Today I received my first set of tattoos.1 It took me many years to come up with something that I felt was meaningful enough to make a permanent part of my external appearance. Ultimately, I was able to develop a short poem in Koine Greek that hit the mark for me. What follows is a sort of theological meditation on the text and the meaning of these tattoos.

The text in Greek:2

ἐν ἀρχῇ ὁ λόγος
ἐν τέλει ὁ χορός

And translated into English:

In the beginning [was] the Word
In the end [will be] the Chorus

John the Theologian makes an astonishing claim in the first sentence of his Gospel about the primacy of the ontology of the “Word” (including in its semantic constellation categories like Relation, Story, or Reason): it is coeval with God, in fact it is coextensive with God. Even more astonishing, several sentences later, he makes the claim that this primal category of existence became human flesh—became one of us, in all the important ways that make you you and me me.

The prophet Isaiah declares that the Word of God shall not return void, and trinitarian theology sees this fact as part of the very fabric of reality: the Word proceeds from the Father (as the Son) so as to save, collect, and preserve all of Creation, returning it to its Creator in a joyful reunion. A word that is spoken into nothingness is of no value, for soliloquy is the domain of solipsism. A word that is spoken to a featureless surface and bounces back as a mere echo is similarly void, however resounding. But a Word that is caught by its hearers, that effects change, and that elicits a conversation in response—that is the Word which does not return void.

And so, in almost syllogistic (literally, “together-with-the-word”) fashion, we realize that the point of the Word is to produce many other words in response. The point of the Son is to bring all of Creation into the relation of restored childhood with the Father. The point of the first Word spoken in the darkness is to create the the light necessary for life. And the point of the Word spoken into human flesh is to enable all flesh to speak to God. But do we imagine a cacophony of voices shouting unintelligibly? No! The proper mode of diverse oral unity is not speaking (which can ultimately only mean speaking over one another) but singing, together. Only in singing are words from multiple parties joined temporally in mutual respect and harmony. They blend, creating something new and better without loss of person or agency. Therefore, the proper auditory image is not the atonal conversation of a debate, but rather antiphony, call-and-response, the bid of the lover and the reply of the beloved. First the Word, then the Chorus. When the Chorus joins the Word, the distinctions between the two matter less than they did before. When humankind joins the Son as children of God, the Son becomes “merely” the eldest brother, the first-born of a new kind of creature. The Word lassos and lifts; it does not return void. It grants existence without being made less itself. The relationship between God and Creation is anything but zero-sum.

The existence of God as Word shows us God as yearning, more than anything else, to be joined in song by other words, by we who have heard the first Word and who have chosen to sing in reply through the patterning of our lives. Each voice that answers the Word in song has its own character, its own timbre, its own language, and these differences are not erased when joined in the mighty chorus with others; rather, they meld into something impossible, individual yet corporate, the distinction between sum and parts having become a category error. The ineffable movement and infinite song of Dante’s comic apex is captured in the χορός, because this word in Greek is the root not only of “chorus” but of “choreography”. When we respond to the Word we do not do so with verbal statements, but with our singing voices and our moving bodies, the inscribers upon physical reality of the Word’s work upon our hearts.

The fact that “Word” is the primary ontological category, not just in the sense of time but also in the sense of preeminence, implies that “Chorus” (known variously as theosis, the beatific vision, and so on) is the primary teleological category, not just in the sense of time but also in the sense of purpose. The Word that spoke the universe into being also apparently spoke Aramaic, through trachea and tongue, creating pressure waves of sound, which reverberated eventually, with many twists and turns, into my ears, transformed but retaining their essence. The choice that remained for me was merely whether to join the Chorus or to remain silent. And in a way it was never really a choice, because whatever else I am, I am a musician. I will always choose the song, the “yes”, over the silence of the void.

Notes

1. The tattoo was inked by Jessica Puska; very happy with her work!
2. Many thanks to Seumas Macdonald who helped to ensure the Greek was sensible and correct.

Recently, it occurred to me that there is something else I can do. Something that won’t fit in a tweet or be very popular. Something that might be long, hard to deal with, or uncomfortable to read. Something that may or may not connect with any audience. But there is something that can help me, at least, plumb more of the depths of the dark cancer that gnaws at the heart of potential reconciliation in our country. I can talk about my racism. I can talk about what part I play, or have played, in this drama that we’re so shamefully writing as a society.

