Profanity, Civility, Community

(This is where I would have embedded George Carlin's "Seven Words You Can't Say on TV," but it's an age-restricted video you can watch only by going to YouTube.)

The Washington Nationals' home opener last Friday, against the World Series-winning Los Angeles Dodgers, started spectacularly well: two shut-out innings from starting pitcher Miles Mikolas, three unanswered runs from the Nationals including C.J. Abrams's home run. It hardly mattered that half the people in the ballpark were Dodgers fans. 

And then the game took a turn. Mikolas collapsed, setting a new club record for runs given up by a single pitcher (11). The Nationals' new manager, wunderkind Blake Butera, didn't pull him until the fifth inning. The bullpen kept the Dodgers to only two more runs, but the final score was a demoralizing 13-6. 

Somewhere around the seventh inning, a man in the row behind me lost his patience. He started bellowing that the Nationals should be ashamed, that this was a disgrace, that the managers and players were bums. He was loud, relentless — and profane. The Nationals weren't just a disgrace, they were a fucking disgrace. The game was a fucking disaster. The owners were fucking robbers, and the whole thing was a fucking insult to the fans. 

Eventually another man across the aisle, a season-plan holder I think of as the Mayor of Section 100, told the heckler to shut up, or at least to quit cussing. "There are kids here." 

The heckler took offense. He was much the worse for drink (which was pretty impressive since even American beers cost just under $15 apiece at Nats Park these days). The two men stood up and confronted each other. 

Eventually an usher noticed the disruption. When he came down, the heckler insisted that he'd been insulted. He refused to back down, calm down, quiet down, or moderate his language. He demanded that the usher call the police. 

Everyone told the man that no, he didn't want the police. Seriously, dude. Just settle down. Don't make this a thing. 

But since the heckler insisted, the police came — and took him away in handcuffs, as he protested the unfairness. A rotten way to end a day that was supposed to be nothing but fun.

The thing is, the guy wasn't wrong. It was a miserable performance before a sellout crowd. Butera should have pulled Mikolas after the third inning, though even that might not have been soon enough. Hell, Mikolas probably shouldn't have had the ball that day at all. But the combination of rage and alcohol made the angry fan feel it was okay to use whatever language he wanted in an environment that included small children, and most of us in 100 were grateful when the Mayor spoke up. 

Yesterday the President of the United States posted a threat of war crimes against the people of Iran unless they opened "the Fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards." And I posted a comment to BlueSky that the President was using language most of us wanted to keep out of our children's mouths — to which, because it was BlueSky and that's the nature of that community, a complete stranger snarked at me for taking offense to the language. 

But the language matters. I'm as sweary as the next person when the situation calls for it, but language is always a tool. Language conveys not only what we think and feel about what we're saying, but also what we think and feel about our audiences. It conveys who we are. And it expects a response. 

Words' meaning and power change over time, but we identify members of our community in part by agreeing on acceptable usage. Last Friday, Section 100 got a reminder of our microcommunity's acceptable boundaries. Yesterday, the President of the United States scoffed at them.

The Cautionary Tale of Constance Mayer

 

The Soul Breaking the Bonds of Earth
Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, 1821-23 

The Louvre is almost mandatory on one's first trip to Paris, so off we went on a Sunday morning last month. Had I visited the Louvre on my first day in Paris, my impressions of the city might have been very different. I'd already had three days of Paris as open, intimate, and unexpected. The Louvre is a literal fortress full of looted treasures, crowded with people who feel obligated to be there and are apparently incapable of looking at art except through a phone screen. Why, why does anyone need to take a cellphone photo of an artwork? Will they ever look at it again? Could a cellphone photo possibly be better than the postcard that costs a single Euro in the museum gift shop? Je n'ai aucune idée, non, et non.

The irony is that I did try to take a photo of this painting — and somehow my phone did not save it. (Of course the Louvre is haunted. It's probably as crowded with ghosts as it is with people.) I'd never seen this painting before, nor heard of the artist. This image is from the Louvre's website, but does not do the painting justice. What caught my eye was the brightness of the white paint used for the central image and the cascading water below. The painting in real life is bluer and darker than it looks here, and the white is correspondingly brighter. 

