January 15, 2018

Dear Pastor Kenny:

Long time no write, but I thought of you a great deal yesterday and wanted to tell you all about it. For an Atheist like myself, it was certainly a very religious day.

However, first let me share some amazingly weird news, so the following makes more sense. Last year I blurted out to Miami District 2 Commissioner Ken Russell, a gent I have come to know over the last few years, that I loved his life story and wanted to be the one who writes it. He didn’t laugh.

We started kicking around a few ideas for a book — he shot down my original thought that we alternate chapters with “If you’re waiting for me to write something, you’ll be waiting forever.” — and finally came to an understanding: I’d write the whole damned thing. However, he agreed that it would be warts and all biography and I would have a free hand.

Then he announced he’s running for Congress in Florida’s 27th district, now considered one of this country’s districts to watch swing BLUE in 2018.

So, back to yesterday: Once a week — on the Lord’s Day — I meet with Ken and grill him on any topic that appeals to me for the book. However, yesterday he had a full day of ceremonial events, as well as looking after his 2 girls, something he does every Sunday while I interview him around their interruptions. I asked whether I could tag along and embed myself with him for the day. And, we’re off at the races.

First up was Three Kings Parade through Little Havana. I know you’ll get the reference, Ken, but for anyone reading over your shoulder, those are the 3 kings that brought gifts to baby Jesus. [I needed the explanation.] It’s one of the biggest parades in Miami.

Double parenthetically: If you don’t mind me saying so, those were very impracticable gifts for a child. Why not a rattle? Or, a brightly coloured mobile to hang in the manger?

Where was I?

I rode in the Commissioner’s car with his girls while he jumped in and out of the car to press the flesh. [Videos can be found on my Facebookery.] While the parade commemorated a religious event, there was little religiosity from out perspective, riding in a brand new Mustang convertible near the head of the parade with the other dignitaries.  Although Ken’s girls got to see the 3 camels when they went for a walk with Dad before it started. We never saw the parade.

As soon as we got to the finish line there was just enough time to find an Uber, find Ken’s car [made more difficult because the parade along Calle Ocho cut off the way back], drop off the girls at the babysitter, and rush back to Coconut Grove to attend the Martin Luther King, Jr., memorial at Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church, the oldest Black church in Miami. It was sponsored by the Coconut Grove Ecumenical Network and the Commissioner had been invited to speak.

The church was filled, with an overflow crowd watching on a monitor in the community room in the basement. As people filed in a piano player quietly tinkled some Gospel. Occasionally spontaneous singing would break out from one end of the room to the other as people recognize the tune. Then it would die down again.

Once the official program started, it was like a locomotive that just picked up steam as it approached the end. There was song, humour, several sermons, and the sound of Gospel and the message of Dr. King still fills my ears.

Brother Edward Leonard read the entire “I Have A Dream” speech. What a hard act to follow, but Mr. Leonard made every word sound new and important. Furthermore, it was amazing how much Dr. King’s words rubbed uncomfortably against some of the recent news events out of Washington, not to mention the comparative poverty of the West Grove.

However, I was most impressed with the final Message, delivered by Reverend Nathaniel Robinson, III. He used the Bible story of the lepers to make a connection with present times. “It was a skin problem” he said. The comparison to the colour of people’s skin and Racism was not lost on the congregation. “It was a skin problem” and they were not letting the skin problem define them.

I won’t even try to paraphrase the Pastor, because I would never do him justice. [I’ve looked for a video online and, believe me, Ken, if I find it I’m going to share it.] However, it was rousing enough that more than once I was on my feet applauding and shouting along with the congregation. I felt the dream.

I was so awestruck that I took no pictures or video. I became a participant, no longer a disinterested observer.

No offense, Ken, but you could use a little of that fire and brimstone in your sermons. Your sermons are pretty calming. Pastoral, if you will. There was nothing calm about Reverend Robinson and the congregation reacted appropriately.

Having said that, I have to commend you for your sentiments on the very same day. My Uncle Harry was Pops.