“Hold on a minute”, everyone who knows me will say. “Isn’t this just some kind of false humility, or publicity stunt, or exercise in link-baiting? You’re the last person I would call a racist!” And indeed, there is much to my credit, both ideologically and in my actions, with regard to love and respect for people of all races and persuasions. I live in San Francisco, arguably the least ideologically-racist city in America. I’m a software developer, working in a field that many like to think of as a meritocracy. I’m a fan of diversity, inclusion, and non-violence. I talk to everyone I meet on the street or in bars or restaurants with respect, regardless of their skin color or social position. I’m what many would consider a radical feminist, acknowledging the unjust system of male domination that has irrevocably shaped the workings of society since the beginnings of society (a system, I would argue, that has deeper and stronger roots even than racism). I lived in Kenya for almost a year, volunteering to help make the lives and prospects of African orphans better. I did my best to learn Swahili so as not to participate in the implicit colonial narrative of a white person in Africa. I became a vegetarian because the children I was with could not afford to eat meat. Ask any of my friends, and they’ll tell you that I’m an all-around bridge-building type of person. So in what crazy possible world would I be counted among “racists”?

Unfortunately, that world is all too actual. Racism is not just about our beliefs, what we would claim, or even our conscious actions. It’s much more often implicit, pre-arranged; it’s in the air we breathe. The world comes to us racist. The structures of society are set up as positive feedback mechanisms, and those of us that benefit by being on the upward spiral can easily go through life without seeing how those benefits are often powered by some form of racism or sexism. This is just the way things are set up. Of course, these structures encourage narratives that can birth a more overt form of racism as well.

I grew up in North-Central Texas, in a small town outside of Dallas. Neither of my parents were from Texas, and we didn’t move there until I was 6, so we didn’t feel very “Texan”, but I soon learned about the centuries-deep furrows that “race” had carved into the social soil. My Junior High and High School were pretty diverse, with (I think) less than 50% White students, and substantial Black and Hispanic populations. It was also highly segregated. Friendships did not easily cross racial boundaries, and while there must have been one or two, I can’t remember specifically any interracial romantic relationships. Neighborhoods were also fairly segregated. My neighborhood (predominantly White) bordered on another neighborhood (predominantly Black). I remember the first time I was driven to a house in that latter, poorer neighborhood. It was made obvious to me through what those around me were saying that this neighborhood was “worse”, that it was dangerous, and that our friends who lived there were surely only doing so because, as poor missionaries, they couldn’t afford to live in a “better” area. Why was the neighborhood worse and dangerous? There may not have been an explicit link, but it was described as being a “Black” neighborhood. As a result, I believe that my first racist feeling was one of fear. Black people were dangerous, and I shouldn’t go to this area on my own.

And so, in my experience, Black people were talked about in general as a “they”. They were a “they” because we didn’t have Black friends, and it allowed us to lump all of these people together in our minds according to this one attribute that they shared: skin color. And again, because we didn’t bother to differentiate between this or that Black person (which we could have done by making friends with Black people, for example), many negative adjectives (“dangerous”, “low class”, “aggressive”) were taken to apply not just to this category of people, but back again to individuals. This is how a stereotype succeeds in its self-sustaining reaction: the two reagents (“white” and “black”) were close enough to combust, but not close enough to forestall a meltdown.

In Junior High, I made a friend on the school bus. We both played trumpet in band, and liked to read books, and we began to sit together on the way to school. He was Black, though, and I soon discovered the awkwardness of enjoying being with him on one hand, and then on the other hand listening to my White friends making fun of him behind his back. Some of it was normal kid stuff that I also suffered—he was a “nerd”, and he had a funny last name that led to the kind of crude and cruel puns junior-highers are known for. I also had to deal with this kind of thing. But some of the mockery was about his appearance, specifically his “huge lips”, which was derogatory code for his being “really Black”. I’m deeply sad to say that, in the face of this kind of social pressure, I increasingly avoided him until we no longer spent any time together. It’s this kind of non-action, not any overt pro-action, that characterizes my racism, and much of the implicit racism in our culture. Did I personally make fun of him? No. I even said (feebly), “Hey, he’s actually pretty cool” one or two times. But at the end of the day, did I disturb the status quo for the sake of a promising geeky friendship? No. And so the train rolls on, and the wheels bite ever deeper into the grooves of the age-old carnival ride we wish we would end.

It’s not just about staying quiet while my friends told racist jokes, or when they laughed about what some “crazy nigger” did, or when they viewed a Black woman as a totally different kind of sex object than a White woman. It wasn’t just how I contributed, because of my own sharp need to be accepted by my peers, to the endemic racism in our society. It was also what I missed out on! How impoverished was I, who could have experienced so many more kinds of relationship in life! But it’s not that simple. By the time you’re a teenager in a society like this, race-driven “culture” has shaped you just as much as latent ideas about race itself. For a few weeks in a row, my family went to a nearby Black church. I’m not sure why. Maybe (let’s be generous) we were moved by a desire to see the unity of the Church crossing racial boundaries. All I can remember is being terrified—the only White kid in a sea of Black people, everyone looking and waving and Hallelujah-ing at me the whole time. I felt embarrassed both by their exuberance and then by my own cultural faux pas of not jumping and raising my hands in praise. Race aside, I found it impossible to connect with the culture of that place. I couldn’t understand or affirm the constant shouting and hand-waving. I couldn’t understand or affirm the expensive suits and showy preaching. And so on. To an introverted geek, it was a cultural nightmare.

