I’ve written elsewhere and a pastor friend has also written elsewhere about my experience. Oh. Since the age of 15 maybe. Something like that. Through periods of atheism and agnosticism and belief. Of God during worship. God wandering the sanctuary, as the congregation sings, growling around, rubbing up against my person, like a great jungle cat. Tall as my sternum. Making me tingly. Making me feel.
How should I say this. Frightened and hopeful and a little bit leaky around the window-shades and excited and loved and loving and naked and. Well. Like I could just as easily be God’s lunch as his pet.
It is literally a hair-raising experience. And when I have this experience, I feel also. Of all things. Reassured.
What? You are thinking. Reassured? By a God that is so fundamentally other. So dangerous. So clearly capable of rending one limb from limb. So ready and willing to rend one limb from limb.
And I know. I’m thinking the same thing. Open-mouthed. Gawking at my own paradoxical reaction. My own odd feelings.
I don’t know. This is what love is, is what I’m feeling. This is what at heart I long for. I ache for this. I look forward to this. To the terrible jungle cat showing up and rubbing up against me.
It happened today during worship. Today, he showed up again during worship. And it’s. Oh. I want to weep with happiness that he has chosen to come back.
Maybe this is what I mean. Maybe this suggests something of what I mean. When I talk about mystic believer priests. About the priesthood of mystic believers.
Maybe what I mean is that for us, being the slaves of Christ is not about us. It is not about us at all. We are just his slaves, after all. Our ontological status is just above the pigs and not far from the dirt clods. And being made of the dirt, this seems fitting.
In other words, our being is not about us. Our being is about him and looking for him and finding him and doing what he asks. It’s about loving him. It’s about trembling with love for him. It is about trembling to do what he asks because he is our beloved.
It’s about wanting to live in his presence always. No matter how frightening. And it is frightening. Don’t let anybody fool you with talk of how God is a lamb. Of how God is a lamb only.
God is a tiger in a lambs’ body. A lamb in a tiger’s body. Both. God will tear your insides out as soon as look at you. And he does. He demands the most difficult things. And when one is shy. When one hesitates. He tears out one’s insides. Strews them all about the place.
God is love. But he is tiger love and lamb love both, at once. He is pussy cat love and jungle cat love at once. With God, anything may happen.
After he eviscerates you, for example, you find yourself whole again. Mended. Healed. That does happen. It happens all the time. The eviscerating and the healing, both. Sometimes both at once.
You find him showing up at worship again, for example. Rubbing up against you. Growling. Purring. Inviting you again into something that you think, maybe, he actually means. Means for you. Something that is certainly improbable but may be. If looked at in the right light. Possible.
But you don’t know. You are a mystic believer priest. And you don’t know. All you do know is who you love. And you do that fiercely. Frighteningly. Out of all proportion. Completely. And with abandon.
You look for him until you find him. Then you stay there and do what he says. Or go, if he says so. Stay or go, as he wishes. Doing whatever asked. No matter what that is.
Why? Why? you ask. For the pleasure of his company. For the infinite delight one finds near him. And nowhere else.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Oppression
Odd how oppression may not feel like oppression to oppressors. I’m thinking of a homily a week ago. The person speaking brought up the AIDs epidemic in Africa and our response to it. The response of the drug companies, the way they price their drugs, and America’s response. Our financial response. Our humanitarian response. Our Christian response.
He wondered if that wouldn’t look like oppression to us if we were poor people in Africa rather than relatively well-off people in the U.S.
That got me thinking about the priestly class in first century Israel. About Jesus getting in the faces of the priests. Getting in the faces of the priestly class of Israel in the first century. Accusing them of oppression. Of oppressing the people. With their many rules, laws really. Their standard of perfection.
I’m wondering about our current priestly class and about whether they are also oppressive. I don’t know. I know some pretty gentle and gracious and smart and kindly pastors and ministers and priests. So it’s hard to think of them as oppressive, really. They don’t exhibit the style of the first century Israel priests.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’ve run across a number who do quite obviously resemble the first century Israel priests, but I don’t associate with that group very much. I hang around people who are more generous, more encouraging, more affirming, and more loving than I perceive their first century counterparts to have been. By about a mile. Maybe a million miles.
But just as oppression may not be obvious for oppressor nations, one over the other, or oppressor continents, one over the other, maybe it makes sense to ask the question as to whether our priestly class today uses their privilege oppressively. I bring up the question. I don’t have the answer.
Well I do have an attempt at an answer, but I don’t feel confident in it. I think there are ideas that get hold of all of us, ideas that have something apparently right in them but that are wrong. Ideas about God and our relation to him.
I have written extensively in this blog about the idea of Christlikeness—the idea that we should all be like Christ. I find this idea and this task oppressive. I don’t know about you, but I don’t measure up very well. I stand Christ up so that I can see him, and then I look in the mirror.
