This week, I’ve been marinating on what, exactly, is going on across
the country with the “Occupy” movement. It started with “Occupy Wall
Street” and has now spread all over — Alabama to the state of Washington. And,
of course, Boston.
My family (me, my husband, and our 2 and 4 year
old) went down on Monday night but were advised a few minutes into our
visit that the police planned to come at nightfall and that it
wouldn’t be the best place for kids. There has been a decent response from the faith community; a group called the Protest Chaplains is blogging and visiting, and there is a sacred space tent. Bishop Tom Shaw, the Episcopal bishop of Massachusetts, went yesterday for an ecumenical service of support (the video is wonderful!). A UU minister who lives in my neighborhood lead vespers last Sunday night.
As a softie bleeding heart, I’m inclined to be sympathetic; after our
wedding in 2003 (in New York), my husband and I cut the reception
short so everyone could go downtown to the anti-Iraq war
demonstration. I love a good protest. The difficult thing about
what’s going on now is that the method has little do to with the
problem. The financial crisis was not caused by local branches of Bank
of America. It was a result of a financial system that relied more
and more on abstract amounts of abstract money moving from spread
sheet to spread sheet and a government that stopped regulating much of
anything assuming the market would fix it all. It didn’t, and here we
are. Still, you could just as well occupy the Internet as Dewey
Square; there’s no “there” there.
The problem is meeting an abstract problem with a concrete complaint;
there is truly no way that the message can be transmitted in a
“rational” way, because it is not a “rational” problem. Corporate
incomes have no relationship to the production of real goods and
services. CEO pay increases into the tens of millions as regular
workers are laid off. The United States is closest to Russia and Iran
when it comes to income inequality. The “Occupy” movement is using the
most basic means of communication possible: putting a tent stake in
the ground, putting their bodies where they will be seen.
As a Christian, the question I ask is this: what does this have to do
with the kingdom of God? I think there is a connection: something
about how we are in the world but not of it, how we put others’ needs
ahead of our own, how “the least of these" are to be cared for first,
the shepherd going after the one lost sheep. That there is enough
–there really is. It’s not Tea Party vs. Occupiers, it’s not even 1
percent vs. 99 percent. It’s all of us. My faith teaches that Jesus
went to the cross for everyone, not just the morally pure, not just
the vegetarians, not just the poor. He didn’t go just for the
successful, intelligent, and brave, either. That means that each of
us has a responsibility to the others. We are all just as much in need
of that grace. We are all in just as much need for food and shelter
and love and forgiveness.
This does not mean everyone has to go out and quit their jobs and
become organic farmers who make their own clothes. I want there to be
a bank and a banker when I need a mortgage. I want a small business
to be able to open because someone invested their money in it. I want
all of us to have well-paying jobs so we can finish my church's capital
campaign with handicap accessible bathrooms! But I also want us to be
critical enough to ask how, and why, our economy works the way it
does, and to do what we can to make it a just one.
Is this not the fast that I choose; to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to
break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and
bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to
cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your
light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring
up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord
shall be your rearguard. (Isaiah 58: 6-8)
