Note: This is a “throw-back” entry, written five years ago. I no longer deliver groceries on the side. At the time I wrote this is wouldn’t have been appropriate to post on my blog. Five years later, with all the names changed, it remains a poignant glimpse into that job and the holy lives I crossed …

An Unexpected Pick-Me-Up
David R. Weiss, January 23, 2016

Well, on Thursday it finally happened. I heard the words that every delivery person dreads: “Um, I don’t have any clothes on, but, yes, come in here—please.”

For over a year I’ve delivered groceries to Rose (not her real name). But I’ve never seen her. She lives with her mother, a delightful 90-year old woman who moves slower than molasses (yes, that is possible), but she also moves with a chipper demeanor and cackling laughter. Mom is the caregiver. Most days I only hear the daughter’s voice hollering out from a back bedroom, asking how much to write the check for. Thursday was different.

In the morning around 9:30, while still at Cub Foods double-checking people’s orders, I got a call from the office. Noah asked me how well I knew Rose. I replied that I’d been delivering to her home off and on for more than a year, but explained that I’d never actually met her because I only ever interacted with the mom. He went on to say that he’d gotten a rather confusing email first thing in the morning, sent by Rose’s volunteer order taker the night before.

It seems the order taker received a cryptic voice mail from Rose’s phone number, but not in Rose’s voice, just saying that Rose had fallen down and might need to be seen by someone. Noah had been trying to reach Rose by phone since 9:00 a.m. without success. He didn’t understand the message and asked if I had any insight. I said the voice on the message was undoubtedly the mom’s voice and that I guessed one of two things was going on. Either Rose had fallen and was going to need to be taken somewhere—in which case the mom was calling to say that they would not be around for delivery on Thursday. Or—and I thought this more likely—the mom had picked the wrong number to dial from a list of “important numbers” by the phone and had intended to leave that message for a home health care person.

In any case, we decided that despite Noah’s inability to get a phone response, I should attempt delivery, but not be surprised if I found no one home. This does present some issues as all the perishable items are simply taken as a loss (they can’t be returned to the shelf), and the whole order needs to be returned to the store and all the non-perishables “un-shopped.” But Rose’s home is in the middle of other stops, so it wasn’t out of my way to take a chance. Good thing I did.

Rose was my fifth stop of the day. I pulled up a little before noon. Since I had two heavy totes to carry up to the house, I decided I’d try calling first to see if there was an answer. No luck. Rang and rang, and eventually went to voice mail, where I was told the mailbox was full. Okay, but rather than just drive off, I figured I should at least ring the doorbell. This is always an exercise in patience, because even when the bell rings (and I can’t hear it clearly from outside the home), Rose’s mom moves so slowly that I’m never sure if she’s actually coming or not. I rang the bell, but couldn’t hear whether it sounded inside. I waited. Nothing.

Ah, but the storm door is unlocked, I might at least rap on the wooden door, in case the doorbell isn’t working. Rap, rap, rap. And then, distinctly, I hear a voice holler. I think it says, “Someone’s at the door!” I wonder if maybe it said, “Open the door!” or “The door is open!” So I try the handle. The door is unlocked.

I call inside, “I’m here with your groceries. I’ll get them out of the van and be right back.” I bring both totes to the doorstep and carry them inside. The entryway has its own little vestibule, maybe 4 feet by 4 feet before you step into the living room. They keep the house dark and there’s always a heavy drape hanging over that doorway. With the totes inside, I pull the drape back and take a look into the living room. I can see in the dim light that at the end of the sofa there’s a slumped body underneath a blanket. No, please, no.

Rose’s voice comes out of the bedroom in back, “Is my mom sleeping out there?” Yes, please, yes. At ninety-plus years and slower than molasses, the line between sleep and death might well hinge on “please.”

“Yes, she’s asleep.” “Well, can you wake her up? I need her in here.” “Okay, I’ll try.”

Then again, we are NOT supposed to touch our clients. (Or their mothers, no doubt.) Our mantra for safe boundaries is “Keep the box between you and the client. At. All. Times.” Time to think outside the box.

I go over to mom, and she is clearly zonked out. Ancient and exhausted. I do not want to startle her. Not sure she is capable of screaming, but if I were her and I was unexpectedly awakened by a long-haired, bearded man looming over me in my own home, I imagine I’d skip the screaming and go right for the nuts. So I cower a bit while I gently touch her shoulder. Geez, even after  a year, I don’t even know her name.

“Is she awake yet?!” Rose has not mastered patience like I have. “Can you please get her to come in here? I’m in pain!” Mom opens her eyes. Sort of. She rises from her slumped position to sit up on the couch. Thankfully she recognizes me, so there is no fear on her face … or any longer between my legs. Praise Jesus for small favors.

But all she’s doing is sitting there. “Rose needs you.” Open, vacant eyes. She starts to get up. “Is she coming?!” “Yes, she’s awake, and she’s getting up.” Meanwhile, ever the one to keep myself busy, I carry the totes from the doorway to the kitchen to start unloading. “Please, I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up! Is my mother coming or not?!” Well, damn. Shit just got real, as they say.

“Yes, she’s coming now.” Meanwhile, in my head, a whole lot more comes out: But, let’s be serious, Rose, this woman, who moves slower than molasses, whose shoulders are permanently stooped such that only once in fifteen months have I ever even made eye contact with her, this woman is NOT going to be able to do a damn thing for you if you’ve fallen. And, as I notice with some alarm, there is no chipper demeanor, no cackling laughter, and today mom is moving slower than cold molasses. She is walking weariness. Time to move to Plan B.

“Your mom is on the way, but she’s moving pretty slowly. Do you want me to come in and help you?” “Um, I don’t have any clothes on, but, yes, come in here—please.” Well, that didn’t go as planned. Ummmmmmmmmm … “Okay, I’ll follow your mother into the room.” Suddenly I find that I have a very active prayer life. And a very vivid one, too. And mom is barely moving. “Please, I need help!” Well, shit, here we go.

