On Race and Nationality: George Washington Carver

There is a constant struggle in theology between liberalism and conservatism when it comes to God’s relationship to the world. Liberalism argues that, while humans are not perfect, they are good enough to make positive changes in the world. Conservatism tends to focus on human sin, arguing that, while forgiven and redeemed, humans continue to put selfishness before the needs of others.

As an example, in recent American history, the Social Gospel Movement--at the beginning of the 20^thcentury--argued that humans, guided by God’s love and purpose, could continue to make the world a better and more humane place. Two World Wars then gave birth to Neo-Orthodoxy, a type of conservatism that focused on the inability of sinful humans to move beyond evil to create a better world.

In light of this theological and spiritual struggle it is enlightening to reflect on the life and mission of George Washington Carver, whose birthplace and National Historical Site I visited last month in Diamond Grove, Missouri.

Nationalism, by definition, creates an “us versus them” dichotomy, and often that distinction is based on race. Our nation began with the violent displacement of Native Americans and the bringing of Africans in chains across the ocean to do the work that whites did not want to do. There were many dimensions to the Civil War, but one of them was the moral struggle to place the human rights of slaves above the nationalistic intent of the Confederacy to continue to maintain itself on the backs of those slaves. 

It was into this situation that George Washington Carver was born into slavery right near the end of the Civil War. Even though the Civil War would soon end, that hardly put an end to racism. As George himself wrote, as a young boy “my sister, mother, and myself were ku Cluckled (this was his exact wording, meaning that the Carver farm was raided) and they were sold back into slavery in Arkansas. However, Moses and Susan Carver sent a man with money to buy them back. George was the only one he found (he never learned what happened to his mother and sister) and, in his words, he was “brought back, nearly dead with the whooping cough.”

Never treated by the Carvers as a slave, and too weak physically to do much work, George spent his days wandering in the woods by the stream in Diamond Grove that you can still visit today. He had an intense desire for knowledge, and cared for all the plants and flowers growing around him. In fact, he became known as the “Plant Doctor,” not just because he used plants to heal, but because he learned how to heal pants damaged by wind or rain.

Soon he wanted to expand his knowledge by going to school but the local schools would not accept blacks, and so George walked 8 miles to nearby Nesbo, which accepted blacks in their school. Schooling in several different places followed this until he was accepted into Simpson College in Winterset, Iowa, where, as the only black student, he achieved a degree in art. From there he went to what is now Iowa State University and earned both Bachelor and Masters in Agriculture degrees. It was shortly thereafter that George was invited by Booker T. Washington to head the new agricultural department at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama.

George’s special concern was how newly freed slaves on their small plots of land could possibly compete with the large cotton-raising plantations. He created a demonstration wagon that went around to small farmers to teach them the best farming techniques. And then he developed new uses for peanuts and soybeans, which would both enrich the soil and create new products for market. He discovered over 300 uses for peanuts, including rubbing oil used in massage therapy with polio patients.

George first gained national attention in 1921 when he testified before a US House committee debating a peanut tariff bill. At first members of the committee made fun of him and his peanut research. However George--with the same demeanor Jackie Robinson would later demonstrate--kept his cool and won the committee over with his research and wisdom. Eventually he would be invited to speak at universities where African Americans had never been invited to speak before, and he became a symbol of interracial cooperation.

George traced his spirituality back to his time as a youth in nature, writing, “All my life I have risen regularly at four o'clock and have gone into the woods and talked to God. There He gives me my orders for the day."

One of those orders included his research with peanuts. As he explains, with humor, “When I was young I said to God, ‘God, tell me the mystery of the universe.’ But God answered, ‘That knowledge is reserved for me alone.’ So I said, ‘God, tell me the mystery of the peanut.’ Then God said, ‘Well George, that's more nearly your size.’ And he told me."

George traced the root of racism back to fear, writing, “Fear of something is at the root of hate for others, and hate within will eventually destroy the hater. . . . . .We are brothers, all of us, no matter what race or color or condition; children of the same Heavenly Father. We rise together or we fall together.”