This was Prud'hon's last work, left unfinished when he died. It seems to have been a response to the suicide of his collaborator and longtime companion, Constance Mayer, who slit her throat with his razor in 1821. Mayer, 16 years younger than Prud'hon, had been his pupil, then became his housekeeper and raised his children after Prud'hon's wife was committed to an insane asylum. When Prud'hon's wife died, Mayer understandably assumed that she would become the next Madame Prud'hon. Prud'hon made it clear he had no intention of marrying again, sending Mayer into a suicidal depression. After she died, Prud'hon organized an exhibition of her work, returned to paints to create this remarkable image, and died himself — of alcoholism, apparently, though some say it was a broken heart — less than two years later.

Scholars agree that Prud'hon and Mayer worked closely together from 1804 until her death, and that Mayer painted some, most, or all of several works credited to Prud'hon during that time. Prud'hon preferred to work in pencil and chalk; Mayer was a painter. He would draw an image, and she would paint it. His was the more famous name, though she exhibited her own work, and that work hangs in galleries around the world. Paradoxically, her paintings seem to have survived better than his have; he was apparently bad at mixing pigments, and his paintings have darkened. Except for these flashes of white on the painting he left unfinished.

. . . .Aaaand we're back.

After almost ten years of salaried work, a reorganization has put me back into full-time freelancing. 

If I've ever told you I simply didn't have time for your project, that's no longer true. I have time, and I want to help. I want to see your manuscripts and projects and help them be whatever they need to be. 

In the meantime I get my own voice back, after hiring it out to employers for years. The world is a marvelous place, and I've been on it a while. I have Thoughts. I'd like to hear yours. Watch for new posts on a regular basis, and chime in through the comments. 

Meet me at Mary's Place

I spent this weekend on retreat with other members of my church, talking about how to strengthen communities under the guidance of the extraordinary Sister Simone Campbell.

The second requirement for prophetic communities, Sister Simone told us, might be the hardest of all: the need to “touch the pain of the world as real.” That is, experience it without trying to fix it; letting it break your heart. “Having a broken heart makes room for everyone.”

This morning I’m sitting two blocks from the Pentagon, remembering that day 22 years ago, letting it break my heart again. Nothing we have done in the last two decades has made an attack like that any less likely. It might be minimally more difficult to execute a plan like the 9/11 attack than it was in 2001, but no one who was truly determined could be deterred. All deterrence measures assume that the attackers want to survive. That wasn’t true in 2001, and it’s not true now.

So how do we live broken-hearted? What are we supposed to do, if not try to fix things? We are supposed to build community. We are supposed to broaden that community. We are supposed to love our enemies, even when they lie and persecute us. The instructions are right there in the New Testament. Jesus gave them to us, and he was not equivocal. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

How do we form that community? We come together with radical acceptance. We listen. We celebrate. Coming together makes hope possible, because — as Sister Simone reminded us — hope is a communal virtue.

Bruce Springsteen’s album The Rising, which I always listen to on this day, gets it. It starts with a lonesome day; it moves on to Mary’s Place.

            Tell me, how do you live brokenhearted?

            Meet me at Mary’s place. We’re gonna have a party.

 

Turn it up. 

 

 

A Homily on the Prodigal Son

I missed going to church during the pandemic lockdown in 2020. I'm a haphazard and occasionally defiant Catholic, but that's kind of the point. In college, a Jesuit suggested that sin and redemption might be a dialectic process that brings us toward God. I wouldn't want to go too far down that road, but it comforted me at the time. 

Anyway I found a faith community that suited me, a non-diocesan parish in Northern Virginia that was holding Mass online. They've been a lovely, welcoming, safe group, one of my pandemic treasures. Liturgy planning is a cooperative effort with a regular rota of order priests, the "padre cadre." A few Sundays a year, we don't have a priest, and instead of Mass we have a community-led liturgy. We had one yesterday, for the fourth Sunday of Lent, and I got to be part of the planning team. Not only that, but I got to give the sermon. 