14 Jan 2018—Blue Ocean Faith Ann Arbor MLK Remarks from Blue Ocean Faith Ann Arbor on Vimeo.

I’m also so very proud of the political positions you’ve taken and how you’ve been encouraging your congregation, and your facefriends, to hector their elected representatives. I also like how you don’t tell them what position to take. Despite the simple fact that you believe in God and I don’t, our politics align almost perfectly.

All told our service lasted 3.5 hours, much longer than your’s. Nyah, nyah.

Just before it ended, I quietly slipped across the street to the Charlotte Jane Memorial Park Cemetery.  This is a place I have visited at least a hundred times. I’ve taken thousands of pictures of it all all hours of the day and night. At one time it was the only place that Black folk could be buried in Miami. The last time I visited the cemetery was in terrible shape. The grass had not been cut and was 3 feet high. Branches broken off by the fury of Hurricane Irma still littered the ground. After a small, quiet cry I sent out a video showing the disrepair the cemetery had fallen into.

You might call this a miracle, but I just call it good citizenship: A woman saw my video. She just happened to work in the Commissioner’s office and jumped onto the problem. She organized a crew of volunteers to get the cemetery cleaned up and now it looks as good as when I first discovered it almost a decade ago.

~~~~~~~~~~

I never did publish your response to my last Pastoral Letter, even tho’ I promised I would Apologies. Here it is:

Marc, I read your pastoral letter on sin. But I can’t comment on the blog. can’t seem to log in the right way. Nothing unusual there. Couple of comments. I could stand to lose a few pounds also I look older than i think of myself on this side of my own eyeballs. So I guess my sin is vanity. But i think envy is the one most of us can cop to. Me for sure. It’s funny, I think I pretty much agreed with all your comments on sin. Either you’re a crappy atheist of I’m a crappy Christian–as we’re supposed to have big disagreements on sin, right? I think the traditional Christian emphasis on sin is all messed up and serves interests other than God’s or most people. It’s like Trump getting us all focused on something else so we stop paying attention to what matters. I’m guessing most of the things I might tend to feel guilty about aren’t that big a deal but the guilt distracts me from paying attention to things that are. I still eat meat knowing how much chickens and cattle suffer in the agri-business world. Why? Because I like the taste and can easily ignore their suffering. I thought you had a characteristically Jewish approach to sin which I generally trust more than the Christian approach. It’s more sensible, more human. But I’m just blathering now.

It’s never blathering, Ken. I’ve missed our communication. The book project has kept me from updating our Pastoral Letters. Hopefully, I’ll see you during what has become our yearly get together in 2018. Yet I know the primary season is going to be pretty hectic as I embed myself with the subject of my book. And, if the Commissioner wins the Democratic primary, I’ll be up to my ears in writing for the general in November.

However, we must catch up. The invitation is always open for you and your family to have a few days in the sun, but otherwise I might be in Motown in April. Let’s plan to hook up then.

Your childhood friend,
Marc Slootsky

Pastor Ken Wilson of the Blue Ocean Church, Ann Arbor, Michigan,
replies to What Is It All About?, my Pastoral Letter of last week.

An Atheist without guile, indeed.

Your Gilchrist memories triggered my own, for some reason, of a time I was in my parents attic–it must have been when they were moving out of the Detroit house to the Southfield apartment.

Under what they called “the eaves”, in the second floor attic remodeled as a master bedroom, was a box of letters. And the one that came to me like a bolt of revelation was one my father saved, written to him by a co-worker when he was a young up-and-comer in the insurance business.

My father, you may recall, was (what was the adjective you used that hit the  mark?….it will come to me…not curmudgenly, which I can’t spell, so glad it wasn’t that….but) irrascable (which I also can’t spell, be back in a minute after looking it up.)

[While Ken has wandered off, let me fill you in. On one of our yearly walks through his neighbourhood, Ken asked me what I thought of his father. I told him that his father reminded me of the fictional — and irascible — Mr. Wilson on Dennis the Menace. Back to Ken.]

Irascible: irritable, prone to anger. When you said that, btw, I thought, what a treasure to know someone who goes back so many years and could say what it is I saw as a judging young lad, irritated by my father’s chronic irascibility.

It was the perfect word, because it dignified his anger. That was it: he was prone to anger….and what I didn’t know at the time was that he had been in the worst mortar shelling to date in WW2, November 11 1944 (four years before my oldest sister was born, and Veterans Day to boot.) His nervous system was assaulted as he ran through a field of exploding shells–one that took two guys on either side of him out as they scrambled for cover at the base of a tree.