He then tried in his own life to model a moving away from fear and selfishness to a deeper understanding of the meaning and purpose of life: “Selfishness and self are at the bottom of a lot of troubles in the world. So many people fail to realize that serving God and one’s fellowman are the only worthwhile things in life. It is service that counts.”

As during the Civil Rights tour we took throughout the South in 2012, I am so impressed by how our National Park Service has created and maintains sites that describe the struggle to indeed form a “more perfect union” by overcoming the racism that was inherent in our founding. However, the rise of white nationalism, anti-Semitism, prejudice again immigrants, and all kinds of racism remind us that proclaiming “never again” is not a statement that can be said once, and then forgotten, but is a constant struggle in the ongoing journey toward freedom, justice, reconciliation and the creation of community.

 

Solace of Fierce Landscapes:: Part VI: Beyond Boundary Violations to the Mystery of God, and Each Other

Our lives are filled with boundary violations. “You need to lose weight.” “You are not parenting correctly.” “You don’t work hard enough.” “Why don’t you study harder?” “Get over your depression!” “When will you ever get your life together?”

We humans mistake intimacy for closeness. We long for loving, close relationships, and assume we will get there by being more intimate. We want to know everything about each other, and we assume we know enough about each other to tell each other what to do. Hence, the nearly endless boundary violations.

A therapist of mine, years ago, said to me very quietly, as I was trying to understand my relationship with my older brother: “Brian, everyone does what they do for a reason. The problem is: we may never know what that reason is, and that person themselves may not know. So much of our lives is unconscious.”

For example, we can focus forever on what we feel our parents did wrong by us, or we can accept the fact that we may never know why they parented the way they did, and they may not have known why they were doing what they were doing. And, guess what? We don’t need to know. We can choose to live in grace, accepting that they did the best they could, and we are doing the best we can. This does not mean we don’t try to grow in wisdom and loving actions. It means that we are wise to accept that there are limits to our ability to know and understand and that our lives and relationships will always have a large degree of mystery about them.

Boundary violations also work against our relationship to God. We assume that we know more about God than we do, and that we have the right to tell God what to do. This ranges from asking God to provide victory in a football game, to telling God to give me a certain job or make my child behave in a certain way, to thinking if I pray hard enough I  will be healed of a serious illness. The Scriptures invite us to bring all of our concerns, worries and hopes to God, but that is not the same as telling God what has to be done.

Whether we are in a desert experience of desperation or a mountaintop experience of insight, the cloud reminds us that we will never see clearly in this life, and that much of life will ever remain a mystery.

As stated in the introduction to this series on Nature Spirituality, Lane explains that the Christian apophatic tradition, in the via negativa, “rejects all analogies of God as ultimately inadequate,” [p. 4] whether from language or nature. Yet, paradoxically, this tradition uses the three spare and lean images of desert, mountain and cloud to bring us to the most profound and ultimately indescribable human experiences of joy and pain, and of who God is in reference to these experiences.

While there is obviously value in metaphorical images of God (and the Bible uses many of them), yet there is danger as well. We may use those images to try to control God, and assume we know God better than we do. The strength of the apophatic way is that it keeps us constantly aware of the limits of language, including metaphor, to adequately describe everything about God. For all that we may know and believe, there is so much more we do not know.

Pseudo-Dionysius (a Syrian monk in the 6th century) attempts to explain this distinction by referring to Moses assent up Mount Sinai. On the mountain,”beyond the summit of every holy ascent,” Moses was plunged into “a truly mysterious darkness.” He was not allowed to see the total splendor of God’s being and majesty, but only to see the place where God dwells (See Exodus 33:21) By doing this Pseudo-Dionysius is making a crucial distinction between the essence of God (unknowable to humans) and what God does reveal to us about God’s self [See Lane, pp. 64-65].

Lane writes, “Apophatic tradition, despite its distrust of all images of God, makes an exception in using the imagery of threatening places as a way of challenging the ego and leaving one at a loss for words. If we cannot know God’s essence, we can stand in God’s place—on the high mountain, in the lonely desert, at the point where terror gives way to wonder. Only there do we enter the abandonment, the agnosia, that is finally necessary for meeting God. [bid.]