And what I find there is a great disparity. A great contrast. A contrast that is so great that it is depressing. Because it is impossible. There is no way to come out of that experience—for me—without feeling like I should just walk away.
Like I should give up. Go do something else. Because this task is something I cannot do.
He wondered if that wouldn’t look like oppression to us if we were poor people in Africa rather than relatively well-off people in the U.S.
That got me thinking about the priestly class in first century Israel. About Jesus getting in the faces of the priests. Getting in the faces of the priestly class of Israel in the first century. Accusing them of oppression. Of oppressing the people. With their many rules, laws really. Their standard of perfection.
I’m wondering about our current priestly class and about whether they are also oppressive. I don’t know. I know some pretty gentle and gracious and smart and kindly pastors and ministers and priests. So it’s hard to think of them as oppressive, really. They don’t exhibit the style of the first century Israel priests.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’ve run across a number who do quite obviously resemble the first century Israel priests, but I don’t associate with that group very much. I hang around people who are more generous, more encouraging, more affirming, and more loving than I perceive their first century counterparts to have been. By about a mile. Maybe a million miles.
But just as oppression may not be obvious for oppressor nations, one over the other, or oppressor continents, one over the other, maybe it makes sense to ask the question as to whether our priestly class today uses their privilege oppressively. I bring up the question. I don’t have the answer.
Well I do have an attempt at an answer, but I don’t feel confident in it. I think there are ideas that get hold of all of us, ideas that have something apparently right in them but that are wrong. Ideas about God and our relation to him.
I have written extensively in this blog about the idea of Christlikeness—the idea that we should all be like Christ. I find this idea and this task oppressive. I don’t know about you, but I don’t measure up very well. I stand Christ up so that I can see him, and then I look in the mirror.
And what I find there is a great disparity. A great contrast. A contrast that is so great that it is depressing. Because it is impossible. There is no way to come out of that experience—for me—without feeling like I should just walk away.
Like I should give up. Go do something else. Because this task is something I cannot do.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
What Story, Indeed?
But of course, one is blessed and challenged by a particular story. One’s own particular story. As that story intersects and interpenetrates and morphs into and out of all the other stories that are proximate to one’s own. A story that is informed by many distant ones that books and plays and art and movies and videos and lives and conversations and relationships bring home.
A story that at every moment of one’s life, one is writing, revising, rewriting, remembering, interpreting, mulling, considering, reconsidering, piecing together, imagining both retroactively and proactively, sorting out, making sense of, repudiating, embracing, rebelling against, reconciling oneself to, asking forgiveness for, asking guidance concerning, and pretending is something it isn’t. One is the most active participant in the making and remaking and discovering and rediscovering and obfuscating and denying of what one’s story actually is.
I’m reminded of Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner’s terrible wonderful novel of the South. A novel that is about story-making in the context of certain destructive and dominant ideas in the 18th and 19th and 20th century American South. And it is about story-discovering on the part of multiple narrators who are all participants in the larger story of a self-destructive family that does have certain resemblances to King David’s family. Hence, the novel’s title. I’m reminded of this particular novel because it is a favorite of a fellow who I had lunch with today.
It is a commonplace in many churches today to talk about story. About stories in the Bible. About one’s particular story. And it is usual to talk about one’s particular Christian story as one’s “testimony.” I find this way of thinking and talking odd on several counts.
First, I find it odd that one’s story and one’s testimony are conflated. Are made out to be one thing, when in fact they are not. One’s story is an ongoing thing. It is much larger than the several selected and related events that one recounts publicly to connect one to the Christian story of love, forgiveness, and resurrection.
Second, I find that testimony is a story of a particular kind—a story that gathers its meanings around the courtroom metaphor. In other words, the metaphorical context is judgment, not marriage or resurrection or celebrating or the rescuing of the lost. And this is not consistent with the metaphors Jesus likes to use with the sinners and common people to whom he ministers by acting out and telling his stories.
Third, we do know that story-making is complex. Much more complex than the testimonies that we use to entertain ourselves and one another. We live inside many stories, and the authors of these larger stories are multitudes. We are characters in hundreds, thousands, perhaps many billions of stories simultaneously. We are the intersections of history, the eternal now, and the future, each of us. Each of us relates one another to one another through time and timelessness.
Fourth, we are spirit vessels and our lives are the expression of spirit, the out-working of spiritual matters. And our stories, to the extent they represent our spirit-selves truly, employ an infinite palate of metaphor. Of trope and figure. Because everywhere they go they are informed by the Manifold, the Infinite, the Mystery of God.
