Solidarity & Prayer

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What's the distinct help that prayer offers to the building of a solidarity economy that works for all of the 99% of people who have to work for a living, and not just a few at the top? Hayley and Vince discuss through the lens of the Church Calendar's celebration of Pentecost. (Icon Art by Kelly Latimore)

SPEAKER NOTES

Solidarity & Prayer

Intro

• We are continuing on in our theme we’ve been discussing the past few weeks: moving from a charity mindset to a solidarity mindset
• A solidarity mindset is based in a view of God that is not some distant, far-off puppet master, but a fellow-experiencer, an incarnate and present God that is intertwined with humanity
• Charity may bring to mind experiences of giving to a cause— which is great!
• But Solidarity is a compelling next step, the possibility of partnering with and having some “skin in the game”
• Reframing and reshaping structures and community dynamics to be more liberating for all people, instead of just beneficial for those at the top
• Today’s conversation is going to center on solidarity and prayer.
• And we wanted to actually start by acknowledging the Church Calendar (for some of us may be meaningful and for some may seem a little irrelevant. That’s okay!)
  • Vince can you tell us more about what today is and why it ties into our solidarity conversation?

Pentecost

• Today is Pentecost Sunday.
• Pentecost, which just means the 50th day since Easter, is a commemoration of a pivotal collective spiritual experience shared by Jesus’ disciples and written about in the the New Testament book of Acts in the Bible.
• It’s an ecstatic, unexplainable, public experience, which is why many more expressive churches today call themselves “Pentecostal” — an homage to this story.
• Conversely, it can make more buttoned-up, less-emotionally expressive, modern westerners (like me, haha!) uncomfortable.
• But even if that’s you, I think you’ll find the picture of solidarity the experience really magnetic!

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them.

5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? 9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

13 Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”

• So many of Jesus’ earliest disciples are together in one place…
  • praying… hoping for guidance from God…
  • Jesus died 7 weeks ago…
  • Several of them have had spiritual experiences with the Risen Jesus...
  • But what do they do now?…
  • And then suddenly a collective spiritual experience that is new and different.
    • Inexplicably, they begin praising God in the native languages of those around them
• What stands out to you in this Hayley?
  • Just that the collective aspect of it is really important! Wouldn’t be possible for this type of encounter to take place individually.
    • We can sometimes reduce experiencing God to individual, internal experiences. This is undeniably external and communal
  • And it can also be easy to dismiss the mystical and mysterious— even some in the story are saying “they have had too much wine”, they’re dismissing it
    • We may instinctively dismiss the mystical but instead, I think it’s something powerful that can draw us in
• I think of the phrase “collective effervescence” from sociologist Emile Durkheim
  • Those Goosebumps experiences where you feel taken up into a larger thing in a powerful way
  • Today it most often happens for people in music.
  • I wonder if Jesus’ disciples were singing together when this happened?
• But the real oomph of this story, I think, is not just that it was a wild experience, but the specifics of this wild experience
  • All these diverse peoples have an emotionally resonant experience hearing God praised in their own home languages.
  • Think about this in the context of Roman Empire controlled 1st century Palestine…
    • Your home language doesn’t matter!
    • What matters is the dominant languages that hold the Empire together: Greek and Aramaic
  • Against that backdrop, this early Christian community says:
    • Our home languages matter.
    • And in that reality, we have commonality — not in spite of our differences, because of our differences.
• Using our word for our theme right now: solidarity,
  • Pentecost is an affront to the false solidarity of “isms” —
    • ethnocentrism, and its later descendent racism,
    • nationalism, sexism, classism
  • all of these “isms” are forms of “solidarity”, but they are false solidarities,
    • because they are usually stoked by authoritarians on top to keep the masses pointing fingers at one another,
    • rather than at the powers that be,
• The distinction between false solidarity and true solidarity is really helpful here
• Coming out of this story of Pentecost today, we have three different statements about prayer and solidarity that we’ll explore
• Let’s move to the first one:

