Oh Wherefore Art Thou, Romeo!

 

Finally a date with my wife! But just to make it happen, both she and I wrestled with our demons and angels. In my case, Yesterday Thursday 7pm, mourning Somervillians for Palestine (S4P) were in my heart. Mourning--The immolation of Matt Nelson at the Israeli consulate in Boston. Mourning-- The shooting of Caleb Gannon, a pro-Palestinian Jewish lifelong Newton resident--allegedly by a man who had repeatedly harrassed S4P--including the daughter of a colleague of the Human Rights Commission on her way into Somerville High School. Mourning the failure of our Mayor to address the need of a plan for protest protection. All this heaviness as we proceeded to our date. We read James this coming Sunday at Mass--easily distorted into an abstraction on wisdom that begins and ends with purity. But today, our spaces map across and through global mess, and we are called into conversions of hope, daily persistant practices of love, solidarity, shouldering the reality of the oppressed. In her 1982 study of James 3:16-4:3-- which we pray with on this Sunday of Ordinary Time--the Boston College based theologian Pheme Perkins wrote that we read James correctly whenever we think of the needs of the community. Community order and disorder are concerns of James, and his council for the "wisdom from above" (v.17) has patterned our thinking for millenia. In contrast, the wisdom from below is a paradigm shift to the needs assessments of marginal peoples. "Governance from demonic grounds rethinks human relations," writes Rufus Burnett, Jr., Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Fordham University, author of Decolonizing Revelation: A Spatial Reading of the Blues. In Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," which we enjoyed at the A.R.T. in Cambridge, Romeo is shown as a pure romantic, and we find him transformed from a peaceful, doting youth, driven into an unholy rage at Tybault, who had murdered his friend Mercutio. If we don't all have a Mercutio in our lives, someone ribald, bold, crude, a piss and vinegar type, driven by passion, perhaps we've become the offended party, the High Priest of the temple purity cult. Romeo is banished--a rebel outcast--perhaps to recover his purity. What about us? If we don't have that person, we have that wild space about us. For example, during the October Trull block party last year, a permitted affair, this entirely white gathering of families around tables of food, a band, and a bouncy house full of unruly kids, two Trull residents, a graduate from Harvard who works in finance and his girlfriend an MBA student, both originally from Kenya, were approaching with their dog, when an over-anxious parent in vexation unfortunately met a pattern of what Job experienced as racism. He had been called the N-word walking to his home and refused service by a nearby Magoun Square restaurant. Wild space is the revelatory power of relationship, the healing power of conversation that leaves Job, originally from a pastoralist family who as a boy shephered goats, renewing his apartment's lease and charting a path to launching his own consulting company. But wilding is not to be confused with the inescapable harshenss of reality, or Job's willingness to leave his dog behind next time, saying "Now that I know the rules." That's assimilating to the Temple cult, refusing to heal on Sunday talk, not God-talk. "Wilderness signals spatial proximity to God rather than an exclusive predetermined experience of that proximity"--Rufus Burnett. Wilding Governance is the whole itinerary of the Incarnate God on his procession from Nazareth. A year before Kamela Harris' s candidacy has risen prospects suiting a doctrine of progress, Burnett critiques Lance Bottom's mayoral address...As a Black woman, mother, and mayor, declaring that her remarks appealing to nonviolence of Atlanta's Civil Rights history ring hollow with many. It sounds like cloying promises of hope renewed, rather than a call to faithful witness. Burnett is ultimately discussing how we receive revelation--whether we find in the experience of Black resistance, in the relationships of black men and women. Burnett, acknowledges the radical foundation of wisdom, rooting the sower's of a good trouble in God's coming, or what I would call a wilding: "an invitation to see God's revelation within cartographies of struggle. In the same way that Nazareth was remapped as the birthplace of one who came into conflict with Empire." This is the enactment of Jesus' mission to announce the Kin-dom of God, the wild seed of all flourishing creation. Can we conceive of the wilding? Our sewer on Trull Street--the Somerville street where I live--was installed in 1887 and received cleaning and inspection last summer by CCTV camera. Running downhill, this fetid common space--originally designed for 70 inlets--eventually will reach a bacterial conversion area and, if you will, be re-wilded. It says something about the way in which we maintain the infrastructure for peacebuilding--servicing micro-community in this macro-system of struggle--so too, me and my wife, with and through our common vocation intending beauty for social justice. The beloved community reveals the struggle of God in the wastelands. And yet, just as we carry with us our needs to God, so much more often we merely let pass, go to waste--we are earthen vessels, and vitrified clay has been used for 5000 years for sewage. Might the very needs of the purity cult, the Purity tradition, be seen as stemming that which coming from below, the sewers underground, the effluent