“Do not go gentle into that good night…”
By: Rev Dr Sparky
Tags: Politics, Spirituality, Racism, Jesus, Peace

And maybe don’t go alone…

I’ve been thinking hard about how people can cope during this time of overlapping crises, because even though I’m not that old, and my country’s not that old, I have Dylan Thomas’s poem constantly in mind:

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night. … Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

It just doesn’t feel like “morning in America” these days, my friends. The government has gotten small and backward and secretive; the people don’t know what truth is anymore; systems of justice are suspect and economies are revealed to be crumbling; progress we thought was real is an illusion-

You know what?— I think they’re trying to cancel the Enlightenment!

Remember how the Enlightenment brought us science? Well, some people want to give it right back.

We now have an elected president who does not believe in science or know what it is, really. Medical scientists, climate scientists, nuclear scientists are all trying to help us… but our president rejects and resists…people die.

Remember the Enlightenment appreciation of freedom of thought and knowledge? Those are being canceled, too. For example, the 1619 Project is an body of research and discourse that seeks to lift up date the first Africans were brought to this continent by slave traders and count US history from that date, rather than the schoolchild 1776 date. The Project places “the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”

You can argue the premise all you want. But the Trump administration wants to dictate curriculum by withholding federal funds to places that teach the 1619 Project.

Please lock up the library if you’re the last one out…

Women’s rights to full autonomy over their persons have never been fully secured and threats are being redoubled; people of color and immigrants and refugees and poor folk and the differently abled or non-binary of gender will likewise find recent, tentative signs of recognition of their personhood slowly or quickly evaporating in the public realm…

Ah, we’ve been in the dark before, haven’t we?

And this is all taking place against the looming backdrop of the war machine that we keep building larger and larger, year in and year out —

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/analysis/2020/militarized-budget-2020/

to the tune of about $800 billion dollars in 2019, or about two-thirds or all our discretionary spending — without even having to declare there is a “war” going on. (But THAT’S not in the news, is it?)

(Somebody in the back is asking: “Ah, now, Sparky, are you going to bring us all the way down?” No. But this is why we can’t have nice things!)

And it makes me angry when I realize we might just be in for a dark, dangerous time ahead. And–

Death is not the only darkness to be afraid of.

Dylan Thomas may have been talking about death and dying, but he could also have been talking about any of the places where we lose ourselves; our freedom; our car keys — yes, I mean that — our autonomy and our sense of agency (even though soon enough we’ll all be wishing we had stayed on foot…).

But I’m a wannabe Jesus follower, so I when Dylan Thomas was getting me too riled up, I turned to the Sermon on the Mountain in Matthew’s Gospel, sometimes piously known as the “Beatitudes” because it’s traditionally translated as beatifications–blessings. And I impatiently read all this calming talk from Jesus, starting at about Matthew 5:5: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.“

The “meek” — more recently better translated as “gentle.” Well, I’m not feeling too awfully gentle these days. And for all my bravado, now I’m worried about getting demerits from my chosen spiritual role models.

(PSST… Am I going to get in trouble with Jesus?)

Photo by Henrikke Due on Unsplash

So I have to ask: What would Jesus say? And the answer is that I don’t know. Actually, no one really knows what Jesus would say, because, apart from their faith convictions, no one really knows exactly what Jesus did say.

I went back to some experts on Jesus: namely, the fellows of the Jesus Seminar and their controversial, highly readable volume, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus. And I look up what the fellows decided about that passage, “blessed are the gentle.”

Here’s the scholars’ translation of part of that Sermon the Mount:

Congratulations to the poor in spirit:

Heaven’s domain belongs to them.

Congratulations to those who grieve!

They will be consoled.

Congratulations to the gentle!

They will inherit the earth.

Congratulations to those who hunger and thirst for justice! They will have a feast.

And there it is, darn it. “Congratulations” if I’m gentle.

But then I discovered — hah! According to the Fellows, Jesus probably never said that. He might have said the other, more unexpected sayings — “Congratulations to the poor in spirit,” for example — what does that even mean? Jesus was sometimes rude; let’s admit it. And when you trace the likely authentic sayings, you find a Jesus who came, not just to sit back, but to make what John Lewis would later call “good trouble”

So I’m not going to go gentle. They think they can cancel the whole Enlightenment?

Oh, no. Not while there are still a few of us out there who heed the poet:

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

I’m no man, but Thomas was a twentieth-century barbarian child, so I’ll pretend he includes me in his dumb generic (nobody knew any better then).

Or maybe, knowing that none of us did enough to prevent these current crises, we will all cry out this way:

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

So I’ll not go gentle

But how to proceed? Violence won’t work; I’m unarmed, unless you count a pretty good vocabulary of swear words (I am trying to rein that in). But I looked again to the east: this time, 1900 years after Jesus started his liberation movement, Gandhi led the people of India to throw off British rule using the power of satyagraha, holding onto truth; a particular form of nonviolent resistance.

So if I want to fight this premature nightfall, I will have to accept the discipline to resist injustice — sign me up! — but also to resist my own anger. That’s more difficult, to be candid. But at least I don’t have to be gentle about it. I can just be myself.

I just about have this figured out, and it is not as complicated as people might think, once you get off Fakebook and turn off the television. But then I must also be willing to risk loss and suffering.

Here are the rules of satyagraha, written for a neurotic, slightly selfish, unsubtle, hasty and anxious person who’d like to meet this darkening sky with a sense of agency:

Satyagraha is not violent resistance. I am not allowed to punch people in the neck when they try to take away my rights. (Rats.) I am also not allowed to vilify them and fuel my own anger against them. But I AM allowed — required, actually — to resist the lies and stand for truth, even if it means giving up my prestigious corporate sponsor and alienating my family.*

*(I’m just kidding of course. There is no corporate sponsor, and my family doesn’t pay any attention to my shenanigans any more.

But if I follow those rules, I can help keep the lights of civilization burning by my loud and frequent insistence on truth:

Jesus said, “The last shall be first and the first shall be last.” I think we need to get started on that, before he gets back.

So that’s going to be me, not going gentle into that good night.

Because I don’t wanna be a wanna be–

and I’d rather be a has-been than a never-was.

So I will not go gentle if they try take away the light.

And I don’t think I’ll get in trouble with Jesus, either.