{"id":1186,"date":"2020-09-30T17:06:12","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T17:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=1186"},"modified":"2020-12-30T18:36:42","modified_gmt":"2020-12-30T18:36:42","slug":"dear-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2020\/09\/30\/dear-son\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Son"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Taking up the example of Marilynne Robinson’s John Ames in Gilead<\/em> and Ta-Nehisi Coates in Between the World and Me<\/em>, a pastor writes a letter to his son about privilege, responsibility, and most of all, hope. <\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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By Allen Reynolds
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Dear Son,<\/p>

I have recently been introduced to writers who have had a profound effect on literature. Writers are not as popular in our world today; people have taken more to watching videos for information and entertainment. We live in a world where we have constant access to everything. At every moment we have the ability to check in on what is happening worlds away; distances that used to be separated by geography, history, and culture are now bridged by code and then re-divided by desire and interest down to the individual and mood. In this world you are forced to live two existences simultaneously, one as a human being and another as digital being. Your digital avatar will have access to everything. And yet you will be confined to the bubble of your own pre-articulated desire so that the odds of you accessing a world that you do not know will be limited.<\/p>

Your access is no longer limited by law or land as your ancestors\u2019 were. Instead, entire worlds will be hidden from you by what you have seen in an advertisement, been offered by an algorithm, had shared with you by a stranger whom you call friend or follower. It is because you live in a world that has been shaped for you by thoughtless machinations that offer you false intimacy through constant engagement that I must offer you an opportunity, an encouragement to see the hidden worlds through books that can transport you to worlds of the past, of imagination, of feeling and thought from real human beings who have existed apart from the clicking of your fingers or the shaping of your choices. Two books I want to share with you that will introduce you to worlds beyond yourself are Gilead <\/em>by Marilynne Robinson and Between the World And Me <\/em>by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The reasons I offer these two books to you are disparate. Both were commended to me and inspired me to write this very letter\u2014so that my thoughts and feelings, a piece of my world, could be shared beyond myself.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Often when people look back over their lives the things that seemed important in earlier years take on less importance, and we are left with the people we love and the joy of life itself.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Gilead<\/em> was written by a woman descended from Europe living in the United States who could be called white and American. Marilynne Robinson has articulated a deep familiarity with corners of the country that were laid forgotten by the movement of history, where families had choices and chose familiarity; they built legacies and had property and told stories and left behind something more than memories. Many people are drawn to her books because they express a comfort in the spirituality of the mundane, the divinity of nature, and faith in the midst of ambiguity. This particular story is of a man who is a minister, like me, who struggles at the end of his life to write a letter like this one to leave to his young son. Reverend John Ames is a man who lives in his head. He is a brilliant man, not in that he is the most educated in his town, but in that he possesses a deep sense of wisdom. His greatest wisdom is to know that he does not know. He is a man whom life has taught that life itself is sacred. He saw the world change around him but spent most of his focus on remembering the things closest to himself\u2014family, close friends, the simple paper in his hands, facial expressions, weather, and water. This seems appropriate. Often when people look back over their lives the things that seemed important in earlier years take on less importance, and we are left with the people we love and the joy of life itself.<\/p>

Robinson is a master at capturing this feeling and reimagining it into a world, a world that is able to bask in life\u2019s sacred everydayness. Son, it is important to know that worlds like this exist and to take time away from screens to drink in the holiness of the day that surrounds you. This was certainly true for Reverend Ames. But Robinson also reminds us that those privileged to live long lives are also left with the task of working through their feelings, especially the difficult ones, in order to find peace. Ames was moved to his writing by the mournful but meaningful reality that his son would have to grow up without him. He was moved with love and uncertainty about whether he had done justice by his young wife. And he was moved with unnamed anger toward his grandfather, his father, and his godson Jack Boughton.<\/p>

Jack had the difficulty of privilege most of his life. His privilege was derived from his place as a pastor\u2019s son. He was a white boy living in a small town where he could easily be shielded from responsibility, and as a result he struggled with the identity that his privilege afforded him. He was able to do just about anything and get away with it; he was protected from guilt. As he grew older he began to resent the loneliness that his shield of privilege brought him, which only caused him to pass his greatest responsibilities to his family. Ames deeply resented this lack of accountability but also recognized the burden it was to Jack. But Ames was often confined by his own internalized resentment, unable to communicate his fear of Jack\u2019s irresponsibility contaminating his precious family for most of the book, like a disease of privilege that could contaminate all the legacy he had built, that could render his holy life filled with sin.<\/p>

Later in life, Jack\u2019s privilege again came back again to confront him and became a burden that finally cost him his relationship with his own son, the son of a black woman like your mother. She faced deep loss because of his irresponsibility and privilege and made a choice to care for her child and family instead of waiting on Jack\u2019s irresponsible love. You see, love without responsibility is dangerous. And while Reverend Ames was finally able to reconcile with Jack, he could not help him overcome his privilege because he was wrapped cozily in his own. One of the major privileges that Ames could not see, one that Jack had to come face-to-face with, was their white privilege. That privilege allowed both of them to have innocence in society, a benefit of the doubt that allowed guilt to occur as a concept in their minds or an accusation to be avoided instead of a persistent, embodied reality that threatened their lives.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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This society will tell you that your destruction will be your own responsibility because you are not white.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Ta-Nehisi Coates tells a truth that is much closer to us in his book Between the World and Me<\/em>. You see, Coates tells his own story, the story of a black man in America and all of the difficult internal and external struggling that we must do as we strive to survive. Coates illuminates the black burden of responsibility for everything, a responsibility to prop up the \u201cDream\u201d of white society where privilege\u2014the privilege that kept John Ames from facing change and the one that allowed Jack Boughton to avoid responsibility\u2014exists. You will not have the privilege of that Dream. As Coates argues, from the day you are conscious you will be responsible for the burden of constant fear\u2014fear for your body, which can be taken from you at any time.<\/p>