It is only when we give up our need to control God, including how God is defined and imaged, that we become open to revelations of who God really is, and what God wants for us and for the world. This is one more aspect of grace, in which we learn how to respect boundaries and accept that there is so much of life that ever remains mystery.

With this comes the “peace that passes all understanding"  (in the phrase of St. Paul) as we turn ourselves over to this God who remains beyond our comprehensions and give up the desire to control the ways of God and how others choose to live their lives.

Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Part V: Finding Your Own Desert Place for Revelation

The technical definition of a desert is an arid land with sparse vegetation in a warm climate having less than ten inches of rainfall per year. Merriam-Webster also calls it a "desolate or forbidding area." So while not all of these pictures are technically deserts by the first definition, they can all be by the second. Throughout the United States you can find vast and remote spaces that evoke the emotional feeling of desert, where one feels alone, powerless, and open to the revelation of God. 

The first picture is of the Verde Valley in Arizona. This is what we call high desert. I have already shown a picture of the high desert of the Navajos in an earlier blog.

 This second picture was taken near the Ute Mountains in southwestern Colorado, another example of high desert. These qualify as deserts in the technical as well as the emotional sense.

These third and fourth pictures are of the the prairies of Wyoming and South Dakota, respectively. While not deserts in the technical sense, you can sense the great vastness that intrigued Native Americans who hunted them for buffalo and antelope. Interestingly enough, on hills in these prairies those Native Americans would go and sit for several days in a Vision Quest, seeking revelation and illumination from God. These lands look safe enough in the spring. But wait until winter. Temperatures in the Dakotas can drop to twenty below, and stay below zero for a month at a time. Add deep snow and icy cold winds out of Canada, bringing a wind chill of fifty below, and you have desolation.

This picture is from my home state, the Badlands of North Dakota, where Teddy Roosevelt liked to spend his vacations hunting and fishing. They have a feeling of both prairie and desert at the same time. However, for Teddy this desolate prairie would eventually become more important than as a place to hunt. , "After losing first his mother and then his wife on a single day in February 1884, Dakota became a place where Roosevelt could heal and move forward with his life. His days were spent riding alone through the wilderness, a spiritual storyline as old as human history. He would exhaust his body physically, riding, hunting, roping and ranching. He would write three books about his experiences in the west. In time, Roosevelt returned to society, resumed his public service career, and established a family."  [Theodore Roosevelt National Park website.]

Wherever one lives, whether near a desert or not, we can find those vast, uninhabited spaces that call us to relinquishment and open us to the vastness and grandeur of God. Take time to go there and just sit, breathing in the beauty and mystery of God's creation. And perhaps God will speak to you just the Word you need to hear.

Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Part IV: We Return, Remembering

Here we see desert, mountain, and cloud, along with the Great Sand Dunes of  Colorado

How marvelous it is to be on the mountaintop, receiving revelation and illumination. How marvelous it is to be in the cloud, feeling so close to God. Yet there is an irony in the cloud. Yes, we do see the world more from God’s eyes, but not completely.

For the top of the mountain is enshrouded by a cloud, and we cannot see the very top. And the cloud extends beyond the top of the mountain. As Luther understood so well, God ever remains a hidden God.

As we step into the cloud, we also begin to lose ourselves. We sense mystical union with God, we sense God’s presence, we feel God’s grace and love, but there ever remains that mysterious distance. The mystics call it a “brilliant darkness.” Rudolf Otto called it the numinous, the “idea of the holy” that is always out of our touch.

We want to remain in that mystical union, in that mountaintop experience. Our human nature is to grasp, to grab, to try to control and keep. But just as one grabs a butterfly, crushing it in the process, so our attempts to cling to people or to control the ways of God end up destroying the very gifts we seek. We weary of the journey, and want to “arrive” once and for all; but that is not the nature of life. Life ever remains a journey, with its joys and hardships, its satisfactions and losses, it deserts, mountains, and clouds.

Like Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration, we cannot stay there. Over and over again we will return to the desert. Our joy will turn to sorrow, our feeling of union to experiences of abandonment and rejection.