I step past mom, who seems barely aware of what’s going on, turn the corner, and prepare to … oh, Praise Jesus, Rose does not have any “clothes” on, but she is very well covered by her nightgown. My day has just gotten infinitely better.

She has fallen and is laying on her side, pressed against the wall midway between a plush easy chair rocker and a walker. Not sure which direction she was going, in or out, from sitting to standing or the reverse, but she didn’t make it, and she went down instead. Her legs are in very bad shape. Advanced diabetes? I don’t know, but it’s clear they cannot support her weight. And when she fell, she collapsed onto to her left side on the floor and she doesn’t have the upper body strength to get herself upright again, let alone off the floor. But, she is alert, and her mind is very clear—and very impatient.

“Please, can you help me sit up?! I’ve been down here for three hours and my mom has been asleep the whole time.” Note to self: so that explains why Noah got no answer three hours ago at 9 a.m. I move around behind Rose so I can crouch down and get my left hand around her left shoulder where the wall and floor meet. I am being very careful about what and where I touch—and, can I just say, I am missing that “boundary-box” desperately? “Just help me sit up, then I can call 911; they’re the only people who can get me off the floor.” Note to self: thank Jesus for 911 responders later today.

With Rose now sitting upright and leaned against her easy chair, life in the bedroom is much better. For both us. “Uh, could you please hand me my purse from the end of the bed there, and I’ll write you out a check. How much is it today?” So apparently life just moves on. Just like that? “And where is your phone, Rose? Can I get that for you, too?” You know, so you can call 911, and we can all say, thank you Jesus, together? “Oh, it’s right here next to my chair, but I couldn’t reach it after I fell.” And, sure enough, there it was. So close, but 90 seconds earlier, so far away.

Life was indeed so much better for both of us. But maybe not so much for mom. I went out into the kitchen to unload groceries. Mom followed like cold molasses. Only slower. In the absence of her chipper demeanor and cackling laughter the smell of urine was overpowering on the carpet outside the bedroom. She came and sat in a chair by the kitchen table while I put groceries here and there, between dirty dishes and other clutter. I called the amount out to Rose. “Thank you,” she said. I went back to the room I had never been to before today, this time like it was all so normal, and got the check from her. “Thank you,” she said again. “For everything.”

Ducking back into the kitchen to retrieve my empty totes, mom was still sitting there. She was the portrait of resignation and despair. Or was it merely weariness from a long night after an already long life? I pointed out where the cold food was and put the vanilla ice cream in the freezer. I wedged it there, diagonally and upside down, into maybe the last bit of free space there was. In front of two other half gallons of vanilla ice cream because I could have triggered an avalanche if I’d rearranged anything. Mom mumbled, barely more than mouthed, the words “Thank you so much.” Even in a broken spirit, gratitude had its way.

I left the home and drove three houses down the street to call the office. I’m a “mandated reporter.” Since I serve a vulnerable population when I see an unsafe situation I don’t get to choose whether to hold my tongue or not. I report it. People at a pay grade higher than mine decide how to respond. Note to self: one more thing to thank Jesus for.

I recounted everything to Cathy, our executive director. I was surprised at how I felt myself trembling as I spoke. While we were on the phone I saw in my side-view mirror the fire truck pull up in front of Rose’s house and watched the four firemen/EMTs go inside. I explained to Cathy my two-fold concern: first, even on her good days, I was not convinced that mom was in a position to care for Rose. Even her chipper, cackling self could never have righted the woman who had fallen in the bedroom. More to the point, the mom I witnessed today was barely capable of human interaction. If that was more than weariness at play, the mom needs help. And even if it was only weariness, a weary 90-something mom caring for a 60-something daughter with significant health challenges is going to be a losing proposition at some point.

Cathy asked me to touch base with the fire crew when they left, to see if they would report this to social services. Otherwise she would. They came out soon after I hung up. I met them, identified myself as the delivery driver who had just been inside the house and asked if they would be making a report. “Well … we really don’t get into that sort of thing,” said the first one. Then the captain (I’m guessing) stepped forward and told me they only report situations that are “medically threatening” or if they see a pattern, but this was the first time his crew had gotten a call to this home. Then he added, “But we work different shifts, so if a call came in on another shift or to different station we might not notice it.” I said we would be reporting it, particularly my concerns about the mom. “Yeah, I saw her sitting in the kitchen,” he acknowledged. Wait, so after I left her daughter was still on the floor in the bedroom, 911 was called—and came, and she’d never roused herself from the kitchen chair? He added, “I’ll put a note in my log, so that if there’s another call we have a record of it.”

Back in my van I had eight more deliveries to make. But I already felt “done” for the day. My hands were still trembling as I drove off, and my soul felt particularly fragile. Many of the elderly folks I deliver groceries to are just that: elderly. But more than a few are elderly-plus. Elderly-plus-poor. Elderly-plus-fragile. Elderly-plus-blind (or deaf). Elderly-plus-lonely. And plenty of them are elderly-plus-plus.

Me? To say that I “just” deliver groceries doesn’t even come close. But sometimes, no matter what, I feel like I don’t deliver nearly enough. And all I can hope is that the ache in my heart, an unspoken prayer, because, truly, there are no words, finds its way home.

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David Weiss is a theologian, writer, poet and hymnist, doing “public theology” around climate crisis, sexuality, justice, diversity, and peace. Reach him at drw59mn@gmail.com. Read more at www.davidrweiss.com where he blogs under the theme, “Full Frontal Faith: Erring on the Edge of Honest.” Support him in writing Community Supported Theology at www.patreon.com/fullfrontalfaith.

