what we are, who and what we Americans are, and I understand, and I understand us.
Truth, my own sociological certainties didn’t change until my freshman year at university, and there’s no reason for me to think, or I see now to have assumed, that the nation or even the rest of my generation changed then or since. I know, I understand how growing up living into a culture creates unquestioning certainty of what is and of what one knows to be so, true, right and good. I also know, and it isn’t political correctness, that the cultural certainties that brought me to adulthood were unkittylittered bullshit. Truth that was and is untruth, wrong, incorrect, arrogance, evil. Sin. “White Only.” "Colored." Now, Hispanic, Islamophobia.
In a slightly different cultural milieu, the military, a dear friend and clergy colleague remembered as a child being ordered off the Officers’ Beach because his father was enlisted. His scar of humiliation, discrimination experience never healed and even though we were extraordinarily close, he may have subconsciously resented me as an officer and not felt as close to me as I did to him. I might ask him, but he is dead, and I will never stop missing him.
My fraternity would not rush or pledge Jews, and there were no black students at my university. We had a called chapter meeting one evening, righteously and we thought rightly, to expel a brother who had been outed as homosexual. Common across the land are non-Jewish country clubs and neighborhoods (I do not understand, then, how Israel with its Heilsgeschichte can elate over this election). Though both were painted yellow, and I remember a funny story about it, Apalachicola in our years had a “white Jr. Store” and a “black Jr. Store” and never the twain shall meet. Our society is what it is and I, no outsider looking in, I understand, I have been there, and I am. Grieving, I see and understand now, that what I had thought was my healing nation is as sick, certain and hate-filled as the day I was born more than three-quarters of a century ago. Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth … that all men are created equal. But "White Only" is alive and well and only yesterday I saw a teenage boy flying the CSA battleflag on his bicycle, perhaps, der DrumpfJunge, last Wednesday morning at school he tormented a Hispanic child. Yet it isn’t just the South but permeant, nationwide, border to border and ocean to ocean. What I didn’t realize, what surprises me, but now I see, is the embarrassment, fear, honour-shame of being outed as One and so now I understand even the Day That Will Live In Infamy. This land is your land, this land is my land From the California to the New York island From the Redwood Forest, to the gulf stream waters we are what we have elected.
Notwithstanding My Lai, I thought we were more and other than this, but we are every word he said, every hatred he stirred to get our vote. I cannot come out of this in +Time+ because we haven’t time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. But now I understand, Kaepernick, and you are right.
In Time, in another and later generation’s day and age, may the stigma of realizing that one is One sink deep enough to infect, shame, embarrass and change the psyche, and may our Baptismal Covenant begin to come true instead of being a mockery of our God and Lord. For the time being though, we are liars, too ashamed to tell the truth: which itself, at least and at last, is progress, hope, promise.
https://michiganross.umich.edu/rtia-articles/embarrassment-and-fear-social-stigma-messed-pollsters-predictions
DThos+
Truth, my own sociological certainties didn’t change until my freshman year at university, and there’s no reason for me to think, or I see now to have assumed, that the nation or even the rest of my generation changed then or since. I know, I understand how growing up living into a culture creates unquestioning certainty of what is and of what one knows to be so, true, right and good. I also know, and it isn’t political correctness, that the cultural certainties that brought me to adulthood were unkittylittered bullshit. Truth that was and is untruth, wrong, incorrect, arrogance, evil. Sin. “White Only.” "Colored." Now, Hispanic, Islamophobia.
In a slightly different cultural milieu, the military, a dear friend and clergy colleague remembered as a child being ordered off the Officers’ Beach because his father was enlisted. His scar of humiliation, discrimination experience never healed and even though we were extraordinarily close, he may have subconsciously resented me as an officer and not felt as close to me as I did to him. I might ask him, but he is dead, and I will never stop missing him.
My fraternity would not rush or pledge Jews, and there were no black students at my university. We had a called chapter meeting one evening, righteously and we thought rightly, to expel a brother who had been outed as homosexual. Common across the land are non-Jewish country clubs and neighborhoods (I do not understand, then, how Israel with its Heilsgeschichte can elate over this election). Though both were painted yellow, and I remember a funny story about it, Apalachicola in our years had a “white Jr. Store” and a “black Jr. Store” and never the twain shall meet. Our society is what it is and I, no outsider looking in, I understand, I have been there, and I am. Grieving, I see and understand now, that what I had thought was my healing nation is as sick, certain and hate-filled as the day I was born more than three-quarters of a century ago. Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth … that all men are created equal. But "White Only" is alive and well and only yesterday I saw a teenage boy flying the CSA battleflag on his bicycle, perhaps, der DrumpfJunge, last Wednesday morning at school he tormented a Hispanic child. Yet it isn’t just the South but permeant, nationwide, border to border and ocean to ocean. What I didn’t realize, what surprises me, but now I see, is the embarrassment, fear, honour-shame of being outed as One and so now I understand even the Day That Will Live In Infamy. This land is your land, this land is my land From the California to the New York island From the Redwood Forest, to the gulf stream waters we are what we have elected.
Notwithstanding My Lai, I thought we were more and other than this, but we are every word he said, every hatred he stirred to get our vote. I cannot come out of this in +Time+ because we haven’t time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. But now I understand, Kaepernick, and you are right.
In Time, in another and later generation’s day and age, may the stigma of realizing that one is One sink deep enough to infect, shame, embarrass and change the psyche, and may our Baptismal Covenant begin to come true instead of being a mockery of our God and Lord. For the time being though, we are liars, too ashamed to tell the truth: which itself, at least and at last, is progress, hope, promise.
https://michiganross.umich.edu/rtia-articles/embarrassment-and-fear-social-stigma-messed-pollsters-predictions
DThos+