Nostalgia: she's a beast

From D.W.: I know that, in the larger landscape of issues that involve actual, real human suffering, that the White House is just a building. And it's a building with no shortage of historical trauma in its DNA, having been built by forced labor on stolen land. I've surprised myself at how visceral my reaction to its partial destruction has been. It's a monument, at times, most times, to the best of our aspirations, but at other times, to the worst of our compulsions. Not all monuments need to last forever. Some should be destroyed. Ripped apart. Crushed. Melted down.

... and yet...

There are some symbols that don't, and shouldn't, go lightly away from your conscience. The monuments in this nation mean something, and the most meaningful of them shouldn't be tossed aside on the whims of a leader who feels no responsibility to those they're supposed to lead.

Rachel had a deep connection with our nation's capital. She spent a formative year working there just after college. Made lifelong friends and deepened her understanding of what it means to be a Christian, an American, and a good human. I was sent to D.C. for a week in the Spring of 2013 to work on a show for the Arena Theatre and was fortunate to be allowed to bring Rachel with me. We spent everyday after I got off work walking around the Mall, touring the Smithsonian collections, marveling at the public architecture. It was fantastic.

Last year, about a week before the 2024 election, I stopped by D.C. and left some of her ashes in the National Mall, about halfway between the White House and the Lincoln Memorial (don't tell the NPS). I sat on a bench and remembered. All of it. And I'm grateful now that I didn't have to hear the sound of bulldozers in the background tearing it all down.

Facebook. August 24th. 2015

Fifteen years ago, I got off the train from San Marcos to DC and began a brand new big-girl adventure. I became a fully-fledged adult that year, and nothing has been the same since. I am so grateful for that year, and for the friendships that continue to feed my soul and show me the face of Jesus.

Facebook. April 26th. 2018

Even better than the grinding saw noises from yesterday: jackhammers AND a back-hoe thingy with a jackhammer attachment. It's super great that I don't have a job that requires me to be able to think or concentrate at all during the day...

Dear Eight Pound, Six Ounce Baby Jesus...I'm about to lose my manners--ALL MY MANNERS--about this.

Confidential to the Contractor Sign outside of my office, proclaiming that "This Project will be finished on April 13, 2018": YOU ARE A LYING LIAR OF LIES.

Facebook. May 6th. 2023

I watched it so that when all the kids have kids of their own, I can tell them I watched the very last one of these ever. That in my middle age I watched the last of the truly old empires finally dissolve. That we got brave and kind and figured out how to be safely uncomfortable rather than uncomfortably safe and started telling hard truths with militant grace and reparative Justice as our guides. And that we finally stopped doing it because it’s gross and rotten and rooted in lies and the disenfranchisement, disappearance, enslavement, fraud, death, desecration, racism, ableism, ethnocentrism, erasure of LQBTQIA individuals, colonial rape and pillage, and also the unholy coupling of church and state. It’s not good for a single human person — not one.

Long Valley Lane. November 14th. 2008

nostalgia: she's a beast.

i remember standing there, in the coldest rain i can remember, singing with pete seeger at the top of my lungs. my roommate mike had come home three days before, and with not too much arm-twisting, convinced me to take a bus ride to someplace in georgia i'd never even heard of. considering that i worked for a bunch of hippie liberals, getting friday and monday off was a snap. explaining to my family that i was leaving dc for the weekend, in the company of total strangers, except for mike, who was a stranger to them, was kind of hard sell. telling your conservative momma and grandparents that you are going to attend a protest at a high profile military installation is a ticklish kind of thing to do. i suppose they just shook their heads, said a prayer, and figured it was something i needed to get out of my system.

what i didn't know about geopolitics, even after graduating from college with a minor in political science, could have filled the grand canyon. i spent my time in college reading about the rise of empire, the divine right of kings, and aristotelian political theory. i spent very little time in the modern era...and the time i did spend there, i spent reading about the palestinian/israeli conflict. i was guilty, according ts eliot, of neglecting and belittling the desert that lay in my own backyard. and i was coming into my adulthood at a time when that desert was filled with voices crying in the wilderness, begging for someone to listen. i was 21 when the big protests at the imf and world bank happened, happily ensconced in my little life in san marcos, trying to finish my degree, and sweltering through another texas summer. i remember seeing the protests on tv and changing the channel to "behind the music"...sometimes you just can't stand to see the reality that is staring you back in the face.