Your fear is valid, however you feel it. This society will tell you that your destruction will be your own responsibility because you are not white. This society\u2014not a nation, but a state of many nations\u2014was built on the bodies of your ancestors. All that you see would not exist without their hard work and lives sacrificed so that you could have access to all knowledge. This society used those bodies, the bodies of African people, as fuel and cogs for the engine of America, but it has still refused to take responsibility for that action. The society has told the story that the fuel was made by magic. The glory for the distance traveled is reveled in by those who believe they are white. They are those who have the privilege to not face responsibility, to not face change, to believe that whole towns, people, the earth itself can be owned by them. Those who believe they are white live in the Dream where they can spend all their time in their heads, drinking in their own thoughts and creating systems, great capsules to keep them asleep. The capsules rest upon the backs of those who are not white.<\/p>

And yet Coates reminds us that we must not believe we are better than these Dreamers. We are simply awake, while many of them cling feverishly to this Dream of innocence and money and fame and friends and power that they<\/em> have created by pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps. Who could blame them? What a wonderful dream it is! And yet we are not part of the Dream.<\/p>

There are and will be places you encounter as oases from the deserts of racism that cover our land. One of these places is the Mecca that Ta-Nehisi Coates describes, the culture that lives within and beyond the institution of Howard University. I want you to pay attention to the challenge, the beauty and holiness of the Mecca that Coates articulates. I, like Coates, was formed at the Mecca and graduated from Howard University. I will do my best to share with you that experience of being yourself in a crowd with no black mark. I will do my best to share with you the critiques and continuities between the Dream and our complicated, beautiful history. Telling you the history\u2014the conflicting stories\u2014will help you to stay awake, to know the worlds beyond you, to face reality for yourself. Coates faces the reality that we try to participate in the Dream by imagining ourselves as a black race who was noble and pure but pillaged and now rebuilding. For that Dream, we too must deny reality, deny history.<\/p>

For we were not a people when we came to this land, but this land and its machine pressed us, forged us into a people under the heat and destruction of racism, patriarchy, and capitalism. We cannot participate in the Dream by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, or by building boot factories, for our bodies can be taken from us in the streets or the schools, by the state or the bullet at any time, and no one will be responsible. Yes, son, I am sorry. I say with tears in my eyes that this is reality.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Hope allows you to be aware of what is wrong in our world and believe it can be made right.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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But just beyond Coates\u2019s brilliant and honest analysis, just on the other side of Jack\u2019s irresponsibility, past the profound and troubled old mind of John Ames, is a truth that neither of these books\u2019 speakers can quite grasp. It is a truth that Coates sees in the eyes of non-violent civil rights leaders he resents and sees in Dr. Jones, a black Christian mother whose son\u2019s body was taken by another black man upholding laws of the white Dream. It is the truth that compelled Jack Boughton\u2019s wife to reject his irresponsibility. It is a truth she learned in the house of her father, a pastor who held the truth in the place of Jack\u2019s ambiguous doubt. It is a truth that was in the hearts of the black church members of Gilead, the truth that powered Reverend John Ames\u2019s grandfather to see beyond his present world with his one good eye. It is a truth called hope.<\/p>

It is foolish to look at the Dream and see hope, and yet it is one of the few privileges we have. It is a truth that is enacted in faith. Ta-Nehisi Coates wanted to leave his son with struggle as the gift. But I will add to it for you hope, so that you do not struggle without aim. Hope is the eschatological vision at the conclusion of liberation theology, which envisions God on the side of the oppressed, and our salvation as solidarity with God in their struggle. If we struggle alongside God, is it not without hope for freedom from oppression. Without this hope there would be no use for our access, for our bodies, our minds. Our own lives of struggle would be our beginning and our ending. Raising you up, raising up your generation, would be in vain. But we have this hope, hidden in earthen vessels\u2014that God\u2019s glory shall be revealed, that God\u2019s justice will tear down privilege and the Dream and make responsibility a foundation rather than a burden and a blinder.<\/p>

This is hope that we can embody justice in our home, in our church, in our community. It is this hope that we can practice while we have our bodies. It is the hope we see in Jesus Christ. It is only by this hope that I can imagine your access, your untold ability to gain knowledge through books, having meaning beyond you. With hope you can master the art of literary irony and fine details like Marilynne Robinson. With hope you can articulate the truth and use curiosity as a tool for liberation like Ta-Nehisi Coates. With hope you can view the videos and posts and articles and friends and likes and then imagine, create, and speak out your own<\/em> vision. Hope allows you to be aware of what is wrong in our world and believe it can be made right. Hope empowers you to continue that struggle toward freedom while believing freedom is real. It is this hope that will sustain you as you face the darkness of the white shadow and the limitations of your own humanity, because the Spirit of God is within you to be light and hope in a world that was built to destroy your body.<\/p>

I have hope for you, son. I hope you will receive it as your own.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Allen Reynolds<\/strong> is a minister, editor, producer, and content developer from the Chicago area. He currently serves as Worship and Christian Education Co-Chair at University Church (UCC\/DOC) in Chicago, Illinois, where he lives with his wife and children.<\/em><\/p>

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Allen Reynolds. A pastor’s letter to his 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