2021.07.04 My "Racism"—Brief Anecdotal History. Part Nineteen. Formative Influences

It’s called Independence Day, isn’t it? Historically, it meant America’s Declaration of Independence—freedom from British rule.  Well, okay, and we have not lived out our precious independence in equitable ways, now have we? You could call it white independence, or wealthy white independence. I have discovered that one’s personal independence is something that comes with courage and creativity and grit and education and experimentation—plus sweet accidentally perceived divine grace. It comes with the help of many others, faith in God, and Love, and it can take years. It’s worth some strife to get it spread out right. 

Scene LVI. Reading Rita

I had read the autobiographical novel by Rita Mae Brown Rubyfruit Jungle published in 1973.  Brown, born in 1944 to an unwed teenage mother who left her at an orphanage from which a cousin of her mother rescued Rita and raised her in Pennsylvania and Florida. 

She hitchhiked to New York City in the 1960s and got advanced degrees in Classics and English at NYU. Brown was also a writer who used her gift, not as a political act, but rather to eschew the label of “lesbian”. Labeling confines and defines and separates—a very common but ungodly practice.   

When I read Rubyfruit Jungle I was initially amazed at such transparent candor, then wowed by the sex a woman could experience—all by herself if she so desired or even with another woman.  I tried it all, and WOW. Masturbation and a sexual experience with a lesbian seminarian friend awakened me to my own sexual power—not simply to “fight” for feminist causes or to procreate, but to relish and cherish my own body—to its fullest., for its own sake. It also taught me never to condemn the sexual preferences of others—sexism. 

Scene LVII. Toni

Getting to know Toni Morrison, nee Chloe Ardelia Wofford in 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, happened to me through reading her novel Beloved published in 1988, the year I was ordained priest, although I didn’t read it until the early 1990s. Morrison converted to Roman Catholicism at age 12, the very year my parents moved me out of my city into a suburb. I too would dabble in Roman Catholicism, seeing the liturgy as embodied, mystical, and inclusive. Morrison added Anthony, hence Toni, to her name, choosing St. Anthony of Padua as her baptismal name.  

“Toni” of Padua (1195-1231) was a Portuguese Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, noted for his knowledge of scripture, powerful preaching, and devotion to the poor and the sick. He is the patron saint of lost things, including causes and respect. 

This saint was a nerd—studied and read and wrote a lot.  So did Toni Morrison. So did I. Words fueled my life engine—soul motors.  

When Morrison was young she had an argument with a little black girl about whether there was a real God or not. “I said there was, and she said there wasn’t and she had proof: she had prayed for, and not been given, blue eyes. I just remember listening to her and imagining her with blue eyes, and it was a grotesque thing. She had these high cheek bones and these great big slanted dark eyes, and all I remember thinking was that if she had blue eyes she would be horrible.” (Anecdote taken from Hilton Als July 27, 2020, New Yorker profile of Morrison, “Ghosts In the House.”)  

In and through Morrison’s writing I felt liberated—also frightened. The energy that surged through her words and characters flew into me like a sharp arrow piercing my soul. Morrison’s language itself set me on fire for words. The story of Beloved, about a runaway slave who murders her child rather than allow it to be captured, chilled me to the bone. It stung me with the memory of Carol Lee and my first racist decision as a teen, caused me to wonder if God had murdered Jesus, and jolted me into realizing that my parents’ decision to move to the white suburbs from my beloved city was not, as my adolescent ego had imagined, to ruin my life. It was racist—fleeing the Puerto Rican influx. 

But it was Morrison’s language itself that healed my horror, and taught me to appreciate my own female flesh and fall more deeply in love with the religious idea of Incarnation. Flesh was suddenly a verb.

“In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don't love your eyes; they'd just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face 'cause they don't love that either. You got to love it, you! And no, they ain't in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don't love your mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I'm talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I'm telling you. And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. and all your inside parts that they'd just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver--love it, love it and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.” 

This is what I look like in Black mirrors. Godde, help me to flesh myself in Your mirror.