Reflecting now, it may also have been exactly the kind of thing that my 14-year-old self needed in order to become a less withdrawn, lonely, and isolated kid, but that ship has sailed. My point is simply that living in a segregated society from early on, and the early whispered conversations about Black people as a “they”, set in motion a force very much like compound interest. By the time I was 14, Black culture was already so ineffable and threatening to me given my own cultural background that from that point on I haven’t really been able to make any Black (that is, culturally “Black”) friends. “I just don’t get the culture”, I’ve heard myself say in the past—this coming from a person who’s traveled the world, lived abroad, and studied many cultures, including in Africa!

But you know, society has conspired to keep me from having to really look at that head-on. I left Texas before my Senior year of High School, and headed to Florida, where the race dialogue was different (and I spoke Spanish, so no problems there). Then on to sunny, perfect, California for college and most of the rest of my subsequent story. I now live in San Francisco, the techno-Mecca where as a society we’ve gotten rid of everyone, like most Black people, who can’t afford to “pay to play” (except for the homeless, who from many citizens’ perspectives just haven’t had the good grace to shuffle on).

It was only recently, when White-on-Black police brutality and terrorism began to surface in the news, that I was turned on to a stream of different voices. Reading the #drivingwhileblack tweets, for example, helped me begin to understand the basic experience of life from a Black perspective, and how different that is from my own. Ultimately, it motivated me to share my own small, ugly story. Just a drop in an overwhelming sea of ugliness, to be sure, but a drop nonetheless. I have no illusions that these confessions or reflections are valid penance, or that penance is even what is necessary. Nor am I writing out of “White man’s guilt” or “White man’s shame”. Nor do I deny that I have been bullied by Black kids while growing up, in situations where it seemed to have been at least partially racially motivated. Racism, as I’ve pointed out many times, is a systemic as well as a personal issue, and it emphatically must be spoken to and about on that systemic level. But I think we have the best chance of facing the systemic issues effectively when we’ve already faced them in our own hearts, and our own bodies, and our own relationships. 20 years ago, with my Black friend on the school bus, I was not able to “speak truth to power”. Today, I might be one small step closer.

I don’t think the conversation in America should be about whether so-and-so is racist, or even asking the question, “am I racist?” I think we need to readily acknowledge that we are racist, and quickly move on from there to ask the harder, more revealing, and more powerful question: “what does my racism look like?”. We need to go from denial to doubt to admission to finally getting our hands dirty with the realities of our individual racisms. The amazing thing is, if we can deal with this, I think we’ll be able to see more clearly how racism is just one species of otherism, the fundamental pushing-away and dehumanizing of those who aren’t “like me”. I think we’ll be more willing to see, then, our own (and society’s) fundamental misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, etc… I sincerely hope that one day I can live in a world where my own brokenness (as I’ve described above), or the brokenness of the system, or even the brokenness of someone who is doing me wrong, don’t mean that I’m forever closed to the way someone else sees the world. In that scenario, we all lose.

I am not here to heap guilt and condemnation on someone who’s not ready to acknowledge what lies in their own heart. I am here to engage in an act of public confession, hoping that it will lead, not to others’ similar confessions, but to my own redemption. What I’m doing now takes infinitely less courage than to face the murderer of one’s family and say, “Since Jesus forgives you, I also forgive you”. But I hope it is an incremental step in my own journey of becoming more courageous to act and speak in situations where an individual or a system threatens the personhood of one of my fellow human beings, especially when that fellow human being is difficult for me to understand or to love.

The antidote to my—indeed, our—racisms is not for us to become “color-blind”, but rather for us to hear the stories, and acknowledge the realities, of people of all colors, to allow their Otherness to penetrate through the scars of our own wounds and suffocate the worms of fear, guilt, and shame, fertilizing with their decomposition a new soil in our hearts. Only then will we see others with respect, and only then will we be able to be something more than a land void of racism. Then will we enter the promised land that Dr. King foresaw, a land defined not by the absence of hate but by the presence of love.

[Photo: a street in the author’s Texas hometown] [Edit: Some discussion is happening on Hacker News]

Two factors draw me back to the blog despite overwhelming opposition from laziness (among other things): first, Jessica has been encouraging me to write on certain topics we discuss from time to time. Second, I haven’t been to my Facebook homepage in four months, and thus have a list of things I actually want to say to The Internet which haven’t been said even in short form.

The purpose of this post is simply to clear the stage, and as such is primarily for myself. It simply wouldn’t do, in my brain at least, to go from an entry about the release of Summer of Rock 2009 to a discussion about the linguistic behavior of Americans in Oxford, 16 months later. And that is partly why the longer I waited to write, the less inclined I was to do so. Now that’s changed.

In short–coming soon: something else!