A story that at every moment of one’s life, one is writing, revising, rewriting, remembering, interpreting, mulling, considering, reconsidering, piecing together, imagining both retroactively and proactively, sorting out, making sense of, repudiating, embracing, rebelling against, reconciling oneself to, asking forgiveness for, asking guidance concerning, and pretending is something it isn’t. One is the most active participant in the making and remaking and discovering and rediscovering and obfuscating and denying of what one’s story actually is.
I’m reminded of Absalom, Absalom! William Faulkner’s terrible wonderful novel of the South. A novel that is about story-making in the context of certain destructive and dominant ideas in the 18th and 19th and 20th century American South. And it is about story-discovering on the part of multiple narrators who are all participants in the larger story of a self-destructive family that does have certain resemblances to King David’s family. Hence, the novel’s title. I’m reminded of this particular novel because it is a favorite of a fellow who I had lunch with today.
It is a commonplace in many churches today to talk about story. About stories in the Bible. About one’s particular story. And it is usual to talk about one’s particular Christian story as one’s “testimony.” I find this way of thinking and talking odd on several counts.
First, I find it odd that one’s story and one’s testimony are conflated. Are made out to be one thing, when in fact they are not. One’s story is an ongoing thing. It is much larger than the several selected and related events that one recounts publicly to connect one to the Christian story of love, forgiveness, and resurrection.
Second, I find that testimony is a story of a particular kind—a story that gathers its meanings around the courtroom metaphor. In other words, the metaphorical context is judgment, not marriage or resurrection or celebrating or the rescuing of the lost. And this is not consistent with the metaphors Jesus likes to use with the sinners and common people to whom he ministers by acting out and telling his stories.
Third, we do know that story-making is complex. Much more complex than the testimonies that we use to entertain ourselves and one another. We live inside many stories, and the authors of these larger stories are multitudes. We are characters in hundreds, thousands, perhaps many billions of stories simultaneously. We are the intersections of history, the eternal now, and the future, each of us. Each of us relates one another to one another through time and timelessness.
Fourth, we are spirit vessels and our lives are the expression of spirit, the out-working of spiritual matters. And our stories, to the extent they represent our spirit-selves truly, employ an infinite palate of metaphor. Of trope and figure. Because everywhere they go they are informed by the Manifold, the Infinite, the Mystery of God.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
What Story, Then?
One wonders what story, then? One wonders that if we shouldn’t live inside the story of judgment, the story of condemnation, the story of punishment, what should we do? What can we do? I mean, isn’t this the story in which the rest of humanity is living? Isn’t this the story that the rest of humanity puts on each morning with their clothes? Is not the jurisprudence system required for orderly living? Isn’t civilization dependent on the judgment paradigm being one of the dominant modes or themes of its citizens’ lives?
If civilization depends on the jurisprudence story—and the institutions and power assertion and social contract that allows these—for the enforcement of its orderliness, its safety, its predictability, its promise of happiness, then what does this imply about civilization’s interest in the Kingdom of God? Aren’t the Kingdom of Judgment and the Kingdom of God at odds with one another? Isn’t the conflict between these in our own minds and in our behavior at the heart of the Christian Drama? At the heart of the choice we are daily asked to make as Christians?
Doesn’t Jesus ask us to choose our story? Do you want to live in the world and affirm the world of worldly ideas, beliefs, expectations, and moral choices? Or do you want to live in the world of heaven and affirm the world of heavenly ideas, beliefs, expectations, and moral choices? Do you want God’s order or the world’s order? Do you want God’s justice or the world’s justice?
Do you want to be the bringer of the good news or the bad news? Do you want to be an agent of change or the status quo? Do you want to reveal heaven or more of the same sorry, sad world? Do you want to look for and save the lost, or do you want to leave the lost to their own devices?
Sin through Jesus’s eyes is what we all do most of the time because of the story we choose to live inside. We choose condemnation and punishment for the transgressions of others, not suspension of consequences and forgiveness.
Oh, we say to ourselves and one another, civilization would break down. We need to protect ourselves from the scoundrels. From the thieves and the rapists and the murderers. From the liars and the cheats. From the charlatans and the confidence men.
And so are we protected? Does our story of jurisprudence protect us? Does it, for example, keep people from doing evil? I don’t know. It seems like there is a lot of evil in the world, even though there is a lot of jurisprudence.
Have you been following the presidential debates? And the ads? The campaign speeches and sound bytes? I have, a little. And what I see and hear are people who believe that lying and fraudulent misrepresentation are okay. These are people who want our confidence. Who want our votes. And this is openly done. It is repeatedly done.
When the fact-checkers come on after one of these speeches or these debates—the next day, usually—we discover that both of them have told dozens of lies. Are fraudulently distorting many, many facts. Their ads do the same.
What should we do? Will jurisprudence help us here? Should we put both candidates and all their handlers in jail for lying to us? Lying to us over and over. And pretending they are telling the truth? Smiling at us like a couple of power-mad idiots through it all?