It is hard to respond to the announcement out of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (and approved by Pope Francis) that the Catholic Church will remain steadfast in denying the blessing of marriage to Catholics in same-sex unions. The message is an affront to Jesus and to the Gospel. Its impact will be measured in blood, despair, and deaths. Yet also in resistance and fresh declarations of God’s love – as here.

Rather than write an essay, I offer three songs as a balm in this moment. The lyrics are below, along with an audio clip so you can hear each one – with gratis to Sara Kay for these beautiful renditions. All songs from my CD.

Hearts on Fire

This hymn was written for the 2008 Lutherans Concerned/North America Assembly; its chosen theme was “Hearts on Fire.” The hymn sets the journey of LGBTQ Christians within the story of Emmaus and becomes a strident anthem about LGBTQ Pride today, from its secular expression in Stonewall to its ecclesial expression in the struggle for same-sex blessings and ordination.

As if in the upper room, as if in God’s holy womb
As we celebrate this meal, as God’s welcome we reveal,
Hearts on fire, Christ’ desire, that our faith be born anew,
And the kin-dom of our God be ever true, ever true.
Here we gather, glad we say, Christ is with us here today.
In the stories that we tell, hear the Holy Wind now swell.
Hearts on fire, soaring higher, comes the Dove on flaming tongue,
Dreams and visions for our old and for our young, for our young,

Once our people lived in fear, once our hope was hard to hear,
Once our lives were framed by fright, ’til that Pentecostal night.
Hearts on fire, holy choir, of a most surprising tune
In the Stonewall cries of pride that distant June, distant June.
From the alleys running scared, from the brutal hate laid bare,
To a sanctuaried space, to the claiming of our place.
Hearts on fire, we aspire, find our missing Body parts
And re-member – every member – whose we are, whose we are.

From the moment that we dare, ask another’s life to share,
Mid the people gathered round, as our lives in love are bound.
Hearts on fire, steepled spires, tolling loud for life-long love,
Witnessed by the church below and God above, God above.
Now the One who knows all needs, on good soil sows good seed,
From the ground some grain is lured, to the Table and the Word.
Hearts on fire, Christ’ desire that this Body be made whole,
In the calling and the placing of the stole, of the stole.

Text: © 2008 David R. Weiss
Tune: Carl Schalk, b. 1929, Thine (Thine the Amen, Thine the Praise), © 1983 Augsburg Publishing House, admin, Augsburg Fortress.

*        *        *

We are your soil

This hymn text was written for the Goodsoil worship at the 2005 ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Orlando. The theme of the Assembly was “Marked with the Cross of Christ Forever”; hence the use of that image here. Also, I draw on the image of “Goodsoil” (the name taken by the alliance of groups working to promote full participation for GLBT people in the ELCA), specifically naming “gay and straight” and “bi and trans” as the “good soil” in which God sows seeds still today. And I ironically invoke the image of “Solid Rock,” the name taken by those opposing full participation, suggesting that ultimately even this solid rock will sing hosanna at Christ’s coming. This hymn uses a newer fast-paced tune, “Du är Helig” (“You are holy”) by Per Harling that appears in the new Lutheran hymnal.

Who are we?—Lord, we are yours!  We are marked forevermore
By the cross and by the word.  In our hearts we’ve been stirred.
Darkness round us, still we sing; To the promise still we cling.
Waiting for the coming dawn; Solid rock turned to song.
We are good soil; we are your soil.
Sow your justice / In Christ’s body still today!
Let compassion fill our lives, Lord.
Rocks and stones, now, / Sing hosanna to our God!

Who are we?—Lord, we are yours!  We were baptized at the font,
Water splashing on our face, Marked forever by grace.
Gay and straight, we sing your praise.  Bi and trans, our voices raise.
To the feast you bid us dine; Welcome bread, welcome wine.
We are good soil; we are your soil.
Sow your justice / In Christ’s body still today!
Let compassion fill our lives, Lord.
Rocks and stones, now, / Sing hosanna to our God!

Text: © 2008 David R. Weiss
Tune: Per Harling, b. 1945, Du är Helig (You are Holy), © 1990 Ton Vis Produktion AB, admin. Augsburg Fortress.

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O Christ Who Came

This hymn text uses the beautiful haunting tune “Londonderry Air” (most well-known for the Irish Ballad, “Danny Boy,” but also for the hymn, “O Christ the Same”). The imagery is triune, picturing Christ as present through the Hebrew prophets, in Jesus’ ministry, and in the activity of the Holy Spirit … from Pentecost to the present. This is a hymn text, blended with music, that touches heaven.

O Christ who came / through ancient prophet voices
Declaring hope / when hope was all but spent
Who offered life / to those beyond our choices,
Whose words beyond / our foolish wisdom went.
O Burning Bush / aflame for all creation,
Who bids us all / to turn aside and see;
O Christ who came / in hope that we might hasten
Your kin-dom come / and set your people free.

O Christ who came / to fisher-folk confounded
yet left at once / their boats and nets behind
To join your work / of holy hope unbounded
Good news proclaim / and captives to unbind.
O Christ the Text / the Word of God brought to us
Who spread the feast / and beckoned all to dine;
O Christ who came / determined to renew us
Your kin-dom come / in water, bread, and wine.

O Christ who came / in rushing Wind of Spirit
In Pentecost / of welcome flaming bright
Unstop our ears / that we might finally hear it;
Soften our hearts / as well, restore our sight.
O Calling God / whose voice is never ending,
Whose hope is strong / whose Spirit yet does roam;
O Christ who comes / in all we are befriending
Your kin-dom come / your children welcome home.

… O Christ who comes / in welcome wide extending,
Now through our lives / invite your children home.

Text: David R. Weiss, b. 1959 © 2008 David R. Weiss
Tune: Traditional Irish, Londonderry Air (O Christ the Same) – public domain.