I. Prayer helps keep capitalism from getting out of control

Summary: prayer as enjoying relationship with God, which is an end in itself, not a means to some greater “productive” or capital-building end

• I’d argue Capitalism needs something like “they were all together in one place… praying” to work well.
• Capitalism is not bad,
  • BUT the version of capitalism that has become the norm in America since the 1980s (sometimes called Late-Modern Capitalism or Neoliberal Capitalism) is not working well.
• Because it is unrestrained and out of control to a dehumanizing degree
  • in the name of moving fast, it has been lightened of any humanizing substance
    • like a sense of social contract or mutual care between employers and employees
  • Our version of capitalism works great for those few on the top benefitting from it.
    • But the poor and planet are exploited
    • And the middle class are exhausted
• I’ve heard it said the logic of Neoliberal capitalism is a spinning top that can’t slow or else it will topple over
  • so we just keep spinning it, again and again, faster and faster, more and more growth
  • Businesses that aren’t spinning and growing will topple over and die.
  • A nation’s GDP that isn’t spinning and growing is in danger of toppling over and dying.
  • A church that isn’t spinning and growing must be about to topple over and die.
  • The pressure isn’t felt to stop and ask, “is this benefitting everyone or just a few?”
  • The pressure is felt to not lose momentum! Or else!
• And this is why I see Prayer as so useful to restraining capitalism from getting out of control, and helping to build a solidarity-focused capitalism.
  • By Prayer, here, I mean time spent solely for the sake of building relationship with God
    • no ulterior motives, no spinning of the top
    • Just feeling loved by God and letting that love flow through us
  • Such a priority interrupts the logic of the spinning top.
    • Other things matter! Not just speed and growth!
    • Love matters.
    • And not just because people will be better workers if they feel loved.
    • But what if love is an end in itself in our workplaces and public square? What if love’s not just a private thing?
    • This can change our evaluation of our capitalism to include questions of solidarity
      • How loved and seen do people feel by this or that economic decision?
• Reminds me of the mentality around rest that people often have— we rest in order to work harder
• Lately, for some reason, seeing so many aesthetically pleasing, calligraphied posts that say “rest is productive”
  • I get what they’re trying to say
  • But it’s still keeping productivity as the ultimate goal
  • Why can’t rest just be rest?
• Replacing productivity with presence has been a helpful reframe for me
  • Instead of accomplishment and profit, can being present, showing up be the ultimate goal
• If productivity and profit are on the pedestal, we’re just kept in the endless loop of always wanting more and more. It’s alluring!
  • Keeps us in a scare-city mindset, which is not a great starting point for building solidarity
• Prayer can help to anchor us in abundance rather than scarcity
  • Frantically trying to keep up and accumulate distracts from the hope of solidarity
• Tricia Hersey’s work— Rest is Resistance is helpful here
  • Not “donating body” to grind culture
  • Also talks about how we have what we need within us. As individuals and as communities.
    • We just need to slow down, rest, and listen to our bodies to access it
    • And prayer is a key component in self-discovery AND community building
• Contrast the spinning top with the Hebrew Bible’s model of the year of Jubilee,
  • where every so many years debts are forgiven —
  • practice that arises from the Ancient Hebrews relationship with the God who teaches sabbath and rest
  • a Jubilee is definitely anti-endless-growth, so it can’t work in our neoliberal capitalism,
  • BUT I think the principles of a jubilee can absolutely work inside a capitalism that considers rest and relationship valuable in addition to growth, not growth alone; that operates with a different logic than just keep the top spinning.
• Rest, interrupting the spinning top, principles of Jubilee can help guide our solidarity
• Let’s move to our next idea:

II. Prayer points to the spiritual component of solidarity building

Summary: prayer as active influence that impacts others and accomplishes the one-to-one knitting of people together that builds solidarity.

