A few months ago, one of my friends from high school gave birth to her second child. A baby boy. A “pandemic baby”. When he was born, the hospital was under such restrictions because of COVID-19, that he couldn’t have any visitors in his first few days, while he was there. Just his mother and father. But he’s doing very well. He’s happy and healthy.
His first name is Rocco. His last name is Fitzsimons.
His middle name is Fauci.
Rocco Fauci Fitzsimons. So now I think he has to become a superhero, to live into that name.
Rocco’s mom is among the first of my high school friends to have kids. I’m 33. During our younger years, I remember some of my peers wondering aloud about whether they might *not* have kids. They were hesitant about it. What did it mean to bring a child into a world so threatened by global warming? And threatened by other things too…
We are living in an Empire. And that’s a hard thing for people of goodwill to live with. I expect this has weighed heavily on many of us here, from time to time.
The tough part is, it’s not something you can just opt out of. Its reach extends everywhere. It’s like a dragon with seven heads and ten horns, as the first reading from Revelation says. What a great metaphor for Empire. Some have drawn a parallel between the seven heads the seven hills that Rome was built on. They see the crowns as pointing to the Roman Empire’s power of all the kingdoms of the earth. How do you escape something like that: something so immense?
You can’t, really. Even when you try your best, as many of us do… it’s almost impossible.
When I wake up to start my day, my taxes are paying for military spending, without my having a say in the matter.
I get dressed, I eat breakfast; only sometimes can I be sure that what I eat and wear is sustainably made. Often, I can’t trace where my clothes and food come from, or know that the people who made them were treated fairly.
I drive a car that runs on gasoline, and the power of big oil companies. When I chose the car I did, it was after being bombarded with slogans suggesting that nothing less than my salvation was tied to the car I bought: “Love: It’s What Makes a Subaru.” “Find Zen with Cadillac ELR.” Some of you may once have driven a Datsun, whose slogan was “Sets You Free.” (!) Then there’s “Honda: What Dreams Are Made Of.”
I carry an i-phone in my pocket— from Apple, whose slogan is, “think different”… Even though Apple products are about as common as rocks, and even more difficult to tell apart. I have to take pains to turn off notifications on this phone, or else it will constantly fill my ears with noise – pinging every time there is a news story, or a photo, or an update. And encouraging me, each time it does that, to make my life all about efficiency, busyness, comparison, appearances, and “more.”
Earlier this month, we needed some incense for the sacristy here at church. It arrived this week— neatly wrapped— from amazon.com. (My brother actually calls Amazon “the evil empire.” But he uses it too! He is a college student, and it’s often the only affordable option.) In any case, here were the symbols of the church, literally wrapped in the packaging of empire.
In this world— of Amazon and Apple, fires and flooding, not to mention a pandemic— my friend gave birth, nevertheless. To a beautiful, healthy baby boy, who just might be a hero.
That’s what both the first reading and today’s Gospel are about.
They’re about birth in difficult circumstances.
They’re about having the courage to be hopeful, even when it seems there are so many dragons; even when the world feels scary.
So much depends on what vision we hold to.
The passage from Revelation is about two dueling concepts for how the world can be: One of Empire, represented by the dragon. The dragon that stands ready to “devour” — just like that mindset sees everything as a product to be consumed.
Then there is an opposing vision, symbolized by “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars”. Humanity, in union with nature, laboring to give birth to better world.
Many of you have been following the struggle over the fate of Parcel 5— the open acre land here in downtown Rochester. Its use been a topic of debate for years. Proposal after proposal has come forward. All sorts of people have made their pitch. Some thought there should be a performing arts center on that land, or an entertainment venue with an IMAX theater. Developers wanted it for apartments. Companies wanted it to be commercial space for retail. Meanwhile, others have pushed back and called for it to be green space— public, for everyone— rather than a place that would only draw wealthier folks. Back and forth and back and forth we’ve gone— for years. It came very close to being a theater. It came close to becoming a site for luxury condos. There is always pressure for it to generate money, and if possible attract the rich and famous as visitors to Rochester.
Right now, it’s finally being used as a community space… But the threat still hangs in the air, with some insisting that eventually there must be a developer.
So the birth struggle goes on. The opposing visions continue their duel. Parcel 5 is a miniature version of a conflict being fought in a thousand different places. And the questions being asked, they’re being asked about the world itself.
Who is it for?
Does it belong to everyone, or to a select few?
What is it meant to be?
Mary, the mother of Jesus, knew her answer to those questions. She sings a song— the Magnificat—as she carries Jesus in her womb. Maybe it was the first song he ever heard; it might have reached his ears even before he was born.
“God has scattered the proud in their conceit.
Has cast down the mighty from their thrones.
God has lifted up the lowly,
Has filled the hungry with good things,
And sent the rich away empty.”
It’s a song redrawing the lines of the world; saying God makes space for the poor and vulnerable. God puts them first.