*        *        *

David Weiss is a theologian, writer, poet and hymnist, doing “public theology” around climate crisis, sexuality, justice, diversity, and peace. Reach him at drw59mn@gmail.com. Read more at www.davidrweiss.com where he blogs under the theme, “Full Frontal Faith: Erring on the Edge of Honest.” Support him in writing Community Supported Theology atwww.patreon.com/fullfrontalfaith.

Beginnings: On Lamar, Letter-Writing, and the Need to Lie to Speak the Truth
March 12, 2021 – David R. Weiss

I barely know Lamar, but after what had just happened I knew it was time to write him a letter. I just didn’t realize how … weird … it would feel to need to lie in order to get my letter to him.

This is a story that has multiple beginnings. Here’s one.

I “met” Lamar in 2017 through Diane who I’d met five years earlier through Margaret (my wife) after they met as co-workers in the Minneapolis Public Health Department. Margaret and Diane are about the same age and became fast friends while working together. They kept in touch when Diane left the Health Department to do a master’s degree in social work down in New Mexico. (That’s where she met Lamar, who’s actually been in Missouri the whole time, but that’s another beginning.) Margaret and Diane just clicked, as friends sometimes do, so even though she was over a thousand miles away we decided to go visit her. That was in January 2017. We didn’t meet Lamar (I don’t think he was even mentioned) during our visit. She introduced us to him nine months later in an email.

Diane had met Lamar through Wayne, a friend of hers at church in New Mexico. Wayne had known Lamar for twenty years by then. He was definitely NOT trying to “set them up”; at one point he simply shared Lamar’s recent Toastmasters speech, prompting Diane to ask for Lamar’s address so she could let him know directly how much it moved her. She began her first letter, “Dear Mr. Johnson,”—and the rest, as they say, is history. Except in this case, it’s as much future as history.

You see, Lamar remains in prison, still waiting for his freedom.

I never met Wayne, so I don’t know much about how he met Lamar. I understand he started writing to Lamar through a prison ministry pen pal project while he lived in St. Louis. That was back in 1997, just a couple years after Lamar wound up in prison, and they’ve been writing ever since.  

Well, imagine the joy-concern-delight-consternation that Margaret and I felt when Diane wrote us in September 2017 to share, with measured excitement, that she was moving from New Mexico to Missouri because she was about to complete her degree and had just landed a job there … so she could be close to a man she’d been corresponding with … who just happened to be in Missouri … in prison … sentenced to life without parole … for murder. Which, and I’m quoting her email, “he DID NOT commit.” Right. Isn’t that what all prison pen pals say?

(That’s a horrid, but honest first reaction. I include it because otherwise people like to nominate me for sainthood, and sainthood is something I DID NOT commit.)

She included a picture of them, looking like a happy couple at prom in front of a cheesy scenic mountain backdrop, made all the more cheesy because you can see the tile floor at the bottom. And while Diane was dressed all cute (just one notch—barely—below “hot”), Lamar’s smile was doing its best to compensate for his standard prison-issue white t-shirt and gray sweats. Oh, and he’s black. I include that, because no slice of our history as a nation or our lives as individuals is untouched by racial messaging. None.

In 2018, after living and working for a year in Missouri to be closer to Lamar, Diane wound up back in Minnesota. Better wages for her work. Better support for her share of the journey.

Here’s another beginning.

October 30, 1994, Lamar was 20 years old when he ducked out of his girlfriend’s apartment to run to a nearby liquor store. He was gone 5 minutes—10 at the very most—a window of time verified by phoned records. But police claimed he was one of two men who shot and killed a third man over a drug dispute some three miles away and then fled on foot. This despite the fact that it would’ve been at least a 20-minute roundtrip car drive, not counting the time for the shooting itself. Lamar is not the first black man credited with superhuman feats—just long enough to be used to erase his mere humanity. Anyway, it’s a 5-minute window of time that’s now cost him more than 25 years behind bars.

I don’t know the whole saga. I’ve read a lot of it, but it’s a complicated sordid tale of police and prosecutorial misconduct, aided and abetted by faulty defense representation and ample racism, both personal and systemic. I offer this too-brief summary with reservations (which I’ll explain below) simply because it’s true.

Lamar has maintained his innocence all along. He was picked out of a line-up by a witness who failed three times to “correctly” identify him (both assailants were wearing full-head masks with openings only large enough for their eyes). Eventually, after a police officer told the witness which number in the line-up he was “supposed to pick”—and promised to pay him if he’d just pick the right number, he did. And it stuck. Well, it stuck when backed up by falsified police reports and other irregularities.

Over the years Lamar lost six appeals at the state and federal levels. Appeals hampered by agencies that refused to give him access to the very information that could have exonerated him years ago. Then again, at least one of those appeals DID include two sworn affidavits from the actual killers confessing to the crime. You’d almost think that the system is set up to keep a black man behind bars no matter what and no matter how he got there. And you’d be right.

In 2008, in yet another beginning, the Midwest Innocence Project took on Lamar’s case. (Wayne helped make that connection, too.) Even with a trained legal team it’s been a long frustrating battle. “Frustrating” doesn’t even come close. By now, 26 of Lamar’s 46 years have been unjustly—knowingly—stolen from him. I typed those words “frustrating battle,” and the moment my fingers paused, I despised them. We don’t have language adequate to name that mixture of grief-rage in the face of sheer bureaucratic evil. Sure, there are four-letter words to throw out as if by using crude language you can somehow make a stronger point. I think the best description would be to say it’s been a goddamn battle to find justice for Lamar. And while that employs an outright curse, it is at least an honest adjective. Because if there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s that injustice sends God right over the edge.

