Weekly Message from Meg

I got into a fight with Siri yesterday.  I don’t mean our typical exchange, where I ask Siri what seems like a simple question like, how many teaspoons in a cup, and Siri responds with information about weather in Topeka, or the phase of the moon, and then I repeat my request slower and with more precise enunciation and Siri tells me something even more irrelevant, and then I throw some swear words at Siri and call up my search engine and look up what I need myself on the internet.

No, it wasn’t this usual fight.  I mean, I started bickering with Siri like Siri was my sibling and we were playing one of those long summer Monopoly games.  I mean bickering where I was snarling and not letting go and expecting some kind of resolution.

It started the usual way; I wanted to pick up bagels for a meeting and I knew there was a Bruegger’s nearby so I said, “Address of Brueggers on Nicollet Avenue.”  Siri told me to turn off my privacy settings.  And I said, “Look. On.  The.  Internet.  Brueggers Address.  Nicollet Avenue.” And Siri told me, again to turn off my privacy settings.  And  I said (looking back, this is where I began to go off the rails):  Look, I don’t need to turn off my privacy settings.  I don’t need directions.  Just GIVE ME THE ADDRESS OF BRUEGGERS ON NICOLLET AVENUE.  And, I don’t have to tell you what Siri said back.  (Hint: It was about my privacy settings.)

So then I just got furious.  SIRI, I said really loudly into my phone’s mic.  THEY TALK ABOUT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE BUT YOU ARE REALLY STUPID!!!  Siri responded, blandly, “I don’t talk like that.”  And I was chastised.  By Siri.  Because actually, I don’t talk like that either.  I work really really hard not to talk like that.  It’s part of being a minister.  I don’t get to talk like that.  (OK, my nearest and dearest could tell you tales, but everyone loses it from time to time…and I really don’t call people names like stupid, even when I’ve lost touch with myself altogether and am saying other ridiculous things…)  And then, predictably, Siri called up websites about artificial intelligence.

This whole exchange made me realize how very very angry I am.  About this tax bill.  About a trillion dollars being given to billionaires and corporations and then repaid with the lives of vulnerable people.  If I weren’t a minister I would throw in ten F bombs right here.  A %*&((* trillion dollars!  If you stack 100 dollar bills, a million dollars will be about 3 ½ feet high.  A trillion dollars will be #@* 32,000 MILES high.  That is the size of the hole that greedy %**(%$*#s are digging and planning to fill with the bodies of poor and working people, elderly and sick people, disposable people in their eyes and precious in mine.

I’m angry.  And it’s holy anger.  As feminist ethicist Beverly Harrison wrote, “Anger is not the opposite of love.  It is better understood as a feeling-signal that all is not well in our relations to other persons or groups or to the world around us.  Anger is a mode of connectedness to others and it is always a vivid form of caring.”

A fight with Siri let me see that this vivid form of caring needs to be respected enough to pay attention to how and when I express it.  All over social media I am watching other angry people fight with one another about petty things.  I get it, I really do.  I want to jump in with some snark myself.  And some of the things aren’t petty; it’s just that the points of disagreement do not indicate a need to fight but could, in better times, yield helpful and clarifying conversation.

Harrison goes on, “Where anger rises, there the energy to act is present.”  And I see that this is why my anger is spewing out at Siri.   I feel powerless to stop the &$##(* Congress and Administration from the evil they are concocting day after day.  I have gone to a neighboring Republican’s district (all of my elected folks are good) and told the smarmy aide about how this tax bill will hurt real people.  This young white man smiled at me and said smugly, “I sleep like a baby!”  I’m watching  videos of people having die-ins at the US Capitol and I am proud and happy to see them, but I’m not there.  I have this energy but I’m not acting with it in enough ways to keep me steady.

I say this as a cautionary tale, in case you are angry too.  Siri can handle it; I’m not worried about Siri.  But other relationships, with people with flesh and bones, are much more fragile.  I need to use the energy of my anger to act, and not to stay in the same conversations with the same people, picking on each other about tiny differences. I need to share this vivid form of caring with the people who are actually hurting me and attacking the people I love.  I need to stay connected to as many people as possible so that our power is greatest when we use our anger to act.