We will again experience the metaphysical pain of mortality, of finiteness. But, having been to the mountaintop, we will not lose faith. We will understand ever more deeply that our love and joy are tied to our losses and grief.

Here is one of those strange times in life when the mental trumps the emotional. We remember. Yes, we remember. Just as the Israelites remembered how God had been faithful to God’s promises in the past, so they trusted God would be faithful to them in the future. We, too, in our times of sorrow and loss, remember the mountaintop revelations we have had. We remember those rare but unforgettable experiences in the cloud when we felt so very, very close to God, even “at one” with God. As we remember, we receive the strength and fortitude we need to move on. 

We may even begin to love the desert, because, as painful as the desert always is, it is the beginning point of revelation, and, like Jesus, we return to it again and again to face our pain and temptations, and in the process find the courage and direction we need for our lives, again and again.

Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Part III: Cloud

Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) Mountains, Southern Colorado

If the desert is the place of loneliness, isolation, temptation, and a thirsting after God, and if the mountain is the place of insight, revelation, and illumination, then the cloud is the rare, but powerful, experience of mystical union with God, when one feels “at one” with God and the world. It is the reward for exercising great patience, being willing and able “to wait” and “to ponder,” as Mary did as she awaited the birth of the Christ child.

It is easy to get discouraged along the way, because the journey up the mountain can be long, dangerous, and exhausting. We are constantly tempted to simply “give up.” On top of this, sometimes we fear new revelation because we know it may radically change us. Strange as it may seem, we humans at times become comfortable in our pain. As Sheldon Kopp wrote, there are times when a person “prefers the security of known misery to the misery of unfamiliar insecurity.” [If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him, 1972]

And so we begin to climb, but it seems so far. So very far. We look back to the valley below. It seems safer there. It would be so easy to return to the valley below, even though it is the valley of the shadow of death. (Psalm 23). We deceive ourselves into thinking we can go back. And often we do. But then, by God’s grace, there are those times when we gather courage.

We look up again. We begin climbing again. Step by step, trusting grace and joy await us. And then an amazing thing happens. A hand reaches down and begins to lift us up. We arrive at the summit. We feel a mystical union with God beyond description and comprehension. We lose ourselves in God. Our separate identity is gone. We feel pure grace. We know we are loved with an everlasting love. This is what the Celtics call a "thin place," where the boundary between God and us is nearly erased.

It was in the pillar of cloud that Moses spoke with God “face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” (Exodus 33:11)

Our hearts are also filled with indescribable love for all people. It is when we finally relinquish the need to control, when we have gone so deeply into solitude that it appears we are indifferent to the world, that the deepest love and compassion are born. [See Lane, pp. 167-173]

Trappist Monk, Thomas Merton, writes of just such an experience in his life: “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world. . . . This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. “ [Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander].

I remember having such an experience just  across the US/Mexico border near Juarez, Mexico. For years I had taken youth and adults to a little village just outside of Juarez, Lomos de Poleo, so that we could learn more about border issues, immigration, and the poverty that grips so much of Mexico. I first took my son, Brian, there after his junior year in high school, and he returned after his senior year. His time there had a profound impact on his life, leading him to change his college majors to Spanish and Global Studies, which he pursued at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma.

The summer after he graduated from college our family went to Lomos to visit our many friends there. After a hearty meal of tamales, we gathered in a circle to visit. I was about to wrap up the conversation when Brian stopped me and said he wanted to say something. In fluent Spanish he thanked this community of people for the love and hospitality he had experienced in this village, how that had changed his career path, and he then shared that whenever over the years he had become discouraged, he was uplifted by the memory of their perseverance in the midst of such great poverty and oppression.” We sat silently for several moments in our tears, and I knew for certain that I was on holy ground.

Finally, the cloud reminds us of that final act of relinquishment, when in death we are given entirely to God. (Lane, pp. 152-54)

In the midst of the cloud, one cannot see very far, if at all. One can no longer navigate one’s own course. We sense the presence of God, and now is the time to give ourselves over to God. We “let go” of our own need to steer, and turn ourselves over to God fully. We do not know exactly what awaits us, but we trust that it is good, because it comes from our loving God who guides us in life, and receives us in death. Like Jesus, our final words can be, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” [Luke 23:46]

Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Part II: Mountain

If the desert is the place of loneliness, isolation, temptation, and a thirsting after God, the mountaintop is the place of insight, revelation, and illumination. This spiritual concept has even made it into our common, cultural language, as when someone exclaims that they have had a “mountaintop experience!”