Had I misremembered? Was he really just normally irritable? Was my memory too harsh? No…..Marc knew. Mr. Wilson was irascible. And now, I can spell that word. So thank you.

But back to my attic memory. The letter I pulled out of the cardboard box of letters knew a different Glen than the irascible man we knew. The writer of the letter was marveling at what a talented salesman my father was: Smart, funny, fun to be around, a real rising star in the world of business. Which never happened.

The PTSD that no one even knew to name back then — anything less than total “shell shock” went virtually undiagnosed and untreated — caught up with him, I guess, and irascibility took hold. I could use a few of your tears to shed over that. All those damning thoughts — why do you have to be so grumpy all the time? Make everyone around you walk on eggshells? — just born of [childhood] ignorance.

Nobody knew what he was going through, least of all the man going through it. Note to self: distrust damning thoughts.

Yeah, and that milkshute. OK how do you spell that? Milkschute? Milkchute? Milk chute? There it is. And memories of shining dad’s shoes down in that back door area, what did we call that? Basement landing? Something. Give me a memory hand here it was called something in particular. The little depressed area where the front door opened into was the “vestibule” I think. What was that little area going from the kitchen to the back door and/or downstairs?

[We called it the “back landing”, Ken. Our front entryway was also called the vestibule. Where did we get these crazy, elitist notions?]

And your going through so many years of accumulation, time detritus, aka memory holders…..makes me glad, and a little sad, that all the stuff my kids pitched after Nancy Rozell died. She was a bit of a pack rat. They ordered up a huge — no, I can’t use that word anymore until after the Impeachment — a very large dumpster, and in a week’s worth of steady work cleared the place of all those memory holders. And now i wish I had a little more of that crap.

So suck the memories out of every last object, I say! What’s the rush?

See? You got me talking. An Atheist (with Israelite roots) in whom there is no guile indeed. With so many of our sleazy ideas of God so, literally, God-Damnably idolatrous, I say Atheism is a step, at the very least, in the right direction. We could all use a good dose of Atheism these days to get us closer to whatever God is or Isn’t.

Ken Wilson is the author of
A Letter to my Congregation, which
this Atheist believes is an important book.

This letter edited lightly and slightly for clarity,
with as few interjections as I could muster.

Dear Pastor Kenny:

Reconnecting after 45 years apart (and linking up on the facebookery) has been a blessing, if you don’t mind this Atheist appropriating a religious term.

Watching your growing politicization since we renewed our friendship in November of 2014 has been a wonderment to behold.

Certainly your walk in the desert began before we rediscovered each other, when you started the thinking that led to the research, which resulted in your writing A Letter To My Congregation. You ran headlong into church and LGBT politics after it was published in book form.

Soon after we reconnected, church politics ran headlong into you and you were fired from the church that started in your living room 45 years ago. Though you believed your congregation was ready, they kicked you to the curb because you had the audacity to enter the 21st century by advocating for a full embrace of LGBT folk in church life.

You do realize they pray to the same God you do, right? How can you all be right, Ken?

I was surprised (and honoured) when you read my email and drew Biblical parables in the very last sermon you gave from that pulpit.

In that 2014 sermon you preached:

So Jesus finds Philip and Philip finds Nathaniel and Jesus sees something in Nathaniel at a distance and names it.

Despite Nathaniel’s snarkiness, which he doesn’t name, Jesus calls Nathaniel, a “true Israelite in whom there is no guile (or deceit.)”. Which reminded every Israelite true or not of their founding father, Jacob, who was renamed Israel, speaking of new names.

Jacob-Israel (like Peter-Cephas) had to undergo a transformation from the one who cheated his brother Esau out of his inheritance into a brother without deceit, without guile.  And Nathaniel represents that transformation. Sitting under the fig tree (which might have been Israel’s national tree) maybe praying or studying Torah, maybe updating his FB status “SEEKING A RELATIONSHIP”

Again, Jesus sees something in Nathaniel that maybe he didn’t see in himself until Jesus named it. Maybe Nathaniel was the ignored kid in school, the one no Rabbi would call to be his dis iple, because he didn’t have much promise. Maybe Nathaniel half believed that about himself but didn’t buy it fully.