Yesterday's Gospel was Luke's telling of the story of the Prodigal Son — but instead of beginning with the words of Jesus, as we usually hear that story (Luke 15:11), the reading included Luke's own reporting about Jesus's audience and purpose. That piece of the story feels meaningful to me, so that's what I talked about. And since I'm unlikely to do this again, I share the homily here for anyone who might need it. 

* * * * *

I am a writer and an editor, working in a broad range of environments—I work on everything from legislative hearings to social media posts about sports. It’s all storytelling, and my first question on every project is, “Who is this for?” Who’s the audience, and what is the audience supposed to do with this communication? 

 

I was so glad that we got this version of the Prodigal Son story today, because the chapter opens with Luke telling us who the audience for this story was: not the tax collectors and sinners, who were already hanging out with Jesus and listening to what he had to say, but the Pharisees and scribes, who were complaining about Jesus spending his time and wisdom on people they found unworthy.

 

When we hear a parable or a fable, we identify with a character based on the lesson we think we’re supposed to learn. The most obvious message of the story of the Prodigal Son is that God will always forgive us and welcome us home. That is a powerful message, and that is a message we all need to hear, that God offers this absolute and radical forgiveness. But the way that Luke frames this story makes it clear that this was not the only message Jesus was trying to deliver, and was maybe not even the most important message for the audience he was addressing.

 

The people Jesus was speaking to were the people in the position of the faithful son. And what does the father say to the faithful son? He says, “You are with me always, and all I have is yours.”   

 

You are with me always, and all I have is yours. Not half. Not “your share.” All I have is yours. 

 

This is what Jesus was telling the Pharisees and scribes: all God has is yours. The forgiveness of the prodigal takes nothing away from you.

 

I grew up in a family of six children. We fought constantly over “fair shares.” My father threatened to get a food scale to make sure that nobody got even a little bit more ice cream than anybody else. God does not need to do that, because God is infinite. God’s love is infinite. God’s forgiveness is absolute. God’s forgiveness of and love for other people takes nothing away from us. And God invites us, like the Prodigal Son’s father, to join in celebrating that love, celebrating that forgiveness, welcoming everyone home again. 

 

In this story, we see ourselves as the prodigal son, being forgiven, because we know we need that forgiveness so badly. But we must also recognize that we are the brother, who needs to get a grip, and realize that forgiveness and love are not ice cream. Nothing God gives anyone else subtracts from the infinite love and forgiveness we get every moment of every day. We are invited to celebrate that radical forgiveness, and if we aspire to be more like Jesus, we must find that radical forgiveness in ourselves as well. And so we are called to be the prodigal son—and the prodigal’s brother—and the prodigal’s father. We are all three people in that story.   

 

So let us all celebrate and rejoice—because we, and our brothers, and our sisters, have all been dead and restored to life. We have all been lost, and now are found. 

 

Alleluia.

 

Regaining Momentum

Thursday broke me. 

It was a small thing on top of a lot of big things. My laptop stopped charging, and when the battery died, I could not revive it.  

My day job is full-time when Congress is in session, and I have a year-round, full-time editing/consulting business of my own. I work all day, and sometimes I work all night. My sense of self is way too wrapped up in my work, and my work is no longer really possible without a computer.

I've tripped over the charging cord more than once, so I figured — I hoped — replacing the cord would fix the problem. But I work on a MacBook, and all the Apple stores are closed, and Apple couldn't deliver a new cord before Wednesday. 

I ordered one from Amazon that advertised same-day delivery, but once the order was placed, the delivery date changed to Friday — and later, to between Saturday and Monday. Best Buy couldn't deliver the cord until Wednesday, but I had an adapter I thought I might be able to rig up as a workaround with the right USB cable, so I went to my neighborhood Best Buy to buy one of those. As it turns out, Best Buy is not really open yet — you can order online and pick up your purchase at the store if they have it in stock — but the lady behind the acrylic shield at the entrance was very nice, and I got my cable. Which did not work.

