An American Pentecost

I am not a great Catholic nor am I great citizen or ally. I often skip Mass or disagree with things. I don’t like evangelizing or bothering people with faith talk. I often stay home while others engage direct with injustice. I’m afraid of conflict and hard conversations.

But as these protests unfold into Pentecost Sunday  I can’t help but wonder if we are witnessing something very different and much larger than we have in our lifetime. We are all “together in one place”, in  tight communities as the apostles were—through quarantine or in solidarity in protest. We are all trapped in the horrors and pain unfolding in our nation, not just the pandemic but the defiant and seemingly indomitable specter of racism and authoritarian violence.

I am moved on a deeply, profoundly spiritual level in ways I have not for a several years. I see these videos of police violence and see the young people I’ve worked directly with in their place. Good kids whose lives are undervalued by the government and systems of society, who have been written off as thugs because of the color of their skin or the city they are from.

I don’t know what comes out of this movement, if anything at all. We’ve seen it all before. Ferguson wasn’t even ten years ago. I have often had the sense, in the last few years, that this country, this world has been in a state of agitation and pain in moving toward a new becoming. How long have our neighbors spent time fearing persecution in the upper room? I can’t see what comes after, I can only hope as the movement spreads across the country and the injustice is exposed over and over and over, we finally realize that injustice against some is an injustice against all.

On Pentecost, what is celebrated as the birth of the Church, when a cleansing flame of the Holy Spirit  came to the disciples and sent them out in the world speaking in many tongues about the justice, love, and salvation of Jesus Christ, what does the spirit tell us in this time? As flames of protest and police violence rise up in cities around the country, are we listening to the pain of our brothers and sisters being communicated to us?

We watched in horror as George Floyd was murdered in cold blood, restrained, begging for breath.

The Holy Spirit came to the apostles like the sound of a violent wind. God is in us and around us in the air we breathe, the air refused George Floyd by an abuse of power—a profound injustice. God speaks to us in the world, if we look for it.

We see the tongues of fire of the spirit, God’s beloved sons and daughters crying out in pain. They are risking their lives,  expressing their pain, and being persecuted for it.

In the celebration of Pentecost, the Church celebrates the coming together of the world as one community.

On Pentecost, 2,000 years later, we see that the promise continues to go unfulfilled.

There are forces that want this moment to divide us, to use the flames as a tool for destruction.

But as people of good will, what can we do to see the flames as a cleansing spirit? To forge ahead in solidarity and community?

I pray that my Church works toward justice. I hope that my nation works toward justice. And I will do my best to be better as a Catholic and citizen to help make this country a more just place. Because my faith compels it. My neighbors deserve it. There is no peace without justice. There is no peace in our nation without recognition that black lives matter.

May the Spirit enable us.

Bernie Sanders is the Moral Choice

Between having just spent a week with a Crohn’s flare up, following the unbelievable narcissism and egotism that is the Trump Administration’s attempt to cover up the Coronavirus, and with news that the conservative activists on the Supreme Court are poised to strike down the pillars of the Affordable Care Act, the heinous nature of our country’s healthcare has never been clearer to me.  

What kind of nation willfully burdens its people to medical debt and denial of care because they are already sick? What kind of nation makes people pay thousands of dollars for the medicine that keeps them alive, or keeps them in remission? What kind of amoral, exploitative government allows its people to have to pay for the privilege to be tested for a global pandemic?

Having lived with Crohn’s Disease since I was ten years old I have spent my entire life distinctly and involuntarily aware of the fragility of our individual lives and health. If I had turned 18 before Obama’s presidency I could have been removed from my parents’ insurance and denied healthcare simply because I actually needed it. 

Obamacare offered me a reprieve to be able to get on my own two feet and made it illegal to deny my care because I was unlucky enough to have a disease. If Republicans have their way they would let insurance kick me off because I need a colonoscopy every two years and the prescription I am going to be on for the rest of my life costs them $3,000 a year. 

This is a country that says it is too impossible and irrational to fight for the right for all people to have health care. This is a country where some of the leading presidential candidates say we cannot afford to pay for healthcare. This is amoral. 

Every year our congress provides millions more dollars to our military to support the murder of people all over the world in drone strikes and spies on every citizen of its country and allied governments. These things never need a debate over economic feasibility. 

I support Medicare for All not just because I need it—I support Medicare for All for all of my brothers and sisters throughout this nation who are economically crippled by medical bills, or who forego their medicine that could save their life because it is too expensive. 

I support Bernie Sanders because he is the moral choice. Period.