Jesus comes along and names the thing about Nathaniel that Nathaniel most wants to be, a true Israelite in whom there is no guile. And when Jesus speaks it, Nathaniel says, “Yes, Lord!”

I aspire to be the true Atheist without guile. But that’s another story altogether.

Anyway, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, Ken, but thought my readers might appreciate the back story before I move onto new stuff.

Through the facebookery I’ve been able to follow your latest political awakening, especially your grassroots agitating following the last election.

I love how you have been urging your facefriends to get involved in the political process.

Not just exhorting them, but you have been providing folks with concrete information on how to contact their representatives in Washington and Lansing. As well, you’ve shared phone apps that make it easier to do so and provided updates of your own experiences, letting people know how simple it is to get involved. Then you give positive feedback and affirmation for those that do.

Here’s why I marvel: You’re not giving people your point of view. You’re not pontificating for or against any candidate or party. You’re not telling people how to vote or which side God is on.

You are merely asking folks to get involved. To make their feelings known. To no longer be silent about issues that affect them directly. You are doing this in a (mostly) bipartisan, secular, non-denominational, non-aligned, intersectional way. Here are some one recent examples:

I’m not like you, Ken. I tend to wear my political affiliation (and heart) on my sleeve. There’s no mistaking where I stand on any given issue. However, we’re both working toward the same end: a better world for those that follow.

I’ve been thinking a lot about you for another reason, Ken, because I’ve been thinking a lot about Gilchrist Street lately. As you know I’ve been downsizing the stuff in the condo. Mom & Pops lived here for 40 years. They never threw anything away and collected a lot of crap in that time. Every cupboard, closet, and drawer was filled to the brim.

It’s been exhausting work — physically yes, but especially emotionally. It’s been a much harder process than I thought it would be when I started and it’s taking a lot longer than I planned. There’s something to be said for my sisters’ suggestions that they come down in a blitz and help me tear off the bandage quickly. I declined in order to do it myself, so I only have my own self to blame.

Funny story: Even though I’ve lived here almost 12 years, there were many places I never looked into because they weren’t mine. They were Pops’. During the clear-out I have found some absolutely wonderful things.

Frinstance: In the very back of a desk drawer that held staplers, paperclips, and envelopes, I discovered a bag folded over many times, which contained the most amazing family ephemeral: Love letters and postcards Pops sent my mother when he was training to be a gunner during WWII. The salutation “Kiss the baby for me” referred to my oldest sister Brenda, who was newly born.

Naturally something like that would make me tear up, but some very bizarre items have also managed to start the waterworks.

In a junk drawer in Pops’ room (now my room) I found (when it still did the job for which it had been intended) a small wooden drawer 5″ x 3″ x 9″ deep. It would have come from a wall of drawers in a large cabinet, like in an old timey hardware store. On the front is a brass holder for a cardboard label, the curved bottom of which also doubled as the pull.

I never knew it as such. Here’s what I remember about the very first day I first saw it. I don’t know where my mother got the drawer, but she was repurposing it. She got some kind of paint (early ’60s) that allowed her to streak it so it looked like wood grain. I saw it immediately after it was painted, when it was still tacky, and thought she was a magician. It looked EXACTLY like real wood grain to my child’s eyes. Now I can see how poorly it resembles real wood.

Recently you and I had a FB conversation about the milk chutes on Gilchrist next to the back door. This small drawer was repurposed to hang from in the back hall on Gilchrist, right across from the milk chute. The bottom was nailed to the wall, with the face toward the floor, and it held the family’s Bills Payable.

I sobbed on and off for 2 days after I found it and I don’t know why this affected me more than Pops’ love letters.

Even though I’m trying to downsize, I find that can’t throw it out. Therefore, I’m repurposing it as a holder for the television remote controls.

So, what’s new with you?

Your childhood friend,
Marc Slootsky

Dear Pastor Kenny:

Thank you so much for the book. It was on my doorstep when I arrived home. I was locked out when I got here (long story), so I read it and finished it while waiting for the locksmith. It brought me to tears, but many things do these days. My emotions are still raw.

It is a wonderful book which I will now recommend to others who have just lost a loved one.