These people are competing to be the most powerful person on the planet. And here they are. In front of us. The most common dissemblers. The vilest liars and cheats. Trying to picture themselves as devoted family men. As devoted public servants. As patriotic. As honest. As straight-talkers. As men we can depend on to lead us wisely, virtuously. As men we can rely on to do the right thing.
Why are they lying so unashamedly? So transparently? So repeatedly? Is it because they can? Is it because there is no judicial restraint? No legal consequence?
That is of course how the world works. If it isn’t illegal, it’s okay. It’s fair game. By definition, if it isn’t illegal, we may do it. And it must be good enough.
If civilization depends on the jurisprudence story—and the institutions and power assertion and social contract that allows these—for the enforcement of its orderliness, its safety, its predictability, its promise of happiness, then what does this imply about civilization’s interest in the Kingdom of God? Aren’t the Kingdom of Judgment and the Kingdom of God at odds with one another? Isn’t the conflict between these in our own minds and in our behavior at the heart of the Christian Drama? At the heart of the choice we are daily asked to make as Christians?
Doesn’t Jesus ask us to choose our story? Do you want to live in the world and affirm the world of worldly ideas, beliefs, expectations, and moral choices? Or do you want to live in the world of heaven and affirm the world of heavenly ideas, beliefs, expectations, and moral choices? Do you want God’s order or the world’s order? Do you want God’s justice or the world’s justice?
Do you want to be the bringer of the good news or the bad news? Do you want to be an agent of change or the status quo? Do you want to reveal heaven or more of the same sorry, sad world? Do you want to look for and save the lost, or do you want to leave the lost to their own devices?
Sin through Jesus’s eyes is what we all do most of the time because of the story we choose to live inside. We choose condemnation and punishment for the transgressions of others, not suspension of consequences and forgiveness.
Oh, we say to ourselves and one another, civilization would break down. We need to protect ourselves from the scoundrels. From the thieves and the rapists and the murderers. From the liars and the cheats. From the charlatans and the confidence men.
And so are we protected? Does our story of jurisprudence protect us? Does it, for example, keep people from doing evil? I don’t know. It seems like there is a lot of evil in the world, even though there is a lot of jurisprudence.
Have you been following the presidential debates? And the ads? The campaign speeches and sound bytes? I have, a little. And what I see and hear are people who believe that lying and fraudulent misrepresentation are okay. These are people who want our confidence. Who want our votes. And this is openly done. It is repeatedly done.
When the fact-checkers come on after one of these speeches or these debates—the next day, usually—we discover that both of them have told dozens of lies. Are fraudulently distorting many, many facts. Their ads do the same.
What should we do? Will jurisprudence help us here? Should we put both candidates and all their handlers in jail for lying to us? Lying to us over and over. And pretending they are telling the truth? Smiling at us like a couple of power-mad idiots through it all?
These people are competing to be the most powerful person on the planet. And here they are. In front of us. The most common dissemblers. The vilest liars and cheats. Trying to picture themselves as devoted family men. As devoted public servants. As patriotic. As honest. As straight-talkers. As men we can depend on to lead us wisely, virtuously. As men we can rely on to do the right thing.
Why are they lying so unashamedly? So transparently? So repeatedly? Is it because they can? Is it because there is no judicial restraint? No legal consequence?
That is of course how the world works. If it isn’t illegal, it’s okay. It’s fair game. By definition, if it isn’t illegal, we may do it. And it must be good enough.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Trope, Trope, Trope
I can’t keep them straight. Tropes, figures, dreams, metaphors, stories, films, parables, proverbs, morals, aphorisms, similes, visions, simulacrums, analogs, avatars, paradigms, frameworks, plays, playacting, actors, agents, dramas, songs, singing, narratives, narratology, music, opera, musical scores, novels, poems, dance, painting, sculpture, symphonies, and so forth.
We are always making. We are always creating something to stand for the thing. For the idea. For the feeling. For the gesture. For the movement. For the change. For the sensibility. For the experience. For the opening onto understanding.
To stand apart from the living so that we can get some. Oh, I don’t know. Get some hope. Some faith. Some sense. Of what it is. What it may possibly be. Or mean. And how we may fit in. How we may fit it. How we may become someone who has a place in this possibility that is not us. But that is us.
And what I sometimes think is that words were given to us as the separateness. The God-made instrument for our setting up of these structures. These twice-made transformations. That we might get some distance from the rest of what the world is and we are. So that we might possibly know a bit about the original Making. The original Being. The original Knowing. And the consequent Living.
And the eventual Judgment. I’ve been writing about judgment. I’ve been writing about jurisprudence as a metaphor for Judgment. Something that does not belong to us. Something that is not ours to do. Something that is a metaphor or a trope or a figure for what. Well. May happen to us.
