Episode 5: Missed Communication
Greetings Friends and welcome to the FIFTH episode of Fish Sandwich Heaven.
At The Chopping Board
Building relationships in this world will be challenging, but not impossible. I can bring my best self to organizing collectives, faith spaces, friendships, family spaces, and romantic/sexual situations. I can name when things get difficult for me. Distance will make different kinds of intimacy tricky, and I am not imagining frustration with technology or necessary precautions.
The Fish Sandwich
This morning’s scripture comes from 2 John. It’s just one short chapter, verses 4-6 and 12 in the NRSV.
4 I was overjoyed to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we have been commanded by the Father. 5 But now, dear lady, I ask you, not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but one we have had from the beginning, let us love one another. 6 And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment just as you have heard it from the beginning—you must walk in it.
12 Although I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink; instead I hope to come to you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.
Missed Communication
Every so often, I have to come off of Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. The incessant attacks on vulnerable people are all I see on the internet. It’s not about putting my head in the sand, or apathy. It’s survival. A human heart can only take so much fire before it crusts into a million pieces. Perhaps you can relate.
I’m beginning to plot my depressive episodes as they relate not just to the events of the world, but also, to the feeling of helplessness in trying to address each thing. I keep praying that maybe this hashtag will end that thing or THIS meme or THAT article will bring greater awareness. And sometimes, they do. There’s a constant pressure to address each thing. Each story. Each old thing wise enough to evolve and pretend to be a new thing. Then there’s the thinkpieces. The memes. The threads. The arguments. And then, come the screenshots. And then, the energy on that old thing pretending to be a new thing dies off…
There’s this eerie feeling you get, when you say to yourself, “hmm. Didn’t we say this would happen a long time ago? Why didn’t they listen to us then? Am I imagining things? Is something new happening? Or Do new people just care about it right now?” Until the next time.
A ball of confusion, that’s what the world is today (hey hey)...It’s enough to drive you mad, and I don’t mean that as hyperbole. I mean, it will drive you mad.
But the Internet, for so many of us, is also where we must be. Because as much as this is where we witness the nonsense, it’s also where we post our selfies. Not because we are vain, but because we must remind the world that we exist. Because here is where we see cute videos of each other’s children styling and profiling for the first day of virtual school. Because here is where we share updates about teach-ins and book clubs we’re hosting.
Because as much as the internet can reflect ugliness and remind us of all that is evil in the world, it is also one place where we can share information about ways to resist such evil.
And this is the world where we meet this text. I am sure that during these times, for every downtrodden person writing to another “keep the faith,” there were more edicts from the State that made folks feel helpless.
Perhaps there were executive orders disseminated by horse, no more immigrants from seven regions.
Perhaps there were public notices to boil one’s water, because the irrigation system in certain neighborhoods has been suspiciously compromised.
Perhaps the local banks took out ads for supposedly affordable home mortgages meant to swindle vulnerable people chasing the American, I mean, the Dream. Sound familiar?
The author of this text writes to an audience in a hostile world. This is not the kind of world where people host release parties at the local independent bookstore for Christ Followers. This is not the kind of world where Christ Followers got Blue Checks on Twitter or Big Checks at major Christian Conferences. This is the world that hated Christ’s people and the future they desired.
Because perhaps the one thing the Empire got right back in those days is that Jesus (and his comrades) were a threat to the bottom line. Jesus was healing people, loving people, feeding people. Do you know how impossible it is to oppress people when they are physically well, emotionally supported, and have a little something to eat in their cupboard? In other words, he was rendering the State useless AND supporting a downtrodden people.
So therefore, y'all, this correspondence that we stumble upon is… quite likely coded. Nobody can say all they want to say just out in the open in an environment like that.
This letter is written to “the Elect lady and her children.” On first glance, it appears as though the letter is written to a woman and her children. It sounds innocent, right, perhaps like some godparent commenting on the graduation live stream.
The writer is not probably writing to a woman and her children. This “elect lady and her children” is a euphemism for the community of believers. This letter is a set of directions for the church. Perhaps it is not helpful to call it a letter to the “church,” but instead, maybe we should think of it as a Facebook post in a group of folks who organize together. It’s likely to be surveilled, intercepted, and used as fodder for persecution and other consequences. This is why, friends, we don’t need to live post every protest we go to. Facebook does not care about your safety.
So what does this author say to the community that will inevitably read this letter?
“But now, dear lady, I ask you, not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but one we have had from the beginning, let us love one another.”
We could say, “Love is Love.” But that’s not always true. Love isn’t always Love. All you have to do is pay attention to the ways marginalized expressions of love, or sexualities, or genders, are treated in relationship to everybody else. Love isn’t love because only certain people have their weddings protested and get anonymous hate mail. Sometimes love isn’t love because only certain families get double takes in the mall. Sometimes love isn’t “just love.” Sometimes it’s something a little more than that.
We could say, “Love makes it alright.”
But love ALONE doesn’t keep people out of prisons and detention centers, although it is a loving thing to release people and bail people out. And love alone doesn’t keep a belly from rumbling. We can love someone as much as we want, but the presence of love doesn’t make the cancer diagnosis disappear. We can love ourselves as hard as we can, and still feel sad about the violence in the world.
We could say, “all we need is love.” But sometimes you need more than love. Sometimes you need respect. Sometimes you need affirmation. Sometimes you need a recommendation for a scholarship. And sometimes, people say they love you, but forget that “love” is an action word. And the “love” they said they had for you was just a conditional transactional word, only meant to be used how they want to honor it.
