Group Courage
Behold the beauty of the book above. I have only just begun reading it but badly want to get it in front of everyone in my path. Resistance, agitation, & love, y’all. What a way of putting it. Read all about it here.
At an event celebrating its release, a panel reminded us that Reverend Lawson was not a fan of the word “protest” as a way of saying what he was up to together with others. He preferred demonstration. In the work of nonviolent direct action, the job is to demonstrate the absolute ridiculousness of the aggressors’ position. Show how silly and unconscionable it is and also show what love and self-respect can do. Love and self-respect are attractive. Group courage is contagious.
Greg Boyle, who knew and worked with Lawson, once told me that the Jesuits he met as a younger person amazed him with how funny and serious and joyful they were. He found them irresistible because they were “hilarious and prophetic.” He wanted in on their act. I feel that. I want to be hilarious and prophetic too.
I didn’t have the words for it at the time, but I found A Wrinkle In Time to be all of that and more as a child. I found that Bad Bunny show hilarious and prophetic. I spy a trajectory. More on that here:
Relatedly: Jared Cheek of Bloomington Community Radio was kind enough to put some questions to me. You can hear that here. We talk about Nashville’s winter storm as an apocalypse. I remind listeners of the Christian Zionist fanfiction called the Left Behind series and the bitter fruit—Think political rollout—its yielded and still yielding in our world today. Empire—Think tech broligarchy fused with white supremacist terror—is discussed alongside art eating it up at every turn. A lot of Brian Eno. A bit of Daniel Berrigan. U2 as a rogue planet. “This Little Light of Mine.” All the stuff.
All the stuff will be on offer this evening at Morgenstern’s in Bloomington. My good friend Stephen Deusner has consented to engage me in conversation. Tell your friends.
Be the group courage you want to see in the world.