“The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today I went to the reflecting pool for the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington. I couldn’t hear well enough to distinguish speakers, but I’m going to use an idea from one of them and I wish I could give them credit. It made me stupid for a second as my internal computer lagged trying to process the moment.

They said, “the moral arc doesn’t bend itself.”

I was glad I was sitting down.

Raphael Warnock said much the same thing on Rachel Maddow the other night. He said, “pray with your lips and your legs.” I grew up with much the same idea… that if you’re going to pray, put on your shoes. You don’t feed people based on whether they deserve it, you feed people because they’re hungry. Then you pray about it and do it again.

Christianity at its best focuses on self-improvement, and social justice is a wonderful way to point groupthink in the right direction. You are bettering yourself with other people trying to better themselves through the common activity of standing up for minorities, both the ones you are and aren’t. Trauma has many basketball courts in one gym. All minorities have it. Jesus would have been subject to those same things, because of course he was Jewish, but his government wasn’t. The Sanhedrin was very much the governing body for Jews, but the Romans had control of everyone.

I wish more people would take in what a radical socialist Jesus was in his day and time. I wish more churches would take in how much their prosperity gospel is embarrassing. It is not what was ever intended by a group of radical Jews who went their own way. What people tend to forget if they aren’t interested in theology is that Christ would understand exactly nothing about what was said in the New Testament because they weren’t written down until 80 or 90 years after he died. The whole thing is a game of telephone. The Nicene Council approved international standards for the Bible, but Jesus still thought like a Jew. Jesus does not give a fuck about your abortion. I guarantee it. The Talmud is sane in this regard.

We were marching for all of it. Black lives matter. Female bodily autonomy. Black trans lives matter. Queer people matter.

Today, the moral arc of the universe did indeed bend toward justice.

But it didn’t bend itself.

---

I remembered that Laura was a preacher’s kid. What I did not realize is that both her parents are retired from the United Methodist Church, albeit a vastly different kind from my dad’s because I was in Texas and she was in New England. But, this woman catches jokes that no one else in the room would understand, and it cracks me up. I felt the same way about her mom. I said, “my dad was a pastor, but my mother was more the ‘smile and play the organ’ type.” Without missing a fucking beat, she says, “oh. That’s more typical….. as IF THEY HAD A CHOICE.” I died for a second. If my mother had been standing there, she also would have been struggling not to fall on the ground laughing.

It was great to feel at home with both of them right away, instantly translating from virtual to physical as if it meant nothing at all. I think people our age do it better than most, because we’ve spent more years chatting online than older people have, yet we’re still young enough to remember life before the Internet… we’re basically the first generation of people who have connected for years virtually because we could.

It would be impossible to keep up the rate with which we contact each other if we only had letters and phone calls. Therefore, the transition is much more difficult. It’s easy to continue a conversation when you can talk right up until you find each other in front of the Washington Monument.

Turns out, I can look forward to seeing more of Laura eventually because even though she lives in Boston, her aunt lives in Alexandria. So, it’s not impossible that we’ll run into each other, especially for days like this. In fact, Laura is only here for 12 hours, and her mom flew in yesterday. It made me feel like part of something very historic- I knew it was, obviously, but that it also meant a lot to all Americans because people had traveled so far for it.

I also didn’t hear about it, strangely enough, and I say that because I read the news all the time. Both Laura and her mom said that it was hard to find information about the event and that even they had to do some guesswork. All of us thought the crowd would be bigger, but it was great seeing everyone, including the Kings and the Sharptons.

Part of being there was just enjoying the moment, even when I left to get water and couldn’t find my way back to where we were sitting. I got lost in the moment when Sasha Baron Cohen was speaking about the collaboration between blacks and Jews. I did not know that it was historically black colleges that opened their doors to Jewish students when they were rejected from other American schools. It makes sense. Trauma sees trauma. Both have been tortured by the same people.

It’s the same type people that would torture me. Never in American history have any minorities been truly safe from persecution. Black people didn’t have rights in England, so why would they here? We forget the Founding Brothers were English just like we forget Jesus was Jewish. The Founding Brothers suffered under the weight of white supremacy Jesus and the country still won’t give it up. To the majority of Christians, what I am saying is blasphemy because the picture in their heads is as white as they are. The picture is every bit as infectious as the Coca-Cola Santa Claus, yet neither are real. The historical Jesus, in my head, looks like Reza Aslan (He’s the author of “Zealot,” about the historical Jesus).

Black people have held onto their Christian faith because they saw the real Jesus like no one else…… they saw him for who he really is.

They saw a man broken by the system who rose up and rescued himself, bringing us all with him. White supremacy will be the end of Christianity as Evangelicals drive more and more people away who leave church altogether instead of joining a liberal congregation fighting against the system. They’re so done with the hypocrisy that they just won’t come back unless a relative is singing, preaching, getting married, or dead.

If you insist on treating your very modern members like they’re failing at life because you’re making them terrified of ancient rules and regulations, you’re doing it wrong. Jesus was not a professional Christian superhero.

He was a man broken by the system, as all minorities are at one time or another.

The problem is when your church doesn’t talk about it.

11:00 on Sunday morning is still the most segregated hour in America.

Not just by race, but also perspective. When you think of Jesus, you think of you. So, if you are the majority, so is he. You are upholding a system that has gone back thousands of years, new generations picking new people to hate. How Jesus’ message became so twisted is easy to put together when you look at it that way. As Reza Aslan said in a famous YouTube video, “God doesn’t hate gay people. You hate gay people.”

It makes the march come together, this feeling of solidarity. If we ban together and include women as minorities, the minority is the majority. We have protested in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Now it’s time to protest, and soon it will be time to vote. If you’re going to pray, put on your shoes.

The moral arc of the universe is long and bends toward justice…… but it doesn’t bend itself.