So what should Love Do? If love is not magic, what is the point of it?
Perhaps it does not matter that the writer talks about love, but perhaps it matters that the writer reminds the audience about where they heard about love. “From the beginning.” The writer says in their own special way, “we are part of a community that cannot be understood or intercepted. Even when they watch us and surveill us, we cannot be decoded. Remember your teachings. Remember when we were with our Lord. Here’s my.. Ghettooo storyyy I REMEMBA DOES DAYS WHEN HELL WAS MY HOME AND…. ” The writer is pointing the audience to an inside meaning.
Perhaps the most important part of the author’s instructions have nothing to do with the Love, and everything to do with the community formed. The writer says, “we have had this commandment from the beginning.” In other words, “we gon be alright. You are not alone. We will win. Stay up. Remember who we are.”
My dad always said that my brother and I, who are less than two years apart, had our own secret language. And we did, and still do. Sometimes we communicate without using words. To people on the outside, it looks like we are just blinking and smiling. But for us, we’re plotting on how to get into the kitchen and distract our parents from noticing the mess we’re gonna make to get a snack.
A secret language, a coded communication, is indication that the people involved have a foundation not easily broken.
It’s why we should not decode all our cultural chatter in public for mixed company. I’m beginning to feel ways about my favorite Beyonce but we don’t have time for that today. All i can say is, The next time Beyonce comes out with a project, I just want us to not tell all the secrets in Buzzfeed or Genius. If you know, you know! If you didn’t know, it’s not to know!
Also maybe we need to put an end to the Beyonce Scholarship Industrial Complex, because whenever we center celebrities we are at their mercy.
But finally the author says this.
“Although I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink; instead I hope to come to you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.”
Have you ever felt this way?
The whole point of The Faith is this-- We are supposed to create relationships that are so life-changing and beautiful that they propel us into new worlds. We live in a world where we are separated by borders, we are distanced from each other because we have cousins locked up, we are separated because gentrification prices us out of the neighborhoods we grew up in. We are over and over, pulled apart from one another. Quartered. Siloed. Isolated. Detached. Cut off. Shut away. Quarantined. Because when we get together, we are powerful.
It’s why this world invests so much in such systems. Because keeping us separated is profitable. It keeps us frantic. It keeps us focused on anything other than getting free. Because it’s so hard to get free when you’re just trying to survive. Coming together, then, becomes an afterthought. Think about how many times (in the before time) you’ve turned down dinner or fun with friends because you had work to do. That is the evil of this world. We are so busy working on building a new world, that we forget that it takes LOVE and PARTNERSHIPS to make that new world come.
So many people have written about the ways radical organizing gets squashed because people gotta work. I’ll include some links in the transcript so you can get caught up.
We cannot confront injustice without loving relationships. But of course, there are powers and principalities meant to disrupt God’s work. Mass incarceration and Deportation and Gentrification and unlivable wages are not godly. Student loans so high that you can’t afford to work anything less than 40 hours in a week are ungodly. Undercover cops waiting to catch young poor Black and Brown folk hopping the turnstile for an arrest are ungodly.
Human beings do not belong in cages. We need a world where harm is not only rehabilitated, but a world where harm doesn’t happen in the first place.
You may be thinking, “well, prison abolition isn’t exactly my call.” And you know what? I’m glad you have discerned what your lane is. But what you CAN do is create conditions of wellness and love. We need a stronger community if we’re going to resist the prison industrial complex. We’re going to need trust, integrity, clarity of purpose, honesty, accountability, compassion, joy, reflection. To be honest, we need those things ANYWAY.
I hope you ask yourself this one question. What kind of world is necessary for building revolution? To me, and to so many others, it’s the kind of world where we care about each others’ kids and parents. It’s the world where we share our excess. Where we can feel free enough to say, “I’m sad” and know that someone can hear that without judgement. It’s the world where the writer of 2 John can write coded speech to a community and still long to be present face to face. This writer could not manage only listening to the sermon podcast, though that was probably useful. This writer needed that face to face love. I’m sure you know that feeling. Sometimes Facetime(TM) doesn’t compare to real face time.
The world is falling apart, yall. It’s been falling apart. I wish I could tell you the easy way to put it together again. But What I do know is that we come from a people who spent their time on this Earth among other people. And the only way we’re going to get out of it is relationships.
If we do not have love, all we have is a hollow skeleton of what ought be.
1st Corinthians puts it this way.
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
If we’re going to turn this world right-side up, we need loving relationships. We cannot afford to not know our neighbors. Not in these times. We cannot afford to bury ourselves in a hole of I, My, Mine, when the world so desperately needs us to find our We, Us, Our.
Otherwise, all we’ll have is missed communication and even more missed opportunities to create the worlds we so desperately need.
Speak your code. Find your people. And when you get face to face, I pray your joy is made complete.
To-Go Bag
So today you have homework. It is your job to research who George Jackson was. August 21 is the anniversary of his assassination at San Quentin Prison during a prison rebellion. Jackson wrote these words to the people 40 years ago, and they are still true today.
“Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are dying who could be saved, that generations more will die or live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love of Revolution. Pass on the torch. Join us, give your life for the people.”
Across the country, over 40 years later, people inside and outside of prisons are engaging in a Prison Strike. Among the demands are calls to end prison slavery, voting rights for those incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, and rehabilitation rather than punishment. If you’d like to know more about the strike, you can check out information about the August 21 prison strike online.
header image from nappy.co