Jesus and the jungle

… An expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:35 -40, New International Translation)

The relentless coronavirus pandemic has led to a change in our lifestyles, the adoption of new habits and practices and, in some cases, the intensification of existing habits and practices as we seek to cope with our new normal. In my case, beyond the routine Zoom calls, I have developed a renewed commitment to attending webinars on pursuing a life well lived. So, a few weeks back I attended a webinar titled, “The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias.”

This webinar was part of a series focused on antiracism sponsored by a Yale University and featured Dolly Chugh, an associate professor at the New York University Stern School of Business, interviewed by one of Yale’s professors (Laurie Santos) who teaches the most well attended online course in the world, a course called The Science of Well Being. The webinar highlighted several key concepts, such as whether one is a believer or a builder and the necessity of auditing one’s consumption of information.

My attendance at this webinar led me, on the Friday eve before our recent election, to watch a CNN television program that I never watch. It was, of course, a time when the cries and screams of our nation had reached a concert pitch and everyone (or maybe just me) needed something to break the tension. U.S. Sen. Cory Booker was the program’s guest that night and offered that timeless refrain from Grandmaster Flash.

In hearing those lyrics, I was reminded of a silent retreat I attended as a second-year seminary student. The retreat was deep in the forest and talking was limited to early morning check-in. Beyond my trusted adviser and mentor who was leading the retreat, I was the oldest person on the retreat by two or three decades and I was the only person of color.

The Rev. Hiram L. Brett is the spiritual care coordinator and chaplain at Connecticut Mental Health Center in New Haven and serves as a chaplain in the emergency room of Bridgeport Hospital.

One evening, Grandmaster Flash’s lyrics would not depart from my head. So, the next morning at our group gathering, I shared them.

It’s like a jungle sometimes. It makes me wonder how I keep from going under.

As you might imagine, my colleagues and classmates had no idea what I was talking about. If I had sought to provide a more familiar theological offering for my classmates, perhaps the question that Howard Thurman posed at the beginning of his classic, “Jesus and the Disinherited,” would have worked.

What does Jesus offer to a people who live with their backs against the wall?

In a country where many feel as though they are close to the edge or have their backs against the proverbial wall, how do we find a path forward? In a republic which strains to be a democracy, what is the necessary work that will transform us from merely believers in a representative democracy to builders of such a future?

In the aftermath of our presidential election, we find that 57 percent of white people voted for President Trump with 87 percent of Black people and 67 percent of Latinos voting for former Vice President Biden. Clearly, there is a divergence of information sources being consumed by different groups and a lack of diversity among groups. In answering the question posed at the beginning of “Jesus and the Disinherited,” Thurman provides some guideposts for navigating these metaphorical edges and walls.

Thurman argues that those who live on the edges and walls are pursued by the “three hounds of hell”: fear, deception and hatred. He continues that while each can be heeled and used as a tool for surviving personal and systemic oppression, it comes with a price. According to Thurman, allowing either of these “hounds” to become the ruling ethos of our life takes its toll and robs us of our humanity, compromises our dignity and perverts our ability to reimagine the world and work for genuine transformation. The path offered by Thurman is the path of love. Jesus rejected fear, deception and hatred as a means of survival and began with the simple idea that every man is potentially every other man’s neighbor. In practice, “neighborliness is nonspatial; it is qualitative, and a man must love his neighbor directly, clearly, permitting no barriers between.”

Thurman calls us to fight and struggle against oppressive powers and principalities. He asks that we “gird up our lions” (Proverbs 31:17) in this fight for the soul of our nation because such a weighty battle will require our whole self. Our spiritual reservoir must be filled and sustained through the practice of spiritual disciplines such as silence, meditation, prayer and contemplation. These tools will allow us to be both believers and builders of a new future that represents the best of our collective destiny and shared future.

Namaste.