But it is not something for Jesus to do either. Even he is not charged with this. Not yet. Someday. But not yet.
God himself has not given himself this gesture. This possibility. This ability. This charge. This right. This responsibility. This authority. Not yet. So why would we? Why would we look for this? Why would we ever accept this? Why would we ever believe this is something we would be permitted? Allowed? Granted? Asked? Commanded? Why would we ever believe we have any business with this? Why would we ever believe we would not be struck down if we were to do this?
I’m thinking of the woman caught in adultery. Who is brought to Jesus. To God. To the son of Man. Who suspends judgment. Who suspends punishment. Who brings grace to the woman and to those who would stone her. Thank God. Who refuses to Judge. Who refuses to allow others to Judge.
No matter Paul. Set Paul aside for the moment. Listen to Jesus. Judgment is not his. It is not now. And it is never ours. Listen. Do not judge, lest you be judged at the appointed time. Do not seek this. Do not ever look for the opportunity. Because this. Of all things. Is certainly perdition. Is certainly torment and destruction. Is certainly hell both here and hereafter. Listen to Jesus. This is not tangential. This is not optional. This is central. He is quite clear on this point. Let us all. Everyone of us. Move on from here.
We are always making. We are always creating something to stand for the thing. For the idea. For the feeling. For the gesture. For the movement. For the change. For the sensibility. For the experience. For the opening onto understanding.
To stand apart from the living so that we can get some. Oh, I don’t know. Get some hope. Some faith. Some sense. Of what it is. What it may possibly be. Or mean. And how we may fit in. How we may fit it. How we may become someone who has a place in this possibility that is not us. But that is us.
And what I sometimes think is that words were given to us as the separateness. The God-made instrument for our setting up of these structures. These twice-made transformations. That we might get some distance from the rest of what the world is and we are. So that we might possibly know a bit about the original Making. The original Being. The original Knowing. And the consequent Living.
And the eventual Judgment. I’ve been writing about judgment. I’ve been writing about jurisprudence as a metaphor for Judgment. Something that does not belong to us. Something that is not ours to do. Something that is a metaphor or a trope or a figure for what. Well. May happen to us.
But it is not something for Jesus to do either. Even he is not charged with this. Not yet. Someday. But not yet.
God himself has not given himself this gesture. This possibility. This ability. This charge. This right. This responsibility. This authority. Not yet. So why would we? Why would we look for this? Why would we ever accept this? Why would we ever believe this is something we would be permitted? Allowed? Granted? Asked? Commanded? Why would we ever believe we have any business with this? Why would we ever believe we would not be struck down if we were to do this?
I’m thinking of the woman caught in adultery. Who is brought to Jesus. To God. To the son of Man. Who suspends judgment. Who suspends punishment. Who brings grace to the woman and to those who would stone her. Thank God. Who refuses to Judge. Who refuses to allow others to Judge.
No matter Paul. Set Paul aside for the moment. Listen to Jesus. Judgment is not his. It is not now. And it is never ours. Listen. Do not judge, lest you be judged at the appointed time. Do not seek this. Do not ever look for the opportunity. Because this. Of all things. Is certainly perdition. Is certainly torment and destruction. Is certainly hell both here and hereafter. Listen to Jesus. This is not tangential. This is not optional. This is central. He is quite clear on this point. Let us all. Everyone of us. Move on from here.
Friday, October 10, 2008
More Jury Duty
And then there’s my hero, Pat. My wife. Who has jury duty on the same day I do. Tells the judge during questioning that. Well. Having no people of color called for jury duty is just plain unfair and wrong. It’s just not right. She tells the judge that the jury duty process should include making sure that there are people of color called when a defendant is a person of color.
“People are going to be biased,” she says. “They may not want to think of themselves that way, but they are.”
The prosecutor wants to know more. He wants to know what she means. So she tells him. She tells him that many white people are biased. They can’t help it. And because of this, she’d be biased in the other direction. She’d be an advocate for the defendant in the jury room. She will stick up for him on principle. Because there is no one of color to stick up for him. To argue for his side in the jury room.
“Do you mean you won’t look at the evidence impartially?” the prosecutor wants to know.
“Of course, not,” she says. “I just told you that because of what you have done here. Because you have an all-white jury. I’ll be forced to look at the evidence differently. I’ll be forced to be his advocate in the jury room.”
And so the prosecutor moves to eliminate her for cause. And so the judge agrees and sends her packing. Sends her into outer darkness for being partial to the defendant.
So I’m left along with the others. The other defectives trying to demonstrate that we can be impartial. That we can detect the truth and nothing but the truth. That we can be fair. That we will weigh all the evidence equally. With equanimity and prudence. With high-mindedness and pristine attitudes that have been unaffected by history or by conviction. So to say.
