“It’s weird that you’re not in our Christmas card,” Sarah said a few days ago.
“Hon, I wrote a two-column sermon on the back of it. I think I’m in the Christmas card.”
It’s true. Here’s the front and back of our Christmas card this year. I’m sharing it in the hopes that you will decide to support, as I nakedly and shamelessly asked my friends and family to do in our Christmas card, the work of my employer, the Kentucky Equal Justice Center. You can donate here. 🙏🏻
As I sit down to write you—our friends and family—I am a little bit buzzed on pecan pie and (like you) a lot bit heartsick over our ongoing, escalating pandemic. I feel a lot of grief over the ways our systems and institutions—political, social, national, local—failed to respond and provide for us and our neighbors during 2020. I’m not talking about Donald Trump. Well, of course I’m talking about Donald Trump, but not just Donald Trump. Like, our institutions failed. A total, systems-wide failure.
15 percent of adults in Kentucky reported living in a house where there wasn’t enough food to eat last week.
Last week (forgive me), I said on Twitter:
I think a lot about politics and policies. It’s sort of my job. Or, at least, tangential to my job.
I often feel like our political problems are fundamentally spiritual problems. Will has been asking recently, “Why did God make the world?” and “Where does God live?” We talked about that a few weeks ago. We talked about how the word for “spirit” and “breath” were the same word (pneuma in ancient Greek) and decided God sort of lived everywhere. Our connection—our bond—is undeniable, yet we try to live as individuals. We pretend that we are capable of isolating ourselves physically, spiritually, biologically, emotionally from each other, pretend that my health is separate from your health, that the strength of my breath and depth of your spirit are somehow different things. As though my redemption didn’t depend on our redemption. As though selfishness isn't just greedy or puerile, it’s foolish: the “self” we’re “ish-ing” is a myth. A powerful, intoxicating myth. Wouldn’t it be nice?!?
Anyway, in the midst of:
- grieving our failing institutions propelled forward by the inertia of our racist past (and present) and
- grieving the unnecessary dead, unnecessary evicted, unnecessary hungry and
- grieving the alternate history in which a pandemic was not a catastrophe but an epiphany, an insight, an ecstatic moment in our collective imagination, an integral (as in, wholeness, integrity, integrate) experience for humanity when we, at last, embodied the truth of living in our “inescapable network of mutuality”
—in the midst of all that—Malcolm has learned to tell really good knock-knock jokes. That’s one for the “win” column!
We can’t wait to see you all once we’ve cracked this vaccine over here. We’re hoping for a Jubilee. The boys are so fun. Mostly.
For more of me waxing on about society, check out "Just Print the Money".
The nonprofit law firm and advocacy organization that I work for, the Kentucky Equal Justice Center, is having our week of Good Giving fundraiser the week of December 1-7. We work on preventing the “evicted” and “hungry” above. If the spirit moves you, you can support KEJC at bit.ly/kejc-stay-strong.
Stay healthy, stay home, stay strong,
The Carters (mostly Ben here)
P!S! One thing our fam has really gotten into is our 🎉Yoto Player🎉! It’s a speaker for kids with different cards for stories, music, or other nonsense. We’ve got some blank cards we can upload our own stories, books, home-made radio shows (nonsense) onto. So, one thing that would be awesome is if you would record yourself reading a kids book or a poem or singing a song or telling a story. You could text or email us the recording (just do it on your phone, no big deal!) Then, we could put it on a card and listen to it again & again on our Yoto player. (If you’re going to buy one, use my affiliate link 💸. )
(They’re really great.)