And in 2018—yet one more beginning—the new Circuit Attorney for St. Louis launched a Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) for the precise purpose of reviewing past cases where a miscarriage of justice had been alleged. Lamar’s case was one of the first to be reviewed. In 2019 the CIU released a 70-page report detailing the extent to which Lamar had been railroaded for a crime he had NOTHING to do with. The Circuit Attorney herself followed the report immediately with a 67-page motion seeking to have Lamar’s verdict vacated and to give him a new trial, confident that he would be exonerated.

Thus far even her efforts have been thwarted. If I posted a picture of her, you’d notice that the St. Louis Circuit Attorney is black. The first black person to hold that position. If you tell me justice is blind, I’ll reply that in this case the judicial system must be peeking through the blindfold, because it’s determined that it’s not going to let a black woman free a black man. Or if it does, it will be only after throwing up as many roadblocks as possible.

The Attorney General opposed the Circuit Attorney’s motion, insisting she didn’t have the authority to go to court to correct a past injustice, even when that injustice was perpetrated by her own office decades ago. Better to “leave well-enough alone”—especially when “well enough” is no more than justice denied to a black man. He’s even—unbelievably—asserted that his role as Attorney General is to always defend the verdicts made based on past prosecutions—that somehow to question whether an injustice was done would contradict his role as the state’s top justice official. (That position even drew a rebuke from the Missouri Supreme Court.)

Over the past 18 months this argument, over whether the CIU or the Circuit Attorney or really anyone at all could actually get justice for Lamar, has stumbled its way to the Missouri Supreme Court. By now it’s not even really an argument over Lamar’s innocence. It’s more the justice system arguing—even while acknowledging his likely innocence—whether it’s appropriate, after a quarter century behind bars, to provide a venue that might set a black man free. And all the while his life is ticking away moment by moment just like yours and mine—except, of course, his is ticking away BEHIND BARS. (What a goddamned attitude. Sorry.)

I’ve lost track of the beginnings by now, but somewhere in here—during that long 18-month stretch—Margaret and I “met” Lamar “for real.” It was pre-pandemic—so, probably late fall/winter 2019. We had Diane over for dinner. After supper she got out her cell phone, excited to have us “really” meet Lamar, and we called him. Sitting at our dining room table, the four of us chatted amiably for about twenty minutes. “Amiably”—if that’s the right word for when three people who are free speak with a man who’s lived for 26 years with the state of Missouri’s knee pressed on on his neck. We were regularly reminded of that knee by a taped voice that came on every 4-5 minutes, “This call to a correctional facility is being monitored.”

I will say this, Lamar has learned to navigate the damning dimensions of his incarceration with good cheer, which is why “amiable” seemed a decent word at first glance. But I don’t want to turn him into a saint either. It’s possible that, after so many years of injustice he’s discovered that rage doesn’t serve him as well as calm. And I do think he was genuinely happy to meet us. AND—I am sure there are days that the circumstances of his life still kick him in the gut so hard that he’s left gasping for air. Which is why, after that phone call, we made a pledge that we’d write to Lamar.

Did I tell you how much I DID NOT commit sainthood? I made that pledge over a year ago. But it wasn’t until last week’s Missouri Supreme Court ruling on the Circuit Attorney’s motion that I finally made good on that pledge. Hell, the ruling came out on March 2, and it still took me a week after that to write the letter. That’s a bit of sorry-ass sainthood if you ask me, so keep your praise to yourself.

As you might’ve guessed by now, the court denied her motion to open a pathway to justice for Lamar. Okay, I do recognize there are genuine intricacies to our legal system. I acknowledge that persons of good will can parse legal codes and legislatives rules differently. But I also need to say that to read a Supreme court ruling that openly comments on Lamar’s likely innocent—after 26 years of being unjustly imprisoned—but still decides the Circuit Attorney just doesn’t have the right standing or the right process to correct that, so, too bad, “motion denied”—well, that just makes me want to swear all over again. And I’m willing to bet God let out a blue streak of holy curse words as well.

Never forget: Black Lives Matter.

So, Lamar and the Midwest Innocence Project, and the Circuit Attorney as well, are making still more beginnings. Because freedom. Because justice. Because life. Because love.

One last beginning (for now).

March 9, late, I crawl in bed and read a bit from my latest issue of The Sun. Inexplicably, providentially, serendipitously, the issue carries three separate pieces dealing with incarcerated persons. A memoir essay by a 67-year-old man recently released into a society hardly ready to welcome him back, least of all during as pandemic. A letter from a woman who met her husband via prison correspondence, each writing over 700 letters to the other during an 8-year stretch. And a letter from a man currently incarcerated in Virginia commenting on the peculiar gift of “words on a page—how you can see someone in their handwriting.” After that trifecta of late-night “nudges,” I tossed the magazine at the foot of my bed so that when I woke the following morning it would be there leering at me until I wrote my letter.

The next evening, I wrote my letter. By hand. I can’t recall the last time I hand wrote a six-page letter. Writing by hand like that shifts your relationship to time and to words. Without a “delete” key, I found myself pausing more often to let my words sort and settle inside myself before putting them on the page. That’s not to overstate my eloquence. This was hardly a soul-searching message or a philosophical treatise. More a “Hi … sorry about what happened in court … here’s a short glimpse into the life of a white man you’ve never met” … more that kind of humble-mundane-awkward-honest letter. Still, I wanted it—this flimsy paper bridge—to carry my best humanity to him, and to affirm his best humanity right there. Across a chasm that neither of us could fully fathom, but which, let’s be honest, has cost him infinitely more than me.

Letter done, Margaret added a quick note promising to write him next month. Then I turn to seal it and address it. That’s when I’m caught off guard by the necessary lie. It hit me HARD. The Jefferson City Correctional Center sits at 8200 No More Victims Road. Think about that. The only way I can send a message of simple hope, simple truth, simple humanity to a man who’s more a VICTIM of injustice than just about anyone I know—the only way I can get that message to him, is to “affirm” this lie—NO MORE VICTIMS ROAD—on the outside of the envelope to ensure it finds its way to him … at the institution that victimizes him with every beat of his heart.