by the time i got to dc, in the summer of 2000, 12 days after i graduated from college, the tenor of the conversation, the realization that things were happening that i had no idea about, knocked me for a loop. as a person, i was just really coming into my own...moving away from home was just the tip of the iceberg. i think most people come to a point in their young adult lives when they realize that they are no longer simply their parents' child, they have become something beyond that. i was, and still am, profoundly proud to be my parents' child. but my identity isn't nearly as wrapped up in that persona as it was when i was 21. things have happened, i have seen things, done things, been a part of things that have happened far from the reach of their hands, physical and metaphorical. those things have shaped me as much as the time i spent in their house. and i am equally grateful for both. that being said, i think most people go through a time in their lives when they stand everything they thought they knew and believed on its head...and you see what sticks.

what stuck for me was remembering that i grew up in a house that believed in God. i grew up in a house that believed in the goodness of people, that believed how you treated people mattered, that even nasty people deserved to be treated well. i never believed that the world was a fair place, but i learned that i could deal fairly with people, and that made all the difference. i learned that standing up for the right, true, and good things is hard, but necessary, and that the licks you take for doing that are always worth it, no matter the cost. i learned that the measure of a person isn't about what's in your bank account, but what's in your heart and what comes out of your mouth. and so, as i felt myself thinking all these big thoughts, wrestling with issues i'd never contemplated, i had a good foundation to build upon.

and so i went to georgia...to find out what i did not know. i wasn't silly enough to believe that the story i heard in georgia was the gospel truth about what was happening in latin america. history is rarely unbiased, regardless of whether it is written by the victors or the victims. but i knew i wanted to know a different part of the story. to be honest, i felt like a charlatan, a voyeur, an interloper. here i was, a middle class kid with a middle class education, who didn't even know if she was a republican or a democrat, who didn't know anything about the sandinistas, or the contras, or nicaragua, or archbishop romero, and i was smack in the middle of a discussion of all those things. i remember being silent for so much of the time i was there...just taking it all in, reading pamphlet after pamphlet, trying to make sense of what i was reading. and i felt like so...unfaithful. both my grandfathers and one of my grandmothers had been in the military. my uncle was in the navy. my great-grandfather fought in wwi, and i had been taught my whole life to be patriotic, to support the troops, to be reverent almost. and here i was, standing in the middle of a cold fall rain, in protest at a military base. to say that i was conflicted would be an understatement of gigantic proportions. and i still feel conflicted.

what i do know is this...i have a profound and deep sense of respect and admiration and gratitude for the men and women in the armed forces. they keep us safe. they are volunteers. they leave me breathless with their selflessness in the face of incredibly difficult circumstances. they don't get to vote about where they go or what they do. they are so incredibly brave. and they deserve to have policies that reflect that bravery and honor. and i believe to this day that the policy i was protesting deserved that protest, on their behalf, because they could not do it themselves.

i'm not going to write a diatribe about how awful the school of the americas is. i'm not going to go off on some rant about how crappy governmental subterfuge is, or why i think the geneva accords are subverted in the name of national security or global stabilization. those things are a matter of public record, and the proof of the pudding is written in miles of newsprint. and i'm sure the school of the americas has graduated some upstanding and decent people, and that the instructors there are not all cyborgs with lumps of coal where their hearts should be. what i am going to say is that america deserves better. our men and women in the field, sleeping cold and hungry in the name of freedom and peace, deserve better. i pray that we are coming to a time when we can say that, demand that, and achieve that.

as i stood in the rain listening to speaker after speaker talking about mid-night raids in el salvador, nuns and priests murdered for standing up to political juntas, men and women who had been kidnapped and tortured for disagreeing with their own governments, i found myself marveling at the wonder of my own government. we have come so far...we still have so far to go.

so, as i sit on my little balcony, on a mild november night, i remember. and i hope.

mil besos,
rmg