• I remember my first experiences in a church setting that took the practice of people praying for one another personally really seriously.
• It was uncomfortable at first honestly, because I’d learned to repress my emotions
  • Not unlike my experience with the story of Pentecost
  • But Immense solidarity person to person was built —
  • because people are sharing about burdens and struggles and needs with one another,
  • and that’s normalized to be done regularly,
  • and there’s a culture of “we know what to do here when someone shares this kind of thing” — we stop what we’re doing and pray for that person
• When people pray for each other, they become entangled together.
• When we don’t have that practice encouraged or modeled or normalized, we leave a lot on the table for one-to-one experiences of solidarity building.
• My experience in that church still forms the community we try to be here
  • Every week we make space for one to one prayer, with a prayer team, because not everyone may feel like they can ask just anybody in their life, so we want to provide for that
  • But also in my interactions with people here in real life, in the stories we tell here, we try to normalize “so and so prayed for me”
  • Because when people pray for each other, people are knit together in solidarity
• you’re right, normalizing prayer helps to lower the stakes of asking for or offering prayer and deepens our experiences together
• Helpful reminder that there is a necessary spiritual component at play as we navigate life
• Recently read the book Soul Boom by Rainn Wilson — yes the guy who played Dwight on the Office wrote a book on spirituality
  • There’s some stuff he writes that I don’t totally agree with BUT his thesis is really worthwhile
  • He says that underneath all of the pandemics we are facing (all the -isms we mentioned that are false solidarities) we are most in need of a spiritual revolution
  • We need a profound shift in goals away from what is productive or the accumulation of wealth and toward the flourishing of all people — and this is at its core, a spiritual, unifying endeavor
• And prayer is one way we participate in the spiritual revolution

I’ve been thinking about the course of my view of prayer and solidarity this week

• Used to view prayer as almost an extension of control (set outcome in mind that God was withholding, just had to pray the right thing).
  • And at the same time also really earnestly believing in the power of prayer esp in praying for other people
• Early deconstruction: I had this skepticism that prayer really did anything. It’s kind of like well wishes or good vibes. Doesn’t hold any real weight or power (honestly thought this was the conclusion I had to come to)
• My view clearly has shifted since then- to prayer with expectation that isn’t control-based
  • Prayer alongside God and others, not pleading with God for some withheld answer
  • We can have earnest hope in possibilities that come about from prayer
  • That view of partnership with God has been far more solidarity-building and connection-driven than my past experiences
• After my Knee injury
  • So many people said they were praying for me, and I would say to people “I feel it, thank you!” And I meant that!
  • The two most painful days after surgery,
    • I had this profound consistent sense that I think all of your prayers contributed to.
    • I thought of that “fellow experiencer” language for God, or “fellow sufferer who understands” to quote the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead.
    • If that’s who God is, every person who has ever had a knee injury like me has added to the experience of God, and therefore to the ability of God to be with me in solidarity
    • not only does Jesus, the person who lived and died and reveals God, show me a moment of God’s solidarity with suffering in the past…
    • God’s spirit, in evey present moment, made more accessible to me by other people’s prayers, shows me solidarity in real time as my fellow experiencer
• I think of that as I think of the pain of economic injustice.
  • God is the fellow experiencer of the exploited poor and the exhausted middle class.
  • Prayer is how we make more accessible the feeling of God’s empathy in real time.

Let’s move to our last theme of today:

III. Prayer moderates individualism (which challenges solidarity)

Summary: prayer as pursuit of something beyond our individual selves, that helps us discover God’s will, and evaluate our motives with a willingness to surrender or repent.