Which brings me finally back to the reservation I alluded to above, when I summarized Lamar’s case. He “happens” to be innocent. But I’d wager for 90% of those incarnated, that’s an irrelevant detail when it comes to this street address. Almost everyone in prison, whether “justly” or “unjustly” there, is a victim. First, of the circumstances that drove them to crime: very few persons actually “delight” in crime. Their first offense might be rooted in a legacy of trauma, a history of desperation, a moment of passion, or peer-fueled foolishness. From there—especially if you’re black—the state steps in and does its bureaucratic best to bury you behind bars, reduced to a number, dehumanized in multiple ways. Second, even the “guilty” are subjected to conditions that do little or nothing to “rehabilitate” them. (This is complex—worth a whole other essay. I just don’t want Lamar’s innocence to become the only reason for outrage.) Prisons don’t make societies safer; they merely make them more punitive, more racist, and more inequitable. They effectively make everyone victims.

And no street address can make it otherwise.

Prison abolition is holy work; not just for Lamar’s sake, but for yours and for mine. Another world is waiting to be born. And few things stir such joy in God’s heart as this work.

In the meantime, I wrote the lie on the outside of the envelope in order to get the truth on the letter inside to Lamar: so that my humanity could touch his humanity. “I can’t likely make much of a difference in gaining you your freedom. But I nevertheless marshal my rage and hope (alongside so many others, including you). Now and then Margaret and I light a candle and say a prayer. Not because we believe in some “magic,” but because we do believe in a moral universe, with an arc that bends—at length and by often unnoticed means—toward justice. Toward freedom. Yours.”

Which is the beginning that I’m really waiting for.

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This essay isn’t a “call to action.” It’s more a simple exercise in truth-telling for myself. But truth, well told, often leaves you wanting to act. If you want to act, here are a couple things you might do.

1. Let yourself feel. Incarceration is geared to dehumanize persons. Simply sitting with the emotions that rise for you in this essay matters. It’s uses your empathy—an emotional muscle that gets stronger when it’s exercised.
2. Join me and Margaret in setting aside regular time to “lean into” this. We plan to do this (at least) the first Tuesday of each month—chosen simply because the latest Supreme Court ruling against Lamar’s freedom came on the first Tuesday of March. It’s a minimal, doable commitment. We plan to light a candle, say a short prayer, and then spend time learning more about Lamar’s case or about other Innocence clients or about prison abolition. Whatever time commitment and approach works for you. Small steps repeated make for movement.
3. Support the Midwest Innocence Project. The first two steps are essential “inner work.” This might the most important “outer work” you can do because it provides material support to the trained legal team that is working on Lamar’s behalf—and for others. You can learn more about their work and support them at www.themip.org. Midwest Innocence Project, 3619 Broadway Blvd., Suite 2, Kansas City, MO 64111.
4. Learn more about Lamar’s story. As I say above, it’s a complicated sordid saga, with many of the recent twists and turns “hidden” behind dense legalese.
   + This Washington Post piece gives a good big picture overview—as of July 2019. It includes links to the 2018 CIU report and the 2018 motion to vacate the sentence and provide a new trial: www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/07/26/st-louis-lamar-johnson-conviction-police-scandal.
   + This St. Louis Post-Dispatch article reports on the Missouri Supreme Courts March 2 decision, and includes a link to the text of the decision itself: www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/missouri-supreme-court-denies-new-trial-in-lamar-johnsons-1994-murder-case/article_4419a6e8-b5e8-502d-99d3-7e8cb2629805.html.
   + And the Midwest Innocence Project website has a page dedicated to Lamar’s case with many other links: www.themip.org/clients/lamarjohnson. (Reading the background on other cases is useful, so you begin to see how hard the “justice” system works to protect and perpetuate injustices once they occur.)
   + Lamar became my “personal” point of entry into this issue. But, of course, it’s MUCH bigger than him. The Innocence Project (www.innocenceproject.org) is a now a global network of sixty-seven organizations working to exonerate persons unjustly incarcerated. The Midwest Innocence Project is one member of this network. Another branch, The Great Northern Innocence Project (www.greatnorthinnocenceproject.org), serves persons in Minnesota and the Dakotas.
5. Finally, perhaps the most challenging avenue of action is to learn about prison abolition itself. Unimaginable to most of us (What would we do with all the prisoners? Perhaps see them as “neighbors”?), there are compelling arguments, unknown history, increasing evidence, and inspiring visions that ALL suggest that prisons are part of a larger problem, not a regrettable but essential dimension of our life together. This is a complex issue, and I am far from an expert on it. But I’ve read enough to believe that there is good news in prison abolition. And, as a Christian, I’m committed to lifting up good news—gospel—wherever I come across it. Here’s one place to begin learning: www.abolitionjournal.org/studyguide. [I am NO expert on abolition, but I have posted a series of theological reflections on it. You can find my first essay, which includes a link to the other five here: Come This Wilderness.]

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David Weiss is a theologian, writer, poet and hymnist, doing “public theology” around climate crisis, sexuality, justice, diversity, and peace. Reach him at drw59mn@gmail.com. Read more at www.davidrweiss.com where he blogs under the theme, “Full Frontal Faith: Erring on the Edge of Honest.” Support him in writing Community Supported Theology at www.patreon.com/fullfrontalfaith.

It seems appropriate to share this playful Seussian-celebration in recognition of his estate’s decision to place their focus on the humanizing substance of his books, while setting aside those titles that serve less noble ends (because of imagery and words we now recognize as fostering a “less than” attitude toward others).