It was also wonderful for you and Julia to come to Pops’ Shiva on Sunday. It meant so much to me. Aside from the fact that you were the only friend of mine to be invited, it somehow closed a loop that began when we met on Gilchrist Street 59 years ago.

[And, it was just slightly subversive to have a pastor and a priest in a clerical collar at the most solemn of Jewish gatherings.]

Fifty-nine years is a very long time, but a mere blink of the eye in the scheme of things. I wonder if we had not lost touch for most of that time whether we would still be friends. We seem to share views on politics and social justice. Our only major disagreement is about God.

While I am far more opinionated than I was about most issues, I am less intolerant of other people’s belief systems than I’ve ever been. I can’t say I always understand them, but I don’t rail against them; only the hypocrisy that occasionally accompanies them. [See: Evangelicals for Trump]

All this week during evening Shiva services I wore the yarmulke and stood at the appropriate times. I went along with the program in a “When in Rome” manner. However, I did not pick up the prayer book, nor did I mouth the words even though I remembered so many of them from childhood. I’ve identified as Atheist for a number of years, so it feels hypocritical to mouth words I don’t believe in.

Kenny, why is my head so much smaller than yours?

There was a time, Ken, when I did say the words, even if I didn’t feel them. But one day the that light bulb went on and I have never been able to turn it off. Yes, brother, I have seen the light. Hallelujah!!! No more hypocrisy for me. [If only!]

Yet, there are times I discover — or, as is more likely, people point it out to me — that I have said, or done, something hypocritical. I can’t proceed until I’ve made amends (if needs be) or examined my hypocrisy from every conceivable angle. Only then do I feel I can forgive myself for being a hypocrite.

Forgiveness is a big part of your religion, Kenny, and I marvel at the ability to forgive others. This is something I find extremely difficult to do, if not downright impossible, when I have been wronged by someone.

As you know my writing and research has taken me into a unique Black neighbourhood in Coconut Grove. Through that I have met priests and pastors, military men and women, and older folk who have lived through many of the years of our racist country’s racist past (not that racism has ended by any means). One question I ask over and over again is where do they find the compassion and empathy to forgive those who have wronged them. They’ve all said the same thing, if not with the same exact words: Our religion, our God, our belief in Jesus instructs us, compels us, reminds us to forgive.

That whole God thing must be pretty powerful if it can be used as both a shield and a sword against the hate directed their way.

Where am I going with this? 

Just as I was leaving Michigan I had a massive blow-up with one of my sisters. It came as I was trying to get over the hump of our last blow-up, which happened almost exactly 1 year ago. We’ve barely spoken since then because she started last year by saying “You may never talk to me again after I say this, but…”

I decided I would let her be right and I was totally comfortable with that. I won’t be verbally abused by anybody, even — or especially — my own sister.

However, what made me decide to circle the square was 2 things: First, all week during evening Shiva services God, family, and forgiveness were all mentioned several times. I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but it started to penetrate my thick skull.

However, it was a story a gentleman told me after Shiva services one night that made me decide to make amends. Here’s his story in a nutshell:

Years ago when this gent (who is our age) was just a young man, he learned he had an aunt he never knew about and no one ever spoke of. It was his mother’s sister. So he decided he was going to find her and reach out to her. Eventually he discovered a woman in Florida with the right name, but it was a relatively common Jewish name.

He called her up and said, “I’m so-and-so and my mother is so-and-so and you may be my aunt.”

The woman started screaming at him, “No! I’m not her! I don’t know who you are talking about! And, don’t ever call me again!!!” She hung up on him.

However, during this time he also discovered he had a cousin about his own age and reached out to him. As it turned out the woman in Florida was his aunt after all.

So the cousin, thrilled to have reconnected with a long-lost relative, called his mother and told her about this. Then he asked if she could send him some of his boyhood pictures so he could show them to my storyteller. His mother agreed to send the pictures, but told her own son never to contact her again!!!

This incident that had occurred decades earlier — which was apparently over who would get to wear a fancy dress when they were children — was still fracturing the family.

