My only verse from the Talmud I have memorized, and it’s appropriate for Fat Tuesday:

“One day we will be held accountable for all the wonderful things we could have experienced, but did not in this life.”

Today the church remembers and mourns Executive Order 9066.

By executive order of President Roosevelt, Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were United States Citizens, were forced into internment camps on this day, February 19th, in 1942.

It is estimated that, at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, 112,000 of the 127,000 Japanese American residents lived on the West Coast. Of those American residents, around 80,000 of them were second and third generation citizens, never having spent any time in Japan.

Forced from their homes, schools, and places of business, anyone with Japanese heritage (in California they exacted it to 1/16th of Japanese lineage) were placed in regional concentration camps. What was trumpeted as a “security measure” in case any of them were sympathetic to Japan, was actually legalized racism. Such measures were not taken for German or Italian residents in the United States, many more of whom were not legalized citizens (though a small number of people of German and Italian heritage were also forced into these camps on the West Coast).

By this order all people of Japanese heritage were forced to leave Alaska, as well as many areas of California, Oregon, Arizona, and Washington State.

In 1944 a legal challenge to 9066 came to a close, and though its constitutionality was upheld on technicalities (another instance where the small print delayed justice, and it didn’t even opine on the concentration camps themselves), it was affirmed by the court that “loyal citizens cannot be detained.”

The day before the results of this legal ruling would be made public, 9066 was rescinded, an implicit admission of purposeful wrongdoing in my book.

In 1980 Japanese Americans lobbied forcefully to have Executive Order 9066 investigated. President Carter initiated the investigation and in 1983 the commission reported that little evidence of disloyalty was found in the Japanese-American community of the day, and that the internment process was blatant racism. In 1988 President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 and officially apologized on behalf of the United States government, authorizing monetary settlements for everyone still alive who had been held in a camp.

In other words: the US government gave reparations. It’s not unprecedented…

The larger question for me, though, is: where was the church?

Why wasn’t the church lobbying hard to have these fellow sisters and brothers released?

Additional studies have shown that religious prejudice also played a part in the justification for these internment camps. In a largely “Christian America,” these often Buddhist, Taoist, and Shinto practicing Japanese residents were seen with much more suspicion (which is probably why the German and Italian residents, also largely thought to be “Christian,” were not rounded up).

The church failed to protect a vulnerable population. The church held hands with the politics of the day in ignoring at best, and aiding at worst, the abuse of other humans.

Today we remember, mourn, and are honest about this failure.

This commemoration is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that when religion holds hands with politics we end up on the wrong side of history.

-historical bits gleaned from Clairborne and Wilson-Hartgrove’s Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals as well as common source news

-for more information on how religion played a part in this stretch of history, visit: https://religionandpolitics.org/2019/07/23/first-they-came-for-the-buddhists-faith-citizenship-and-the-internment-camps/

-art by Norman Takeuchi with his piece, “Interior Revisited,” stated that “Interior and ‘internment’ are synonymous for many of Japanese-American lineage,” because they moved people from the coast to “the interior” of the United States for these camps.

“never
trust anyone
who says
they do not see color.
this means
to them
you are invisible.”

-is, by Nayyirah Waheed

We were in the middle of Bible study. Race came up.

She raised her hand.

“I was at a birthday party,” she said, “where I was the only white person. My friend came up to me and said, ‘I guess now you know how it feels a bit, being the minority.’

She went on, “I told her, ‘I don’t see people of color, I just see people.'”

She sat back and smiled.

“It is a sign of privilege,” I said, “to claim not to see color.” That’s all I said, trying to tread lightly. We moved on.

She stopped coming altogether: to the church, the Bible study, all of it.

I sometimes wonder if that’s just what happens when you expose the myth of “non-racist” and invite people to be “anti-racist.” They’d rather just stop showing up instead of doing the hard work.

When we think we’re non-racist is when the hidden biases, the shadow-side of our privilege, are most insidious.

The Triduum, or Great Three Days, is the antidote to an overly saccharine Easter.

Maundy Thursday gathers the disciples, including you, around a shared table where we all get our feet washed and we all share in dipping our bread in the same bowl as Jesus.

Then the sanctuary is stripped, like our souls now feel stripped, as we realize not only what is about to happen, but also that we must stay to bear witness.

On Good Friday we come not to church, but, with everything bare and the lights low, to a darkened tomb. There we encounter the story of that fateful night, a story we know well not only because we’ve heard it every year, but also because we’ve lived it. It’s familiar.

We’ve all been betrayed by our friends, and have all betrayed a friend. We’ve all been falsely accused and accused others without evidence, let alone our unspoken shame knowing our justice system does this, and profits from it all the time.

We’ve all seen power prey on the powerless. This is that story, but instead of the local courtroom it’s the courtroom of the cosmos.

The reproaches are sung where we’re challenged to answer unanswerable questions of eternal proportions, and the service ends with the cross alone left in the room.

We are, in the end, left only with the cross: this twisted tool of torture to which we now cling, hoping that something good can yet come from it.

Sound familiar?

And then we spend the whole next day in the quiet of non-answers. And at dusk we stream back to that tomb, create a new fire to keep our souls warm, and tell campfire stories of salvation to console ourselves.

“Remember that time that God created the world?” we ask around the fire. “And remember when God saved those folks from the fiery furnace?” We retell these stories as a way to spark hope that, as in those impossible moments, God might be able to do something new with this impossible moment. We teach these stories to our babies, even as we reteach it to ourselves.

And then before we know it, the tomb has turned into a lush garden, and that tomb that was full of death is suddenly full of life: flowers, water, and yes, living bodies.

Our bodies.

Our bodies who now gather around the body of the risen Christ now seen in bread, wine, water, and the faces around us. And we baptize people who have newly heard all of this. And we sing and dance and party because, yup, resurrection has happened again, by God!

The whole arc has import. Every scene plays a part.

Easter is not a day, it’s a journey, and now on the far side of that journey, we laugh and dance with memory in one hand and the future in the other.

Happy Easter!

A thought for Holy Saturday:

The night before Easter, after a day of stone-cold silence from God, the people will gather together to build a fire and tell stories around it.

Salvation stories.

Stories like, “Remember when we were saved that one time in the lion’s den, when we were sure we were dead?”

And, “Recall the flood, when we thought it’d last forever, but it didn’t?”

Like tales around a campfire, they’ll tell story after story into the wee hours reminding themselves, and God, about ancient promises until the ground beneath them bleeds resurrection.

Because stories hold power and no tomb can kill Divine promises.

Good Friday thought:

“I’m going away, where you can’t look for me;
Where I go, you cannot come.
And no one’s ever gonna take my life from me.
I lay it down,
A ghost is born.”

-Wilco-

Good Friday thought:

From the cross, the Christ yells, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

In this he was quoting the Psalms, his childhood prayer book.

At the end he was doing what he was taught to do as a boy: say his prayers.

A thought for Maundy Thursday:

It might be important for us to keep in mind, especially those (like me) with a propensity to hold on to the slights and wrongs others have done toward us and those we love, that Jesus didn’t skip over Judas when he was washing feet.

Failing to recall this has sometimes perpetuated the pain cycle.

And recalling this has saved me from hurting those who’ve hurt me more than a few times.

-painting by Sister Rebecca Shinas