But I have another reason for sharing this today. A certain dear friend finds herself facing a major life challenge these days—a long and uncertain medical recovery—and she asked people to share things that might make her smile. I know her well enough to believe this meets that bill.

In this poem, borrowing the title of a favorite Dr. Seuss book, I playfully recall that Margaret and I reconnected nearly 20 years after dating in college, only to discover, with quite happy abandon, that love was waiting for us all over again …

Green Eggs and Ham

You are like green eggs and ham;
And me?  I am like Sam-I-am.
I did not ever not like you,
But long ago we seemed quite through.
Our lives and loves led different ways
For 18 years and a few days.
But then our paths again criss-crossed,
And we reclaimed what once was lost.
Now we were kids at thirty-nine;
I thought that you looked mighty fine.
Our kids would blush and roll their eyes
When through the walls they heard our sighs.
But we were love and young at heart,
And could not keep our parts apart.
True, we married rather late,
But true, as well: late sex is great!
I’d do that and you’d do this;
With gentle touch or longing kiss.
From heavy sighs to heaving hips,
From limbs to lips to fingertips,
From nippled breast to inner thigh,
From silky shaft to twinkling eye,
With tender trust and playful fun
In many ways we two were one.
Who would have thought such love could be,
As love has been for you and me?

So it is honest that I am
To say you are green eggs and ham.
For I would bed you in a boat,
And I would do you in a coat,
And I would bang you in the rain,
And in the dark, and on a train.
And I would roll you in the hay,
And in the park—both night and day.
And in a car, and in a tree,
You are so good, so good, you see!
So I would touch you in a house
At the sink beneath your blouse
Or in a field, or on the floor
Or pressed right up against the door.
Yes I would make love here and there,
Say!  I would make love ANYWHERE!
My love, you’re like green eggs and ham,
And me? I am like Sam-I-am.

drw / 01.06.2005

Public theology? Really?! Read my last much more somber post on ecological crisis. Making peace with … coming home to our earthy bodies—including the delights of being bodied (amid trusting vulnerable, joyful mutuality, and enthusiastic consent)—is one way which we learn to receive and care for the profound goodness of creation. 🙂

Not to get all “philosophical” about sex, it is, after all, simply sweet joy, but as Frederick Buechner observed, “Vocation is where your own deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.” In this sense, the deep personal/shared ecstasy of sex is one essential aspect of a sacred economy. Absolutely essential and an end in itself (an echo of grace in our own lives), but paradoxically, its “end-ness” is also a “for-ness.” It is in the circulation of the holy across the whole of our lives that we come to fulness.

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David Weiss is a theologian, writer, poet and hymnist, doing “public theology” around climate crisis, sexuality, justice, diversity, and peace. Reach him at drw59mn@gmail.com. Read more at www.davidrweiss.com where he blogs under the theme, “Full Frontal Faith: Erring on the Edge of Honest.” Support him in writing Community Supported Theology atwww.patreon.com/fullfrontalfaith.

From Dust to Dust – Coming Home
David R. Weiss – March 1, 2021

For Christians who observe Lent, the solemn season began on Ash Wednesday (February 17), with our foreheads marked with ashes as a sobering, tactile reminder of the words spoken to Adam and Eve, “You are dust and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19). That “dust” isn’t the collection of sundry specks that seeks to cling to our furniture; it’s the dust from which God created us: it’s earth.

It is at once a humbling and ennobling assertion. Humbling: we are but mortal. Our personal end is … guaranteed. (If we’re honest, the ends of our families, nations, civilizations, and even species are guaranteed, too, if the time frame is made long enough; mortality is a bitch.) And yet, there is a gracious nobility hidden within: you … and you … and you—you have loaned your heart and mind to Earth itself, bringing 4.6 billion years to self-conscious and awe-filled fruition in your mortal frame.

We tend to forget the ennobling part, but, as if on cue, the United Nations reminded us of this on February 18, releasing a new UN Environment Programme report, Making Peace with Nature (MPN). Admittedly the reminder comes cloaked in paradox. Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General, describes the report as offering “the bedrock of hope,” while also declaring that humanity is, at present, “waging a senseless and suicidal war on nature.”

Before MPN sets out its peace plan, it describes the triple emergency we face: climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and pollution that overwhelms ecosystems. It is an emergency of our own making. And, while “triple” in one sense, these aren’t discreet crises that can be addressed apart from each other, they’re interlocking crises fracturing planetary wellbeing. We address them together, or they will—together—unravel the planet and our wellbeing.

Making Peace chronicles in painful detail how our present policies and practices are not merely unsustainable—they’re senseless (indeed, economically counterproductive) and suicidal (on track to produce absolutely catastrophic repercussions for human society). Worse, they’re systemic and structural and cultural: embedded both in the economic and political systems by which we have chosen to organize our life, and also in the very habits and customs (and beliefs) by which we fashion meaning. We’ve been betrayed by the very systems we imagined promised us prosperity.

However, the report goes on to say it needn’t be this way. It is (yet*) possible to choose a sustainable future. There are actionable policies and practices that could meet the conditions of sustainable human civilization on a finite planet. And MPN lays these out in detail as well.

*About that “yet”: the report is brutally clear: we have AT BEST a decade to demonstrate a once-in-a-civilization resolve that has been woefully lacking for the past half-century. That doesn’t mean we have a decade to waffle, whine, fret—and then act. No. We now have one decade—of which every year, including this one, is essential—to shift the paradigm by which we organize life on the planet. And do so, mind you, as prelude to a century of concerted effort to sustain that shift and deepen it. In fact, that “yet” is so precarious, the counsel is often to deliberately understate it, lest people be incapacitated by its precarity. But there comes a time when so much is at stake that the difference between sounding an alarm and precipitating a panic, is the difference between telling the truth today or being swept away by that same truth tomorrow. I’m telling the truth. Today.