Public Testimony, Van Wickle Slave Ring, September 25, 2017

To the East Brunswick Township Council, New Jersey It is my honor to serve as the settled minister of the Unitarian Society, located at 176 Tices Lane, which has made East Brunswick our home since 1964. Let me express my gratitude for your attention this evening and the service you offer our civic society. In speaking before you today, I want to be clear that I speak on my own behalf. Over the summer, as I familiarized myself with local and state history, I learned of the Van Wickle Slave Ring. I believe the Council is familiar with this part of East Brunswick’s history wherein Jacob Van Wickle, a Middlesex County judge, and resident here, used his court in 1818 to send nearly one hundred African Americans into permanent slavery. At the time, once these activities were uncovered, there was public outrage and this incident of human trafficking was brought to an end. Though others were indicted, Van Wickle was not; yet the historical record makes it clear that he was at the center of this abuse of power. Not all the names of those nearly one hundred people have been saved for posterity, but some were. The names I speak aloud now are some of those people who lost their freedom: Harriet Susan Mary Augustus Rosinah, just 6 weeks old Hercules Dianah Dorcas Not fictional characters, but people with real lives: misled, stolen, sold back into slavery. Next year marks 200 years since this travesty took place. It seems a necessary and fitting time to tend to this aspect of the town’s history. The town has a street named after this infamous person. It is my understanding that at the time of the naming of that street, Van Wickle’s part in the Slave Ring had been erased — whitewashed. Those who chose his name for the street could not have known of his evil deeds.

They did not know, but we know now. And we cannot unknow.

I thank the Council for their recent directive of the Township Administrator to explore changing the name of Van Wickle Road, so that it is no longer the inadvertent glorification of a profiteering slave trader that it has become. I offer my support in whatever ways might be of use to help make this a reality in the near future. I know that there are others in my congregation who would do the same. This past August the nation saw Charlottesville erupt with white supremacists bearing torches and hatred. Those events moved the country to revisit the longstanding national dialogue about Confederate monuments and the ways they glorify those who fought to maintain slavery. It is too easy to think of this as a Southern issue, or an issue of some other locale. But that is not true. East Brunswick has its own commemoration of a notorious act of white supremacy. It is time we change this. Thank you for your time. Reverend Karen G. Johnston

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Confronting the Legacy of Slavery in the North was originally published in Quest For Meaning on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dear Closeted Gay Men,

You think that, by lobbing the grenades of judgment and hate at other people, at vulnerable people daring to own the truth of our bodies, you protect your own vulnerable selves. In truth, you are terrified. I don’t know you, but I know your name. Your name is Shame. Your name is Self-Hatred. You think that your homophobia protects you. But we know. We can see right through you. The bigger the front, the bigger the back!

How do I know that at least one closeted gay man helped to draft this new statement? Honey, I’ve been around the block. I’ve seen homophobic preacher after homophobic politician busted by a prostitute or male escort, or by someone who recognized them at a sleazy dark gay bar. I’ve seen luggage lifters and men with a ‘wide stance’ in the mens’ room bleating out lies which no longer cover their duplicity, which no longer bury the lie that is the epicenter of all they say and do. You’ve cried to me on occasion, too, wearied by the energy of fighting off who you are but too scared to stop the fight. You are not invisible. And the misery that you foist onto the lives of others is very very real.

I don’t care if you like to lie about your sexuality. To each their own. But when you project your shame and self-hatred on the children who are trying to live into their authentic selves, when you spew out your terror and shame and judgment and try to pin it on God, when you throw it all over people who already have enough hate to deal with in the world, I call you on it.

You Shall Not Bear False Witness Against Your Neighbor.
That’s in the Top Ten from God, unlike the obscure passages you love to cite. And it is precisely this which you are doing.

Love your neighbor as yourself.
That’s the one big one from the man you claim as your Lord. You are violating both parts of this injunction, loving neither your neighbor nor yourself.

And I want you to know you’re not fooling anyone. We know that your homophobia is rooted in your own desires for men, which you hate. Science backs me up. When electrodes are wired to men’s genitals and they watch male-centered erotic materials, the virulently homophobic men have strong arousal. The gay and bisexual men are also aroused. The non-homophobic heterosexual men, not so much. This physical truth must terrify you. Perhaps you have spent a life distancing yourself from your body, sternly telling yourself that if you don’t act on your innate desires, you will stay in God’s favor.

What a waste of time, honey. What a waste of your life. Why don’t you stop hating yourself and see how much less hate you have to spew on other people? Why don’t you enjoy the gift of sexuality that God gave you and celebrate the diversity of genders and sexualities God put into the world?

I am one of the hundreds of thousands of people of all faiths who welcome and celebrate diversity of sexuality and gender, as well as every other kind of diversity given as a gift to us on this earth. I wish you could climb out of your prison of hate and join us.

In the meantime, I’ll keep reminding you that I see you. You will be judged by the actions you take, and the effects that they have on the lives of others. You’re not fooling me. And you’re certainly not fooling God.