But I think what has happened is that I’ve become contaminated. Contaminated with my wife. With my wife’s partiality cooties. I think in the mind of the prosecutor I’m already in the defendant’s corner.
But also, come to think of it, I’m contaminated in his mind because I’ve asked him questions about some inane line of questioning he was on. Because I didn’t know what he meant by “hesitancy.” Because I simply didn’t go along with the inanity.
“Hesitancy,” he kept saying, “doesn’t mean that you can’t be persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt.
“Just because the evidence that is presented makes you hesitate, you shouldn’t believe that this should keep you from finding a verdict of guilty.”
And so as I question him about what “hesitancy” means, he seems to become even more inarticulate. A number of people look up, with a look on their faces that seems to say, “I don’t understand that either.” A woman at the break thanks me for speaking up, because she doesn’t understand what his “hesitancy” is all about. And why the others were pretending to understand. Why the others were answering his questions about this as though they understood.
“Do you mean the evidence may not be valid or persuasive?” I asked the prosecutor. “If this is what you mean, this would be normal. This is why they have juries, to weigh and test the evidence. Evidence that may be flawed. This is why the jury process is called the deliberative process.”
Bottom line, I’m not chosen either. I’m not cast into outer darkness, but in the end, the outcome’s just the same. I’m not admitted to the heaven of jurisprudence. To the privilege of judging my fellow man.
“People are going to be biased,” she says. “They may not want to think of themselves that way, but they are.”
The prosecutor wants to know more. He wants to know what she means. So she tells him. She tells him that many white people are biased. They can’t help it. And because of this, she’d be biased in the other direction. She’d be an advocate for the defendant in the jury room. She will stick up for him on principle. Because there is no one of color to stick up for him. To argue for his side in the jury room.
“Do you mean you won’t look at the evidence impartially?” the prosecutor wants to know.
“Of course, not,” she says. “I just told you that because of what you have done here. Because you have an all-white jury. I’ll be forced to look at the evidence differently. I’ll be forced to be his advocate in the jury room.”
And so the prosecutor moves to eliminate her for cause. And so the judge agrees and sends her packing. Sends her into outer darkness for being partial to the defendant.
So I’m left along with the others. The other defectives trying to demonstrate that we can be impartial. That we can detect the truth and nothing but the truth. That we can be fair. That we will weigh all the evidence equally. With equanimity and prudence. With high-mindedness and pristine attitudes that have been unaffected by history or by conviction. So to say.
But I think what has happened is that I’ve become contaminated. Contaminated with my wife. With my wife’s partiality cooties. I think in the mind of the prosecutor I’m already in the defendant’s corner.
But also, come to think of it, I’m contaminated in his mind because I’ve asked him questions about some inane line of questioning he was on. Because I didn’t know what he meant by “hesitancy.” Because I simply didn’t go along with the inanity.
“Hesitancy,” he kept saying, “doesn’t mean that you can’t be persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt.
“Just because the evidence that is presented makes you hesitate, you shouldn’t believe that this should keep you from finding a verdict of guilty.”
And so as I question him about what “hesitancy” means, he seems to become even more inarticulate. A number of people look up, with a look on their faces that seems to say, “I don’t understand that either.” A woman at the break thanks me for speaking up, because she doesn’t understand what his “hesitancy” is all about. And why the others were pretending to understand. Why the others were answering his questions about this as though they understood.
“Do you mean the evidence may not be valid or persuasive?” I asked the prosecutor. “If this is what you mean, this would be normal. This is why they have juries, to weigh and test the evidence. Evidence that may be flawed. This is why the jury process is called the deliberative process.”
Bottom line, I’m not chosen either. I’m not cast into outer darkness, but in the end, the outcome’s just the same. I’m not admitted to the heaven of jurisprudence. To the privilege of judging my fellow man.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Jury Duty
First time here. I’m a jury selection process virgin. So I look around. Open my eyes and ears wider than usual. Some very heavy women, one of whom sits next to me, shoving me to the opposite edge of my chair and breathing like Darth Vader so that the whole room can listen with expectation to the details of each breath. A few heavy men. A kid who works at a fast food joint. An accountant. A truck driver. A couple of teachers. A construction project manager. A buyer. A young man with no teeth in front whose father was convicted of sexually abusing the young man’s sisters. The son of a detective in another county. A former elementary school principal. A woman whose friend was murdered some years ago.
Nine men and one woman own among them about 45 handguns and shotguns and rifles. Useful for recreation. For hunting and target shooting reasons, they say. This is out of a universe of 25 possible jurors. You could outfit a pretty effective terror cell with hardware like that, I’m thinking.