Since this is 2020 and I am a creature of privilege, I do also have a smart phone and an iPad, so I could answer email and could call in to a Webex meeting. But I haven't learned how to write anything longer than an email on my phone or my tablet, and I don't know how to mark changes on a document in anything but Microsoft Word. 

"You need a vacation," said one of my colleagues on the Webex call, and my eye started to leak. What does that even mean, in this environment? How is anybody taking a vacation? The country's falling apart, I'm alone in this apartment, I have no means of transportation other than the half-open Metro, and I have all this work that isn't getting done . . . 

And then, at 7:30 Thursday night, I tuned into the tribute to John Prine streaming on YouTube and Facebook, and Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires opened the show with "Hello in There." And I lost it, for the first time since this lockdown began.

It was an ugly cry, and I can't even list all the things I was crying about. The loss of John Prine, absolutely. The tens of thousands of people who have died from this virus, and my friends who still aren't completely well. The loss of our old life. The loneliness of lockdown. The hatefulness, selfishness and willful obliviousness of my fellow Americans who put that mindless, malicious man in the White House. The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and every other black person killed by figures in authority over the past 400 years. The fact that my daughter's going back to Asia next week and I never even got to hug her while she was home. I could go on. I did go on. I went on to the point of thinking, "Okay, I need to stop crying now," but I could not. Eventually it ran down. 

My day-job boss brought me a PC laptop from the office, so I managed to write Friday's weekly newsletter. I got the MacBook power cord yesterday evening, and it did fix the laptop, and today I need to catch up with two and a half days' worth of missed work.  

But three days later, I still feel shaky. I'm afraid that having stopped I won't be able to get started again, because momentum is the first law of motion. I remind myself that this — all of this, life, work, the fight for justice, everything — is a marathon, not a sprint, and it's not all supposed to get done today. In the words of the Mishnah sage Rabbi Tarfon, "It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it." 

So my laptop is recharged. I'm about to open my email folder, with a sense of dread. Dread about what? Nothing I work on is a matter of life or death, but I do feel entrusted with my clients' hopes and aspirations, and I take that seriously. Plus, the work makes it possible for me to make contributions to organizations like NAMI, one of the beneficiaries of the John Prine tribute, and more essential now than it's ever been. 

Back to it. 

 

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story

I have five brothers and sisters, and five of us were born within four years (two sets of twins, one singleton born on the second twins' first birthday). Until I was almost 21, I lived surrounded by people, with a roommate of some kind or in a dormitory. So I learned early about points of view.  

My five siblings and I grew up in the same house and share memories of certain major events. If you ask about them, though, each one of us will tell you a different story — and they will all be true. 

Stories are all about whose story you're telling, and where you place the camera. Recent years have seen something of a craze for first person, present tense narratives, which some authors find easier to write but I often find excruciating to read — because seriously, who's that interesting? When I read fiction for pleasure, more often than not I want that panoramic view. Third person omniscient, that's my jam. 

This is the conversation we're having right now about statues, and about renaming things. George Orwell said that "History is written by the winners," but if that's true, why are my nephews going to Lee-Davis High School? Why does my niece go to Stonewall Jackson Middle School? Why does Richmond still have a giant statue of Robert E. Lee in the fanciest part of town?

These are not new questions, but people seem to be realizing it's stupid to still be asking them in 2020. The statues are getting dumped into rivers. The rec center in Henrico County that used to be called Confederate Hills became The Springs today, with no fanfare. And of course, the intersection of 16th & H Streets NW is now Black Lives Matter Plaza.

To the people wringing their hands about these changes and wailing that we're destroying history, I ask: whose history? We're not changing any history. We're making more, and we're moving the camera.

Everybody stars in their own life story. Too many people have lived and died unseen and unremembered. If we restore the balance, that's improving history, not wrecking it. Be honest: how much did you know about Alexander Hamilton before the musical?