• Individualism, like capitalism, is not by definition a bad thing; it has benefits and challenges
  • We often point out individualism is the inspiration for lots of modern social justice movements
  • Because it says: the rights of every individual matter!
• But fighting for rights for individuals doesn’t necessarily lead to solidarity
  • Because fighting for rights for individuals keeps our focus on self interest, rather than collective interest.
  • So there’s an aspect of social justice that we’re under-developed in in individualist cultures,
  • Despite how “progressive” our brand image may be.
• Think about how far we’ve come from JFK’s speech in the 60s “ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for you country” —
  • Setting aside whether or not you think JFK, or America, lives up to its aspirations with enough integrity to make such an ask…
  • I’m just fascinated that, in the 60s, that was an applause line (it’s famous! it’s lived on!)
  • BUT, today, in our era of mistrust in institutions, NO politician EVER appeals to such a question today with their supporters! On the right or the left!
  • Politicians ALWAYS talk to us as if our individual self-interest is our only concern, and NEVER ask us to vote considering how we’re part of a larger group beyond just us.
• This is a big reason why charity is our usual imagination for addressing economic problems or inequities
  • Because charity addresses individuals in need.
    • And it can help! Absolutely!
  • BUT it doesn’t build solidarity
    • It’d be impolite to ask people to out themselves as the recipient of charity.
    • So charity doesn’t build a collective or community.
    • It doesn’t build bottom up power or commonality and oneness of purpose across difference
    • The helpfulness of charity has a ceiling
• So my suggestion is:
  • a rhythm of prayer can help moderate individualism and reclaim solidarity as a much needed path to justice
• Here I mean Prayer as another thing we see in the beginning of the Pentecost passage:
  • a collective pursuit beyond individual selves
  • to discover the will of God for what’s next,
  • or to evaluate personal motives.
• That sounds like solidarity, right?
• How do you see prayer as helpful in this way, Hayley?
• The helpfulness of charity has a ceiling, the helpfulness of individualism can have a ceiling when it comes to prayer
• When I am in a regular rhythm of prayer — which may just look like intentionally breathing some days, I do feel more grounded
• But the most meaningful prayer experiences I’ve had have all been in communal settings
• Prayer can take us outside of ourselves
  • It’s a brave thing to ask for help and asking for prayer might feel uncomfortable or unnatural sometimes, depending on your past experiences
    • It’s a helpful muscle to get in the habit of building
  • Ripple effect: when you’re used to communal prayer it feels more natural to pray with real hope and real expectation for justice and renewal on a much larger scale
  • Prayer becomes a natural part of solidarity work
• Yeah, prayer as pursuing the will of a Loving God beyond you,
  • that helps you see yourself as part of a bigger picture, more than just your narrow self-interest
  • that opens you to others’ realities, and to perspective taking
  • that opens you to humility, evaluating your motives, a willingness to surrender or repent
• (Evaluating personal motives) Yeah I definitely see prayer as helpful in surrendering or repenting
  • Unique in a way, it’s not like some performance review or self-judgement. It’s taking an honest look at yourself with the help of God
• Someone in our neighborhood recently went around with chalk and wrote all over the sidewalks “The Kingdom of God is near, repent!” And “Jesus is the only way, repent!” Repent, repent, repent all over the place
  • It honestly felt aggressive
• “Repent” can be a charged word for many, can feel judgemental or controlling
• Repent, really simply, means to turn in a new direction
  • Can’t help but think of how many times in the course of our conversations on solidarity there’s been encouragement to turn in a new direction
    • To rethink choices, to pick a new more liberating path
• Also doesn’t have to boil down to an individual responsibility, because that can feel extra weighty to carry alone
• Communal repentance: we turn in new directions together
  • When we come up against patterns and actions that are harming rather than helping, we can turn in a new direction collectively
• God is with us in the turning. And prayer can guide us in the process, to evaluate and examine our motives and to anchor our hopes for a new way that is possible

Vince, do you having closing thoughts?

Closing thoughts

Just that, again, solidarity requires organizing. It won’t just happen on autopilot. And our organizing as a church right now is happening via a small group.

The next meeting is today after church if you want to join us!

This won’t be anyone’s last chance to be involved, as the group’s goal is to lead our whole church in what’s next for BLC contributing to a solidarity economy, so worry not if you can’t make it.

But if you can we’d love to have you!

Prayer