It’s a criminal trial. It isn’t murder, but it’s close. A crime involving a gun. The use of a gun. The defendant—a young black man in white shirt and tie. A man in custody. A man whose shackles around his ankles are not visible beneath the table from where we’re sitting. The only black man in a white room. A room with maybe 45 white people in it, and we’re in the Midwest. So it’s a very white room. All of us present to consider his case. And one another’s qualifications to judge. To sit in judgment of one another first. Then him. Of this young black man. Whether we like it or not.
Judgment is critical here, which the prosecutor makes plain. “Are you comfortable judging?” he wants to know. “That is what you will have to do. If you are selected for the jury.”
“Are you comfortable sitting in judgment of someone else? Of this man over here, for example?”
We all sit here thinking. Eyes open. Wondering if this guy really does understand what he’s asking. Wondering whether this guy reads books at all, has read the Bible at all, thinks about the various meanings of a question like this. Hears the various meanings of a question like this as he utters it. The various contexts of a question like this, beyond the particular context he has in mind.
Context One: This particular trial, which the prosecutor clearly has in mind. Context Two: Any criminal or civil proceeding. Context Three: Our lives outside of the purely judicial context. Context Four: Eternity. For example.
I want to say something like, “You vile creature! Are you comfortable judging someone else? Is your conscience clear and clean as a newborn’s? Are you untroubled by your job? By what happens to the miserable souls of the accused when you succeed? Do you experience an untroubled sleep? What price does justice exact, do you imagine?” But I don’t. I hum quietly to myself, under Darth Vader’s breathing.
The prosecutor talks a lot about the standard of proof in a criminal trial: “Convinced beyond a reasonable doubt” he says. “Not convinced beyond all doubt.
“Do you understand the difference?” he wants to know. “Does anyone have difficulty understanding the difference?”
I want to raise my hand, but I don’t. It isn’t worth it. This is another existential question. Another eternal question. Another question over which one could make a career in philosophy, for example. In linguistics. In poetry. In prose fiction. I want to debate this with him. It deserves a thoroughgoing analysis. A far-ranging discussion. But we are not in a classroom, I’m thinking. We are not in my living-room. This isn’t a discussion group. We are not so much interested in getting at an answer to this question.
No, we are much more interested in finishing up by 4:30 this afternoon. Much more interested in getting our list whittled down to 12 plus an alternate. Much more interested in weeding out the obviously incompetent. The racists. The cop haters. The slavish cop lovers. The people who are too busy to take this seriously. The people who don’t understand that the current theory of criminal jurisprudence in this country is that the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The people who have trouble with arithmetic tests involving single-digit numbers.
First things first. So when he asks the question and makes a gesture that puts “convinced beyond all doubt” physically above “convinced beyond all reasonable doubt” in space—one hand about belly high and the other hand well over head high—none of us raises his or her hand and says, “Yes. I have difficulty. Please explain the difference. Gesturing doesn’t cut it. Stop your inane gesturing. Give us the criteria. Give us the infallible tests.”
None of us says anything like this. No. We look at him like a bunch of idiots. A bunch of parishioners. A bunch of students hoping we don’t flunk. A bunch of dopy pilgrims. Hoping that we are not publicly humiliated by a guy. Well. A guy who…. Oh, I shouldn’t say it. I shouldn’t say anything.
I don’t know. I get the impression that in this particular little world. This little artificial reality we’ve all agreed to buy into here. That if we are ejected from this process, we are defective. Morally or intellectually defective. And I think we’ve agreed that if this were to happen to us, it would be similar to being exiled to outer darkness. Similar to being sentenced to hell. Oh, maybe not by God, but by somebody who is delegated God-like power here. In this simulacrum of the actual world.
So, what are we, I’m wondering. What are we in this pretend little analogical world in which the judge is given God-like power and in which the attorneys for the prosecution and defense sit at the right and left hands of God? A trumped-up little world in which that black man over there waits also to be judged by all this heavenly whiteness?
Maybe we are the candidate humans trying to be Christ-like. Trying to appear fair and even-handed. Peaceful, forgiving people. Trying to rise above the profanity of our larger lives. People working for a seat in heaven by the avoidance of sin. The avoidance of the appearance of fault or imperfection or sin or defect. No, we aren’t racist, we insist. No, we have nothing but unmitigated love and respect for the police and black people and people of color and all people everywhere.
We are always fair and balanced. We have no prejudices or weaknesses of mind or spirit. No, we have no difficulty understanding improbable distinctions. Impossible direction. No, we are tabula rasae. Clean of mind and spirit. No, we haven’t ever dreamt about putting a bullet into the temple of an enemy. A rich man. A person with privilege or power. Someone like you, for example. Or wittingly imagined it, either. Not us. Not me. No. Not anyone here.
Nine men and one woman own among them about 45 handguns and shotguns and rifles. Useful for recreation. For hunting and target shooting reasons, they say. This is out of a universe of 25 possible jurors. You could outfit a pretty effective terror cell with hardware like that, I’m thinking.
