All the grace

It is just another Wednesday morning among thousands of other Wednesday mornings. I drink two cups of coffee as I wake and get ready for the day. I wake my children up for school, ask one of them to get out of the shower a few times before they do. I think about making oatmeal but don’t. I comb my hair, start my car, feed the dog and decide to grab a sweater on my way out the door, just in case the classroom is cold today. From one day to another I never know how the room will be.

I mark the twenty-two miles from here to there by the number of swooshes I hear when the road curves this way and then that. This is the sound, or something like it, that the case of water in the back of my car makes, nearly empty now, when I turn the car enough to send it this way and that. Swoosh on this right turn, swoosh back on that left turn. 

It is just another Spring morning in Eastern New Mexico and the sun is already high and is shining like a lightbulb above low flying clouds that are like strips of white cotton hanging over miles of grass and cows. To the west the clouds are gray and lower and the light is just so that one can make out details that a less filtered sunlight would allow.

This morning you can see all the little houses that dot the prairie. Wood pillars holding up a porch. A white chair next to a front door. Blue shutters on those windows or red trim on that roof. Those fat green trees that are just as fat and as green as can be. My brain catches bits and pieces of what is out there, forming impressions as my car carries me Northeast at 70 miles per hour on this stretch of Highway.

It is almost pretty, this god-forsaken place. I think to myself. Surprising myself with such a thought. I wonder, what makes a place god-forsaken? Poverty? Disparity? Injustice? Racism? All of those things certainly exist here. But I don’t think this place is exactly god-forsaken. There is immeasurable beauty and strength in this little community. My mood has been informed by the news this morning, consumed between sips of coffee and these low hanging gray clouds. 

Truth is, this is a great little community. It is small and sits at the edge of Eastern New Mexico so close to Texas that if one happened to be driving on a thin road East or West one could miss that you’d left one state and entered another, if not for the time change. Since moving here over a decade ago we have seen the folks who live and work in this little town rally around one another when times got tough, when sickness came, or children ran away, when there were horrific accidents or mysterious illnesses, folks showed up for folks.

Although when Covid happened it cut right down the middle of the community. It was like the earths shifting left a crack that went though neighborhoods, houses, churches, and all the buildings that people lived and worked in. People, friends and family alike, were left on different sides of the fissure. Like a new border suddenly raised fences leaving everyone in a new and opposing nation and some people (many people) seemed to settle into the role of enemy or if not that then adversary. It was shocking and disappointing. 

But we seemed to survive that time and we figured out how to live together again or perhaps we just got used to some different reality and got comfortable? Then someone wanted to be president again and the vitriol and purposeful disparaging and dehumanizing language that became the norm his first time around (much worse the second time) sent the tectonic plates to shift and the cracks came up and widened – again leaving people on opposing sides. To be clear, the shift only worked to reveal where people actually chose to stand. I struggled not to despair.

I desperately want to believe that all humans are good. Father Gregory Boyle says this – all the time – that all humans are good. Despite my theological training, I admit that I struggle with this notion when I see the ways we harm one another. I believe it, I do, and I pray that God will help me with my unbelief.

I find that I am leery of other humans these days. You can’t really tell who is who anymore. Maybe you never could. That man sitting on that bench waiting for a ride. The couple sitting on the pew in front of you. The lady coming up to that counter you man, or giving you the latte that you ordered. 

You just can’t tell who is pleased that ICE is in the community. You can’t tell who would defend the men who killed Alex Pretti or Rene Good. You can’t tell who is happy that DEI has been removed or who is alright that Medicaid or WIC or school lunches are in danger of disappearing for thousands and thousands of families. You can’t tell if the lady or man in front of you, smiling and holding the door, is happy about any one of these issues and a hundred and eleven more just as long as abortion gets banned or immigrants are removed from this nation’s soil or both. You just can’t tell, and that is unnerving. 

A few weeks ago I stood on the sidewalk holding a sign that read, “Human rights for all humans”. Underneath was a red circle with a red line diagonal over the letters I.C.E. and next to that another red circle with another red line diagonal over the word kings. Young men with mullets (no shade to mullets) boys really, in a dirty pickup truck drove by us over and over again giving us their middle fingers, the exhaust from their muffler and their best sneers. Older ladies in mini vans gave us both fingers and lots of F’ yous. Old men in big shiny trucks pulling trailers yelling F’you, you mother F’ers.

Other folks drove by and honked, the way that I used to do, and threw fists in the air. You might even get a, “hell yeah!” or “Whoooo!” but I was puzzled most by the many more people who looked straight ahead not seeing us at all. How can you not look? I wondered. Then again, how can any of us get up and drink our coffee and get dressed and drive our kids to school or clock in to our jobs and out again or eat and wash dishes or brush our teeth or plant gardens or do any normal thing when bombs are falling and children are in cages all over our “great” nation?

But I suppose that I don’t know what is on the news you watch and you do not know what I see or read. I believe this is a huge piece of the puzzle. News feeds are pitting us against each other and algorithms are training our eyes and dulling our senses. And maybe the not knowing who is who keeps us all from talking to one another. What if we could sit down for coffee and have hard conversations and listen and learn from one another?

I am afraid that there is a giant pendulum swinging. On the one end stand those who are straight up for all things maga who are not affected by anything happening in our world – besides the high prices of everything and gas- and in between are all those peoples in between (which would be as diverse as all of humanity is) and to the other end, and I think this is where I land (or strive to land) are the folks who get up in the morning and grieve and simmer and go on doing the normal things of life (and whatever they can to stand and fight) in spite of oppressors oppressing everywhere. 

This morning, when I got to the next town, the clouds were lower and grayer. They sat in the trees and blurred all the edges of industry. They seeped under the bridges and laid down flat on the train tracks. Is this what god-forsaken might look like? I wondered again. And again, I wondered who decides that a place or that a people is “god-forsaken?”

I don’t know. But I cannot for the life of me understand how people who follow Jesus can defend this administration, or remain silent or look away from suffering or see it and not be moved. I suppose one could wonder if we, as a society are not in danger of becoming god-forsaken in our apathy, but I digress. 

At the end of this normal Wednesday I mark the twenty-two miles from there to here by the number of swooshes I hear when the road curves this way and then that. That case of water in the back of my car, nearly empty still making the swoosh sound when I turn the car just enough to send it this way and that. Swoosh on this left turn, swoosh back on that right turn.

I leave you with what is written on the other side of my homemade protest sign. “No one is well unless we are all well.” I believe that these words align with something else that Father Gregory Boyle says often and that is, “We belong to each other.” Which to me affirms the belief that there does not have to be sides. I wish you well. Do you want to grab a coffee?