Writing Isaiah Entry #10

Writing Isaiah

Entry #10

June 13th, 2013

Tom Ryberg   

We inhabit an overpopulated world that, alongside its glad joys and peace-filled moments, is filled with sorrow, rage, greed, violence. To bear a child today means to inevitably expose her or him to suffering - of others, of her or his own self. How do you feel about bringing this child into this world, at a time such as this? What gives you hope? What gives you pause? What gives you courage?

Emily Joye McGaughy-Reynolds

What gives me hope? Men like you, Tom. Humans like you. People who are able to stay present with suffering, build connectivity to/through suffering, and offer love in suffering. Hope also comes to me when I reflect on the role of suffering in carving out empathy. Of course, not all suffering produces empathy or compassion, insight and/or solidarity, but it can. When it does, that's hopeful. I of course want to shield my children from from all unnecessary, cruel and abject suffering, but I know without some suffering, they will not grow into the fullness of humanity. Suffering is an inevitable part of life. How we move with it partially defines the content of our character. 

In some ways I have hope about how I will influence my children as an adult when it comes to suffering. Not to sound like a victim or anything, but I've seen my fair share of suffering in 32 years. Not to sound like a hero or anything, but I find myself in a relatively confident place these days when I contemplate my capacity to endure what life throws at me, simply because none of the stuff its thrown at me so far has ended me. Of course I give G-d's grace entire credit for that. But in the reception of G-d's grace, I've learned that G-d's grace is most accessible in times of suffering. Even that, then, has become a source of confidence. Truth is every time I've been brought to my knees, I have found incredible meaning, resources, mentors and community right on the other side of crisis. "Tears may endure through the night, but joy cometh in the morning." (Psalm 30:5) So, when it comes to parenting, my hope is that I model a certain level of faith in suffering and an openness to what suffering can do/be/give. 

Part of this, is of course, embodying the art of grief with honesty and integrity. I'm not saying that I will face my own suffering or the suffering of my children with a smiling face. I will scream and cry and fight and fuck up. And, I think that's so much healthier than shutting down, pretending everything's fine, trying to buck up and move on as if nothing happened. 

Tom, you and I often talk about the consequences of white supremacy both in our own lives and in our community. I think one thing white supremacy has done to me/us is strip us of the capacity to truly, spiritually, authentically feel. There's a certain insulation from particular suffering that happens when we are privileged. The inverse of that is, of course, that being under-privileged and/or targeted is to experience and  endure particular suffering. I've seen way too many people in the white community think that suffering is something that happens to "other" people, unfortunate people, people who aren't as "blessed" as them. This feels like insulated privilege speaking, not any kind of truth about the distribution of suffering itself. For instance, someone who has lived on the "right" side of town and done all the "right" things all their life, including "go to church every Sunday" comes down with cancer. Inevitably there's this question: "how could this have happened to me?" Inherent in that curiosity is a sense that suffering is distributed intentionally and that if you do all the right stuff, you can avoid it. That's utter horse shit. Only a person who is entirely privileged and insulated from life can have that world-view. And no matter how privileged and insulated you are, that world view will inevitably crumble because the body is inherently vulnerable, relationships are inherently unstable, the Earth is constantly in chaotic flux and death is waiting for us all. There's no "safe" life for anyone. It's only a matter of space/time before that lesson gets learned. Back to white supremacy. To show feeling is to magnify the fact that one is suffering, that one is enduring something hard. When our social virtue, as white people, is built upon notions of being "safe" and "fine," to feel out loud, in public, is to betray the very fabric of white supremacy. Whenever I grieve the "precarity of life" (to use Judith Butler's language) in white spaces, I can just feel people freak out in the face of my tears, outrage, pain. Whenever people let loose in church, either sobbing or setting themselves free with joy, you can feel the people around them grow in discomfort. Like, oh my God, feelings are happening next to me! What should I do? It's like they know that whatever has us feeling just might be contagious and they might have to feel too! Whatever has us suffering might get them too. And you know what, there's cause for that fear. What's ironic is that they fear the feelings and suffering, when they should be afraid of what's been lying to them all their lives about the good life being the 'protected' 'insulated' 'privileged' non-feeling life.  We joked, hard, almost to the point of stomach ache last night about this dynamic among our people. But we laugh so hard to avoid collapsing from the monstrous insanity of it all. Not being able to feel means not being alive. I think in parenting we can model what it means to be alive, to be a feeling being through it all, in suffering, in grief, in celebration and joy. Through it all. Alive. I have hope that if I model this well, my children will be even more alive than I have been. 

What gives me pause? You know: the regulars. Poverty. Global warming. Mass incarceration and police brutality. Escalated "costs" of living that make it impossible to move in the world debt-free. Hyper-masculinity. Perpetual war in the name of national security. I cannot help but think that the seeds of destruction sown in the war/s on terror are going to come back on Aurora and Isaiah's generation. That shit keeps me up at night, as a parent. It's been keeping me up at night to think of other people's children being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003. Sleeplessness is a kind of pause. Now I have it in regards to my own children. Tom, I hate war. I always have. I've never been more sickened by it though as I am now as I look upon the innocence and tenderness of my daughter. We do not come into the world violent. That gets manufactured some how some way. It's got to stop. 

The thing that gives me most pause, right here and now, is the slow and steady erosion of public education. I am incensed by the lack of concern for the tearing away of the most important institution in the life of society. Knowing that I'll have children entering public education only 4-5 years from now terrifies me. Our schools are underfunded, under-resourced, undervalued, and frankly, in my opinion, often misaligned. It's a two fold concern I have: on the one hand I'm worried about the fact that often what happens in school is not learning; it's conceptual banking and memorization, a kind of factory model that Louis Althusser refers to as an Ideological State Apparatus (ISA). I think schools, particularly in light of high state regulations and ridiculous standards of measurement, are conditioning adolescents for the work force instead of teaching them how to think, how to question, how to resource their own quests for understanding. This is alarming to me. Second: any and all kinds of reform that are necessary to make our schools learning communities instead of ISA's are short circuited because we'd rather put our biggest and brightest minds into the military and we'd rather use national dollars for weapon making than compensation for awesome teachers/administrators/visionaries engaged in educational reform. More dollars to kill citizens of other lands than dollars for our children? It's just fucking sick to me.  

What gives me courage? That my children will be great and that their greatness will carve out beauty instead of violence, wisdom instead of ignorance, hope in the face of despair. The potential for their greatness and how that greatness will touch those around them--that gives me courage. Incredible young people in my life like Abbey Labrecque, Rachel Strand, Taylor and Hannah Soares, and others near/far--they give me courage. The adults I know Aurora and Isaiah will have on their team--radical queers, fierce activists, bold lovers, spiritual seekers--they give me courage. And, at the end of the day, G-d gives me courage. When I reflect on the goodness of G-d and the goodness of life, not in spite of hard shit, but in the midst of it all, I am encouraged. In fact, I am enlivened. I am inspired to believe in them without reservation and to love them more fearlessly. 

Thanks for this question my beloved colleague, . Thank you for being an unfailing rock in my life. For your music that saves me. Your ministry that compliments and cares for me. Your humor that loosens the stress. Your tender listening ear that enables truth to appear. Your love that never quits. 

"He who writes the songs of deliverance..." that's still you, all day everyday. I am grateful. Amen.