I have been doing Margaret Feinberg's Awestruck Lenten Bible Challenge, for now, five or six years. She has laid out a reading plan that is intense, challenging in order to read the Bible from cover to cover over the season of Lent. The plan averages about 20-30 chapters a day for six days a week. The point of this plan is to develop deep awe and to see Scripture as deep metanarratives that are intertwined. Every year I have added a different challenge by reading a translation that I do not read regularly (in the past I have used: NLT, ESV, CEB, NASB, MEV). I also have found different concepts to focus on and think about. Last year it was justice...in the past it was worship...this year, the concept is TRAUMA. Why trauma?
I am glad you asked.
The Bible is about trauma and trauma responses. I do justice work and I write about justice and striving against injustice. I spend a lot of time thinking about injustice and historic violence. What I have realized, an old memory, an old lesson: The violence and trauma (both individualized and vicarious) that is a necessary part of justice work can produce a tautological cycle of despair and hopelessness. This is what I am entering this exercise with. I am wrestling with trauma and the work that lies ahead. I am working to ensure life is better, more equitable for everyone especially for Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color.
In order to do this...I must draw from the deep wells of my faith. For, Avadeem hayeenu, "We were once slaves." We are no longer slaves, but we are not yet free. I will close this reflection with words I wrote a year ago on FB:
I believe every generation must answer the question, "What does it mean to be free?" (Borrowing from the great blues prophet, Nina Simone.)
In the past, the answer to that question drove our fight out of the terrible chains of slavery. It allowed us to stand in front of fire hoses. It encouraged our ancestors to thrive in the midst of deep lack and despair. We are the product of those beloved and unknown fighters. In this moment, in 2020 (2021), we are still not free. But, I feel that my expectations of what freedom is have changed, I believe freedom is nothing less than a clear trajectory to thriving. It includes access to [full] rights and privileges, but it is more than that. It is locating what Howard Thurman calls, "the final privacy of an individual" and developing that into an interconnected tapestry. Freedom is the acquisition and development of power for the benefit of dismantling systemically and systematically unjust systems and building up frameworks and systems that are equitable.
"From my childhood, I have been on the scent of the tie that binds life at a level so deep that the final privacy of the individual would be reinforced rather than threatened. I have always wanted to be me without making it difficult to be you."
Howard Thurman
Remember that you are but dust...but you matter...your tears matter...your traumas matter.
