Counting

How, for all these years, could I not have noticed the last sentence of the Gospel of Matthew 14:13-21?  This Gospel relates the famous story of Jesus’ feeding multitudes of people from only a few loaves of bread and some fish. It is one of the most moving and inspirational of Jesus’ “miracles” assuring us, if we so believe and act, that there will always be enough for all. But then the Gospel writer had to add that pesky last sentence:  “Those who ate were about five thousand men, not counting women and children.”

This is the Gospel that will be read on August 2, 2020 in every Catholic Church. How many will notice that not only women (and, you could also argue, given the past decades’ abuse revelations, children), but all the others who are still not counted? Genders other than male and female, races other than white, ethnicities other than Euro-centric? On and on it goes. I cry out at the injustice within the Church, and then I cry out even more when I look outside its stony walls and barricaded doors.  

I write in The Table each week to focus on the need for all genders’ ordination, ministry, and leadership in a huge, and still hugely influential, institution. I write to make sure they are counted. I also write about the monstrous injustice in, of all the places it should not be, religion. But there are equal or even greater monsters out there competing for my – for all of our – attention, that need to be included in the count: climate change, the pandemic, Black Lives Matter, the plight of immigrants, food and water shortages, hunger, homelessness, healthcare, upcoming elections….  I feel guilty for not spending enough time and energy on each of them, too.

What can I do – we do – not only to be counted but to count?

Maybe, I thought, we could merge some of these, focus on the intersections and interplays among them, tackle our issue it relates to others’ and vice versa. But a July 5 New York Times Magazine article, “Should a black protest movement be used to advance other progressive priorities?” does flash a caution. At a recent rally, a young protester, hearing Black and white speakers bring up other related issues, objected: “I want to do all these things, too, but can we please talk about Black Lives Matter for one second?”

Others in the same article sympathized with the protester, as I do, but still maintained unity in complexity was the answer. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor in “How We Got Free” is quoted as pointing out: “Solidarity is not subsuming your struggles to help someone else” but strengthening “the political commitments from other groups by getting them to recognize how the different struggles were related to each other and connected….”  In fact, the article ends with a belief statement by a group called the Combahee River Collective that affirms this approach: “…if black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free, since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.”

The same idea might apply to, for example, climate change. The whole July 20/27, 2020 issue of Time magazine labels this issue the most critical of all. Lest we not be suitably alarmed, the author reminds us: “Climate change has understandably fallen out of the public eye this year as the coronavirus pandemic rages. Nevertheless, this year, or perhaps this year and next, is likely to be the most pivotal yet in the fight against climate change…In the future, we might look back at 2020 as the year we decided to keep driving off the climate cliff – or to take the last exit.” Significantly, the same section has a sidebar piece titled: “We must be antiracist in our fight against climate change” noting  radically important intersections of environmental justice with women’s rights and Black Lives Matter.

So, for what work do we keep on showing up?

How do we spend our energy and how do we refuel?

What sacrifices do we need to make?

And, since I truly think we need to show up for them all in whatever capacity we can, what internal work do we have to do so that we show up as whole people and not as liabilities?

Hilton Als wrote a piece in the June 29 issue of The New Yorker called “Homecoming”. He described growing up as Black and homosexual with a mother devoted to listening and watching out for the safety of him and all her children by keeping “our refugee status dressed up in self-protective decorum.” Then he wrote these heart wrenching words: “The old model – Ma’s model – was not to give up too much of your power by letting your oppressor know how you felt. But Ma, I was dying anyway, in all that silence.”

Let us honor him, his mother, all in our beloved worldwide community, by never being silent in the face of oppression or indifference. Let us all count and be counted.