When Jesus made that vision the heart of his preaching and his ministry, people accused him of turning the world upside down. They said, “what are you playing at, with these newfangled ideas, these modern norms and values that we don’t understand?”
But they only seemed new to the ones in power.
Women, prophets, and poor people had been singing this song for centuries. Jesus learned it from his mother. Mary learned it her spiritual grandmothers and great-grandmothers: people like Hannah, who sang a similar song in the Book of Samuel. Mary had listened to that, she knew it well.
And who knows if Mary would have had the courage to speak her truth without Elizabeth: her friend and ally, who BELIEVED her, when she expected no one would. Who instead of shaming her, spoke up: “cried out with a loud voice”— affirming Mary’s story, and her dignity.
Mary had to go “to the hill country” to see Elizabeth. Meaning, she had to find her niche at the edges of the Roman Empire. Maybe not totally beyond its reach, but away from its center. She had to find her parcel of earth, where she could stand and carve out a different life, and follow different values.
In the first reading, the figure of the woman clothed with the sun and the moon flees into the desert. This is what we all can do. We can try to live on the edges, in communities that TRULY “think different”; that help us remember what things like love, dreams, being set free really mean. And that remind us they don’t come in the form of a new car, or phone, or ap, or product of any kind. They don’t come in the packaging of Empire.
*
You often hear these days about the church being “marginalized.” It’s not the center of society anymore. It’s not the cool thing to do, and it’s not a social obligation in the way it was even just twenty years ago. People say this with crestfallen expressions. This is when fear starts to take over— and spiritual communities try to become more like the culture. We start saying to ourselves, “maybe if we had just the right program, we could compete with the art nights and the pub crawls, the lecture series and the sold-out concerts. Maybe if we had a cappuccino machine at coffee hour. Maybe if we were savvier with Twitter. Maybe if we had an advertising department. Maybe if we were just a little bit cooler.”
The church got its start meeting in secret. The early Christians were outsiders. They had to gather in the catacombs, hidden away out of sight— that’s how much their alternative vision went against the dominant culture around them in Rome.
Then, with Emperor Constantine, we started down the road to becoming the official state religion of Empire. We started meeting in huge ornate churches, often right across from the business district and shopping district, or else across from the political elite. We filled our coffers, but we lost our soul.
Someone once remarked, “That was the day Christianity lost its way. The day it went from the catacombs to the basilicas.”
The church is MEANT to live on the margins.
We are supposed t to challenge society, not mimic it. We have a radically different vision than the dominant culture.
Here at Spiritus Christi, we have often stumbled on contested patches of ground, or forgotten patches of ground. Where people were asking the same questions being asked of Parcel 5.
When the question was, What is this place for? We answered: it’s to lift up the lowly. It’s to fill the hungry with good things.
When asked, Who belongs here? We said, not the mighty on their thrones. But the ones laid low— by poverty, addiction, mental illness, discrimination.
When asked, ok, well, what is this space meant to be?
We’ve answered: how about shelter for the homeless? How about a mansion for the poor? Or a drop-in center? Or a neighborhood cafe honoring the struggle for women’s rights? How about a civil rights heritage site? (Congratulations, by the way, SPARC!)
Mary and Elizabeth couldn’t totally escape the Roman Empire. It touched everything around them. Its reach extended everywhere. And yet, they found a way to center their lives somewhere else. They found their patch of ground, on the edges, on the margins— where they could dream, and labor to birth something new.
A couple of years ago, I was in Asheville, North Carolina— way up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. There’s a fight being waged there too, about whether the town will become completely a tourist trap, or stay (at least in some way) a countercultural community in the hill country. Among the locals, there’s a popular sign that’s hung on front porches, and over doorways: “Stay weird, Asheville.”
Another one of my friends is the parent to a six-year-old daughter, whose current passions include picking flowers, letting birds eat seeds out of her hand, wearing giant red-framed glasses, and dressing herself in gloriously unmatching outfits.
She doesn’t have a thought about fitting in, doing what’s popular, having an Instagram presence, or imitating anyone else. She doesn’t care one jot about what’s cool.
She’s just HERSELF.
Consequently, everybody wants to be around her.
She is kind, brave, old-fashioned, soulful, and alternative. It’s great.
Her mom often says to her affectionately, “Stay weird, my dear!”
*
With all that’s difficult and fearsome around us right now… there is always hope, as long as there are people willing to march to the beat of a different drum; to truly “think different,” and live differently.
So I have hope for Rocco Fauci Fitzsimons, with his heroic name. I have hope for the world he’s being born into. And he gives me hope for that world.
The struggle goes on. It never ends— the tug of war over what society should be.
But he reminds me that we all have it in us to be heroes. We can each stake out a place where we can work for a different vision… and save the world one block, one lot, one acre at a time.
Small, heroic acts are where it begins.
Stay weird, Spiritus Christi.
0 Comments