Loss: June 2020

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been drowning. While I’ve been dealing with the discomfort of a mask on my face, the restraint of staying at home, the danger of viruses in the air we breathe, the surfaces we touch, the hands we shake, George Floyd was dealing with the knee of a white cop on his neck, unable to breathe at all. I hate the usual local TV coverage of hour after nightly hour L. A. car chases, but couldn’t turn away from the daily morning-to-night coverage of the riots and demonstrations under the banner of Black Lives Matter.

Two pictures now keep me awake at night. John Oliver (Last Week Tonight, June 7, 2020, Comedy Central), has devoted many of his recent programs entirely to racial issues, police corruption and violence against People Of Color and the provocative role of President Trump. But in one segment, he gave the closing words to Kimberly Jones, whose blistering rage was searing. She screamed at the camera: “Why do we burn our own buildings? Because we don’t own anything! You’re lucky Black people want equality instead of revenge!”

And then, following on the heels of that, I read an op-ed piece in the New York Times (June 5, 2020) by writer Chad Sanders. The agency representing him postponed a meeting about his book so that they could observe a “Blackout Day” to think about what they can do to address systemic racism. Mr. Sanders points out the terrible inconsistency – – systemic racism – – implied in thus delaying a book on systemic racism and how Black people might deal with it.

So when I set my mind to writing about loss, I remember Ms. Jones and Mr. Sanders and swallow hard. More than once these days, I’ve been glad that I am old, that I won’t be around to deal with the changes that American society must negotiate if we are not to keep repeating the bloody mistakes on which our nation was founded. If nothing else, those two pictures make it impossible for me to claim that I am innocent. My age doesn’t get me off the hook, nor does my annual donation to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Mr. Sanders ridicules “the Snuggie of white privilege” implied in the gestures of his white liberal acquaintances. My own particular Snuggie during my career as a hospital chaplain was that I was fairly good at communicating my care and concern. But from his perspective, Mr. Sanders labels that as “forced intimacy.” In that case I am invading the pain and fear that I cannot possibly understand or ameliorate because I am not Black. He calls that “white people performing empathy,” and neatly knocks the feet out from under my best stock in trade, my best gifts for ministry. It is a loss of skill and power that I will have to accept if I wish to have any relationship at all with people like him.

Ms. Jones is right; I am fortunate that she wants equality rather than revenge. What would revenge even look like today? Echoes of the Psalmist ring in my ears: “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, who could stand?” (Psalm 130:3)

Several years ago, I received a brand-new Volkswagen sedan out of the diesel scandal. I was nearly as grateful for the new car as I was gleeful that I had won against the corporation. For a variety of reasons – – I was paying forward all those good neighbors who drove my elderly mother around for years, I didn’t feel it was ethically right to drive my car with only one person in it, I liked being a good neighbor myself – – I took to driving on the far right lane of city streets to pick up people who looked hot or tired to offer them a ride. I was quickly confronted with some issues I hadn’t thought of. In the “white bread” college town where I live, some African-Americans were afraid of me. One African-American woman and I got to know each other a little bit in the course of the ride. She said, “You must be Catholic. They do things like that.” Many white people were suspicious of me. One white woman eyed me from the safety of the curb: “Oh, I’ve gotten into trouble going with people like you,” she said as she hastily backed away.

In the end, I gave up the practice, and my joy at having something to share gave way to discomfort and shame about the way I might have been perceived. I suspect that a Chad Sanders or Kimberly Jones would have taken sharp offense. What threads did I not see, blinded by my high spirits? Like the police who bent a knee in the days following this week’s riots, I was offering much too little, much too late. My loss is that I’m not sure I’m any wiser now.