even demonic desires–which need be eliminated? Perhaps, glimpsing his emphemerality, like Matt Nelson who self-immolated at the Israeli consulate, Romeo's actions of devotion challenge all of us in the midst of our daily-do of love--and it's humbling, as a failed lover, a failed activist, encumbered by our ill-received seed of the wild heart of God, rather than being nourished, we let it pass. "You ask, but you do not receive,"writes James, playing with the words receive, obtain, possess--ultimately suggesting that when we are in community, the promise of our hope is renewed. Possessed by the beloved community, our labor is a conception of God's beautiful plan. The performance ends with a gorgeous depiction of an unfurling wild garden, a sod like assembly while two actors heave poles that transform into hoes while from the darkness the cast of characters unites in a silent, gorgeous pastoral of them in common cultivation, achieving the peace, these souls, the living and the dead, all those whose embittered relations, now imagined as reconciled, in the great act of creation. "the wisdom from above is first of all pure..." (Jas. 3:17) A nugget  in the middle of the Sunday Mass readings for Sept. 22--specifically as a foundation for peacemaking in the nuclear age.  In the wisdom tradition of meditation-- St. Ignatius of Loyola spoke of preparatory work--advising to sit with a phrase of a prayer, a word even, taking nourishment and consolation. Hence, Cain Felder, addressing the United Methodist Council of Bishops, draws on the "Our Father" prayer in speaking at the Hearings on "The Nuclear Crisis and the Pursuit of Peace," Washington, D.C., July 15, 1985:  "Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" reads one of the petitions of the Lord's prayer, memorized by many—studied by but few. Despite this, it seems that central to any correct understanding of New Testament foundations is the hope that coheres in New Testament apocalypticism—a hope that is both promise renewed and a call to faithful witness. In this light, the single most important challenge of New Testament sentences on peacemaking is assisting people to rediscover the New Testament apocalyptic, thereby symbolizing the imminence of God as they engage in "active peacemaking" in our nuclear age.   Felder continues: "By New Testament apocalyptic, we mean an ethical eschatology in which God's power to sustain and transform becomes part of the praxis of the Christian believer. This apocalyptic presupposes a radical disjuncture between the evils of conventional wisdom and the wisdom of God. The author of the Epistle of James, that "secret little apocalypse," elaborates on "the wisdom from above," providing in James 3:17-18 a sortie of sorts by there mentioning wisdom from above in relation to the peaceable good fruits, a harvest of righteousness (justice) and "peacemaking." "Righteousness is sown in peace for those who cultivate peace" (v. 18) Indeed, behold a hope that is both promise renewed and a call to faithful witness: MIT Divests from Lockheed Martin This seems like a big deal," writes Kevin Martin in an email to Peace Action activists, "see the post from National Lawyers Guild MA chapter: https://nlgmass.org/mit-coalition-for-palestine-announces-major-divestment-win/ In reply to the thread, Jonathan King, MIT Prof. of Molecular Biology Emeritus writes, "This is testimony to the persistence, engagement and courage of MIT student, staff and faculty Palestinian supporters.  Ending such a direct academic program collaboration is a small victory and concrete step forward.  "However, it should not be confused with the more common campaigns pressing for divestment of university endowments from companies  providing weapons or support to the Israelis (implied in the Subject). The MIT Corporation has not taken that step." "A number of good things happening in Cambridge," writes Brian Garvey, Exec. Dir. Mass. Peace Action. "BDS Boston also chased Elbit systems out of town: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/08/30/business/elbit-israel-palestinian-protests/ To quote from the Somerville for Palestine call to action: Matt Nelson self-immolated in front of the Israeli Consulate in Boston. In his words, "The protest I'm about to engage in is to call on our government to stop supplying Israel with the money and weapons it uses to imprison and murder innocent Palestinians, to pressure Israel to end the genocide in Gaza, and to support the ICC indictment of Benjamin Netanyahu and other members of the Israeli government". Matt is the third person to self-immolate in front of an Israeli consulate or embassy in the US, and the fifth around the world since October 7th. Watch Matt Nelson's video here.  Also, last week in Newton, Scott Hayes, a leader of the pro-war agitators who has harassed our group here in Somerville, allegedly shot Caleb Gannon, a pro-Palestine Jewish lifelong newton resident after an altercation at a standout. Our prayers are with Caleb, who is expected to live. You may know that Scott Hayes has had a well-documented history of harassing pro-Palestine folks and disrupting events across the greater Boston area. We've sent a letter to Mayor Ballantyne and other elected officials asking to meet with us to ensure there is a plan to keep our community safe while we protest this Genocide. Read the letter to the Mayor here.   *_*_*_*_* Burnett, Jr., Rufus. 2023. “Cartographies in the Wilderness: A Decolonial Theological Reflection on Intersectionality.” Journal of Moral Theology 12 (SI 1): 19-41. https://doi.org/10.55476/001c.75191