In the midst of the pain and sense of being lost that we often feel in the desert, we may, like the Psalmist, look up to the hills, from whence our help is to come, from the maker of heaven and earth. [Psalm 121] “Give us your grace, O God!” we cry. “Hold us! Heal us! Make us whole.”

We long for knowledge, insight, and inspiration. We want to see the world, and our lives, from the perspective of God. Like Moses on Mount Sinai, we long for revelation. “Show us your truth, O God.”

This understanding of mountaintop revelation is carried on metaphorically by the prophets, often tied to the holy city of Jerusalem. In the words of Isaiah 2:3:

“Many peoples shall come and say,

‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

   to the house of the God of Jacob;

that he may teach us his ways,

   and that we may walk in his paths.  For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,  and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.'"

For Jesus the mountain is a place of prayer. "After he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray.” [Matthew 14:23]  The mountain is also where he is transfigured before his disciples, and they hear God pronounce that Jesus is his “beloved Son,” to whom they are to listen. [Mark 9:7]

What do we mean when we state that we have had a mountaintop experience? It could be an emotional experience that we find exhilarating, as when we feel a loving, closeness to another person. It could be a moment of revelation, when we suddenly see God or other people in a new way. It could be a time when we finally figure out our sense of call in terms of what we want to do with our lives. It might be an especially strong sense of community, as when we work on an important project with others, or join together in worship and praise of God.

Part of the struggle of life is that we not only do not have as many mountaintop experiences as we would like to have, but so often they are very slow in coming.

This second stage is the most like ordinary time, which is often monotonous and dull. It is often a time of waiting. It takes a long time to climb a mountain. And it may take a long time to receive revelation. Moses waited forty days on Mount Sinai to receive all God had to teach him. [See Lane, p. 91] Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness, waiting for three revelations to come to him, one by one.

There are other times when revelation comes very quickly. Well, maybe not so quickly—it could just be that we had not been looking for anything different. Sometimes God whispers in our ear: “Have you ever stopped to think that there might be another way, a better way?” God nudges us toward a different understanding, a different behavior, and we have one of those “ah hah” experiences.

The most difficult thing for us to trust is that our desert experiences will not last. It is always tempting to give up hope and become cynical, or to give in to addiction or narcissism. We may even despair to the point of suicide. Like Job, we may tire of waiting for an answer. Like Job, we may find it difficult to remain open to God long enough that we finally experience what Job experienced: our loving God and friend, explaining to us the magnitude of creation in a way that we shall never be able to comprehend or understand, so that we, like Job, may finally state: “Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. ‘Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you declare to me.’ I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” [Job 42:3b-5]

Finally, the mountaintop may come to symbolize a sense of fulfillment in our lives, not necessarily meaning we want to move on beyond this life, but that we no longer fear doing so.

This was the experience of Moses on Mount Nebo as he looked into the Promised Land, knowing he himself would not be able to enter it. [Deuteronomy 34:1]

This was the experience of St. John as he describes his vision of the Kingdom of God. “And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. [Revelation 21:10]

This was the experience of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the last speech he ever gave, in Memphis, the night before he was assassinated:  “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land! And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

1950-1982

This was the experience of my first wife, Pauline, as she was awaiting a heart-lung transplant, knowing that death was a very real possibility. As she wrote in her journal: “When I become seriously ill, will I continually be depressed because my little mental game can no longer bolster me? After a bit of trepidation, I can answer a hopeful no. I do not think my positive attitude will desert me—off and on, perhaps, but never completely. For I have my belief and faith in God. She/He gives me courage and, more importantly, love. I have Bear. Our love is everlasting. I have the love of my family. The love of my friends. I am truly blessed. I have been to the mountaintop. Life is beautiful: it hurts, but I can leave it.”