It’s a criminal trial. It isn’t murder, but it’s close. A crime involving a gun. The use of a gun. The defendant—a young black man in white shirt and tie. A man in custody. A man whose shackles around his ankles are not visible beneath the table from where we’re sitting. The only black man in a white room. A room with maybe 45 white people in it, and we’re in the Midwest. So it’s a very white room. All of us present to consider his case. And one another’s qualifications to judge. To sit in judgment of one another first. Then him. Of this young black man. Whether we like it or not.
Judgment is critical here, which the prosecutor makes plain. “Are you comfortable judging?” he wants to know. “That is what you will have to do. If you are selected for the jury.”
“Are you comfortable sitting in judgment of someone else? Of this man over here, for example?”
We all sit here thinking. Eyes open. Wondering if this guy really does understand what he’s asking. Wondering whether this guy reads books at all, has read the Bible at all, thinks about the various meanings of a question like this. Hears the various meanings of a question like this as he utters it. The various contexts of a question like this, beyond the particular context he has in mind.
Context One: This particular trial, which the prosecutor clearly has in mind. Context Two: Any criminal or civil proceeding. Context Three: Our lives outside of the purely judicial context. Context Four: Eternity. For example.
I want to say something like, “You vile creature! Are you comfortable judging someone else? Is your conscience clear and clean as a newborn’s? Are you untroubled by your job? By what happens to the miserable souls of the accused when you succeed? Do you experience an untroubled sleep? What price does justice exact, do you imagine?” But I don’t. I hum quietly to myself, under Darth Vader’s breathing.
The prosecutor talks a lot about the standard of proof in a criminal trial: “Convinced beyond a reasonable doubt” he says. “Not convinced beyond all doubt.
“Do you understand the difference?” he wants to know. “Does anyone have difficulty understanding the difference?”
I want to raise my hand, but I don’t. It isn’t worth it. This is another existential question. Another eternal question. Another question over which one could make a career in philosophy, for example. In linguistics. In poetry. In prose fiction. I want to debate this with him. It deserves a thoroughgoing analysis. A far-ranging discussion. But we are not in a classroom, I’m thinking. We are not in my living-room. This isn’t a discussion group. We are not so much interested in getting at an answer to this question.
No, we are much more interested in finishing up by 4:30 this afternoon. Much more interested in getting our list whittled down to 12 plus an alternate. Much more interested in weeding out the obviously incompetent. The racists. The cop haters. The slavish cop lovers. The people who are too busy to take this seriously. The people who don’t understand that the current theory of criminal jurisprudence in this country is that the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The people who have trouble with arithmetic tests involving single-digit numbers.
First things first. So when he asks the question and makes a gesture that puts “convinced beyond all doubt” physically above “convinced beyond all reasonable doubt” in space—one hand about belly high and the other hand well over head high—none of us raises his or her hand and says, “Yes. I have difficulty. Please explain the difference. Gesturing doesn’t cut it. Stop your inane gesturing. Give us the criteria. Give us the infallible tests.”
None of us says anything like this. No. We look at him like a bunch of idiots. A bunch of parishioners. A bunch of students hoping we don’t flunk. A bunch of dopy pilgrims. Hoping that we are not publicly humiliated by a guy. Well. A guy who…. Oh, I shouldn’t say it. I shouldn’t say anything.
I don’t know. I get the impression that in this particular little world. This little artificial reality we’ve all agreed to buy into here. That if we are ejected from this process, we are defective. Morally or intellectually defective. And I think we’ve agreed that if this were to happen to us, it would be similar to being exiled to outer darkness. Similar to being sentenced to hell. Oh, maybe not by God, but by somebody who is delegated God-like power here. In this simulacrum of the actual world.
So, what are we, I’m wondering. What are we in this pretend little analogical world in which the judge is given God-like power and in which the attorneys for the prosecution and defense sit at the right and left hands of God? A trumped-up little world in which that black man over there waits also to be judged by all this heavenly whiteness?
Maybe we are the candidate humans trying to be Christ-like. Trying to appear fair and even-handed. Peaceful, forgiving people. Trying to rise above the profanity of our larger lives. People working for a seat in heaven by the avoidance of sin. The avoidance of the appearance of fault or imperfection or sin or defect. No, we aren’t racist, we insist. No, we have nothing but unmitigated love and respect for the police and black people and people of color and all people everywhere.
We are always fair and balanced. We have no prejudices or weaknesses of mind or spirit. No, we have no difficulty understanding improbable distinctions. Impossible direction. No, we are tabula rasae. Clean of mind and spirit. No, we haven’t ever dreamt about putting a bullet into the temple of an enemy. A rich man. A person with privilege or power. Someone like you, for example. Or wittingly imagined it, either. Not us. Not me. No. Not anyone here.
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