To borrow a metaphor from last month’s story regarding United Flight 328, when one engine is out of commission and on fire in plain view of passengers, it’s actually a good time to BOTH stay calm AND call out with total conviction and urgency, “mayday—need a turn immediately.” If the UN Report were a visual map it might well place a star by that mayday call and write, “you are here.”

In January, just a month before MPN was released, seventeen climate scientists published a piece in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Conservation Science titled “Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future.” Ghastly. Now that’s not a word you often see—or hope to see—in a meticulously referenced (about 170 sources cited) scientific article about our future. But they’re quite serious. Citing the same crises noted in MPN and more, they assert we are currently living so far beyond the carrying capacity of the planet (a condition called “overshoot”) that it’s fair to say “humanity is running an ecological Ponzi scheme in which society robs nature and future generations” to pay for an unsustainable present. When they summarize the cascading consequences awaiting us if we continue to mostly posture and pontificate, it reads like an over-the-top zombie movie script. They conclude, “The predominant paradigm is still one of pegging ‘environmentalism’ against ‘economy’; yet in reality the choice is between exiting overshoot by design or disaster—because exiting overshoot is inevitable one way or another.” Again, “you are here.”

Still, Making Peace with Nature also charts a path toward a future in which we are at peace with Earth. It is technologically possible, even if it’s a far stretch politically. But if there was ever a time to attempt such a far stretch, now is that time. And MPN offers an integrated, systemic plan, both for achieving sustainability and also for overcoming the resistance posed by “vested interests that benefit from preserving the status quo.” Of course, the technological challenges, steep and costly as they are, pale next to the political ones. And the political challenges are so foreboding because they’re so misshapen by wealth and power. Sometimes held by corporations or political parties; sometimes wielded by lobby groups and individuals; and sometimes exercised by societal centers of value such as cultural institutions, extremist organizations, and religious traditions.

While actions at the individual level (household recycling, “greener” diet, transportation choices, etc.) are critical to cultivating personal integrity and empowerment—and even though every little action adds up—on the scale of the triple crisis, these actions, even when multiplied, don’t add up to much. To really effect change we need leverage points that access power on a much larger social-political scale (which does not, however, lessen the value of the italicized first sentence in this paragraph).

Perhaps understandably, the UN report never calls out the role of religious communities or whole traditions in expanding the realm of the possible in politics. Global policy papers seem reticent to ask (or accuse) religious traditions of much at all. As for me, I’m happy to do both.

Making Peace identifies eight leverage points able to move the dial toward a new paradigm and a sustainable future. The first three are: (1) Paradigms and visions of a good life; (2) Consumption, population, and waste; and (3) Latent values of responsibility. How we envision a good life … and where our patterns of consumption, reproduction, and waste intersect with that … and how actively we invest ourselves in responsibility for the well-being of our neighbor and the health of God’s creation … all these things are impacted by—often directly rooted in—the deepest (often religious) values we hold. Thus, religion will play an inescapable role in EITHER talking us down from the ledge of ecological annihilation, OR (wittingly or otherwise) encouraging us to hurtle ourselves—and half of God’s creation—off the ledge and into oblivion. It’s one or the other.

Yes, religion’s social influence is less than it once was—especially for mainline/liberal Christianity. And, yes, Christianity (and religion in general) have been at least as much a liability as an asset on ecological issues for the past several centuries. Nonetheless, when it comes to actually harnessing imagination and motivation for a common purpose at a level sufficient to impact an entire society there may be no institution that can do so as effectively as the church—that is, were it to make these leverage points the crux of being the church today.

Frankly, were it not to do this, the church will have abandoned any legitimacy for bearing witness to God’s love for creation. Unfortunately, overall, the church has thus far produced more fancy rhetoric than fierce resolve. If that sounds harsh, reread the part above about the entire human race having now just one decade during which we must either flip our entire paradigm of how we relate to nature … or we’ll have chosen to embrace a “ghastly future” for those who come after us.

We do not need more social statements about creation. We need to transform our entire lived witness—worship, education, fellowship, service, accompaniment, and advocacy—so that it forms us into persons who love nature as passionately as God does and are committed to stand in solidarity with creation and in resistance against the forces that threaten it. AND—we must do this as swiftly and dramatically as we did for Covid-19. We’ve shown, in response to the pandemic, that we are capable of swift and dramatic transformation. Now we must do so on behalf of all creation. (Or else.)

Which brings me back, at last, to the season of Lent and that Ash Wednesday reminder that we are dust. If being dust, dirt, earth is framed always as a curse—as something we find humiliating and are wont to forget, escape, or overcome—perhaps it’s no wonder we have played spiritual midwife to an entire culture intent on dominating nature, imagining ourselves somehow apart from it, and locating God in an absolute sense as pretty much anywhere but here.

How can we possibly begin “making peace with nature” until we reclaim the truth that we ARE nature? These ancient creation accounts in Genesis are myth; neither poor science nor pretend history, they’re tales that carry truth. And one truth is that before sin wracked Eden, when God breathed life into earth—culminating, as it were, some 4.6 billion years of gestation—God called that dust-bound humus being very good.

If we can remember that this Lent, we might find ourselves pulled faithfully into the fray of shifting away from a paradigm that promises to kill us all toward one that offers life … finite, abundant, and sustainable. The truth is that both while we are living dust and also when we return to dust, we are, as God intended, at home.

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David Weiss is a theologian, writer, poet and hymnist, doing “public theology” around climate crisis, sexuality, justice, diversity, and peace. Reach him at drw59mn@gmail.com. Read more at www.davidrweiss.com where he blogs under the theme, “Full Frontal Faith: Erring on the Edge of Honest.” Support him in writing Community Supported Theology at www.patreon.com/fullfrontalfaith.