It was this story, far more than the religious services, that made me decide to make up with my own sister. Who needs this kind of strife in one’s life?

My conversation with my sister went sideways immediately. In less than a minute we were screaming at each other. My sister was purposely hateful, hurtful, and abusive. Getting nasty in a fight — fighting to wound as opposed to to arguing to get to a mutually agreeable point — seems to be my sister’s comfort zone when things are not going her way. She brings a bazooka to a spitball fight.

She attacked me in several ways that would have shocked you had you heard it. It certainly shocked the accidental ear-witnesses, of which there were two. And, it shocked me that she would ‘go there’ again because it obviously wasn’t enough that she said some of the same shit last year when she abused me.

One of the very first things she said was “You are throwing away a perfectly good sister.” Aside from the fact that she was really throwing herself out with that statement (because, remember, I was attempting to make up), she felt the need to say it several times. Finally I said, “Then you must be garbage if I am throwing you out.”

It didn’t get any better from there. When she stormed out she said, “Have a nice life” and I certainly plan on it. And, it may even be nicer without her in it.

Forgiveness? Nope. I don’t have it in me even though it was one of Pops’ fervent wishes that all of us sibs get along.

IRONY ALERT!!! One of her bones of contention is that I did not accept her apology from a year ago. But her apology was “I love you. I’m sorry we had a fight,” which I took as a non-apology apology.

First, we didn’t have a fight. She abused me on the phone and I took it silently with tears streaming down my cheeks. Secondly, a real apology takes ownership of one’s words and/or actions. There was no ownership of how she had hurt me and she even made me a party to it by describing it as a fight. It was not a fight.

However, one of the things she yelled about yesterday was how when I was apologizing to her, I added a “but.” But, here’s the deal: I wasn’t apologizing. I never said the words “I’m sorry”. I said, “We’re good, but if you ever talk to me again like you did last December, we’re not good ever again.” In fact, that was my opening statement to bury the hatchet.

In fact, that’s what sent her spinning.

To her that was a failed apology because it added a “but” and apologies don’t come with a “but.” She’s right about that. She’s just wrong about it having been an apology.  I wasn’t apologizing. I was drawing a line in the sand.

I have nothing I feel the need to apologize for. I said nothing either time that I want to take back or make apologies for. If she’s being honest with herself, she cannot say the same thing.

IRONY ALERT #2: During our fight yesterday, with her trying to hold back tears because she was suddenly playing victim after having just verbally abused me, she actually offered a rationale for her behaviour last year and all it would have needed was an “I’m sorry” attached to it and I would have accepted it without reservation. I know how to do that.

IRONY ALERT #3: And, maybe a smidgen of hypocrisy on my part. One of the things I threw at her yesterday was how after our fight of a year ago, she called up all kinds of people to tell her side of the story; something that I didn’t do because it was nobody’s business. She aired this dirty laundry to family and friends. When I tossed this out yesterday she tried to deny it, but I started rattling off the names of people she told because I heard all about it from several of them. What I don’t know is how many people she told and how I was made to be the villain.

My hypocrisy is that I just shared this latest fight with the entire world or, more accurately, anyone who reads this article.

Ken and Julia found each other after the untimely deaths of their own spouses. A wonderful love story.

One saving grace is that she may read this post and recognize how her behaviour last year and yesterday was over all lines of decency. If so, she may offer an apology. I have never refused a real apology. However, I will still have my line in the sand.

Bottom line, Kenny, is one of these days you will have to teach me all about this forgiveness thing. It seems like a pretty powerful thing and something I still need to learn.

However, while I am still upset over yesterday’s fight (in which I did participate, unlike last year) I know I will grow comfortable with where it sits because I have been here before with her and not just last year.

Have a Merry Christmas, Kenny, and give my love and deep regards to Julia. Maybe my next time in Michigan we can go visit the old neighbourhood together. And, maybe I can get you and Julia down here to Florida sometime. I’d love to show you Coconut Grove, which is the where the social justice issues I am writing about reside. In fact, some missionaries recently showed up to help with the fight for social justice in West Grove. I know, right?

Forgive this paraphrase, but “Social justice is the reason for the season.”

Talk to you in 2017: The Year We Fight Fascism.