This luggage tag was a birthday gift from the Mays, and true to my nerdy Lutheran self I think it's hilarious (though i don't know why blogger won't rotate the picture - sorry). Funny as I normally find it, however, I put it up to illustrate more somber thoughts tonight. So let's see just what baggage I'm lugging around these days. . .
The first night of the GME, we heard Katrina Browne speak, then watched her documentary Traces of the Trade. It's about her and a group of her cousins coming to terms with the fact that their ancestors were the biggest slave trading family in New England. It's a good film but heavy - I don't recommend watching it if you're already having a rough day. And watch it with someone you can discuss it with afterwards, not by yourself, if possible.
I've been thinking a lot about the weight of our history ever since that night. Browne said the reaction from many folks, especially those whose ancestors happened to have immigrated after the slave trade and even the Civil War was over, is that "These weren't my ancestors. This isn't my or my family's fault. I have no guilt, no responsibility here." Being the descendent of more recent immigrants myself, and being from a Northern state, I'd have to say this is my normal response.
Browne's response to that (which she credited to conversations with a history teacher) is that later immigrants came because America was the land of opportunity, and it was such a land of opportunity precisely because of an economy largely built on and undergirded by slave labor. In thinking more about it I would also add, even just stepping off the boat and not speaking the language, those later immigrants still had a degree of white privilege that provided opportunities which native-born black Americans were denied, even if their families had been here for generations. So though myself and my ancestors may not have been the perpetrators, we are certainly still among the benefactors of an evil and unjust system. Long before my family ever dreamed of America, the body of Christ was broken here, for us.
But that's not the only weight I'm carrying. Yesterday was the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Part of the argument in dropping the bomb was that it would end the war sooner and ultimately save more lives. My grandfather's life is certainly among those that this decision intended to spare - he was sworn into the Navy the day before the Japanese surrendered. Instead of getting sent to the Pacific front he was sent to Oregon to decommission returning battleships. While my mother was yet a twinkle in my grandparents' eyes, the body of Christ was broken half way around the world, for me.
But it's not just the weight of such history that I'm lugging around. It's also the weight of today. For the body of Christ is still being broken, in this country, around the world, every day, for me. Traces of the Trade brought that up as well - the modern day slaveries and unjust systems that our lives depend upon. I am afforded many privileges and opportunities because of my skin color, citizenship, economic class, and education level, things others are denied because they lack one or more of the same qualities. I am afforded a lifestyle that, while rather simple by American standards, is yet outrageously luxurious compared to most of the world, a lifestyle that is underwritten by the people who work for a non-livable wage (in this country and others), by the people who live next to the factory farms and the garbage heaps and the mined mountain tops, by the soldiers risking their lives to enforce the Pax Americana, by the creation itself, which suffers every indignity and abuse in the name of efficiency, all of whom pay a price so that my costs as a consumer stay relatively cheap (even in a world of rising expenses). This is all the body of Christ, broken daily, for me.
Jesus, that's a hell of a lot of baggage.
Lord, have mercy.
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