Graham Adams’ new book had me at the title: Holy Anarchy. It’s his deliberately disruptive re-description of the Kingdom of God – “Kingdom” being a metaphor that has lost its tension to the point where we forget the profound ways that the realm of God is not like the top-down, power-over kingdoms of this world. “Holy Anarchy” stands in opposition to the totalising, dominating impulse of Empire, defying the “False Order”-sustaining lie that “There Are No Alternatives”...a lie that Christian communities, in our preference for certainties and our uncritical valorisation of "order" for order's sake, too readily remain entangled with.
TANA is a pretty apt encapsulation of what I was railing against when I wrote this poem... [1]
[1] Prompted, among other things, by Miroslav Volf's take on the Tower of Babel, which he describes in chapter 5 of Exclusion and Embrace as a "totalitarian project to centralize, homogenize, and control." See also Rabbi Ari Lamm's recent viral thread on Babel as an account of the birth of Empire and God's response to it.
PLEASE PUT YOUR SEATS IN THE UPRIGHT POSITIONThe skies were never ours to start with –So, you see, we simply had to have them.“Fill the earth,” He said; we said, “but first, the air.”He put a stop to that, initially. But look at us today,Ten thousand years the smarter,Umpteen fingers reaching upwards later:FasteningOur seatbelts, switchingOur devices into flight mode, stowingCarry-on and tables, clutchingArmrests, digging in our nails and suckingUrgently on complimentary Love Hearts (‘WhatsApp Me’).Next thing, we’re thirty thousandFeet from chaos; gazing at the mist belowAbove the sea. Three whole free-falling minutes...But it shouldn’t have to come to that,Provided we obey procedure.For the safety of your fellow passengers please keepThe aisles clear, your questions to yourself until we’ve landed;Do not dream of any different sandwich;Do not hold out for another cup of tea.This is your sandwich; you have had your cup of tea;And all you need to know is on the safety cardLocated in the pocket on the rear side of the seat in front of youWith which you are familiar already.We are estimated to arrive on time;We only ask that you believe, with every fibreOf your flight socks; every inclinationOf your tray table; believe itFrom the bottom of your Love Heart (‘I Surrender’)Or, like Tinkerbell but with moreFire, more hysteria, more sandwiches asunder, moreCollateral destruction, we will fall,And all of it – the bloody kit and frightening kaboodle – will beWholly and unbearablyOn you.Carolyn Whitnall, March 2019. In Second Chance Lit, Issue 3: Ubi Sunt.
Adams wants us to believe that "There Are Several Alternatives" to the system of hierarchical domination whose "order" embeds White supremacy, male supremacy, cisheteronormativity, ableism, and the pillaging of the earth’s resources for the benefit of a privileged few at great cost to the many and to our non-human neighbours. Holy Anarchy "beckons from the margins," a realm of non-domination that breaks into the here and now as we respond to the "awesome weakness" of God in solidarity among us. Christian communitites are called and enabled to be "shaken open" to reality beyond our narrow individual experiences and the lies and the half-truths of Empire; to grow in empathy for and solidarity with others across division and difference, including religious difference. Importantly, solidarity-building requires sustained openness – a re-prioritising of what Adams calls "truth-in-process" over certainty-clutching "truth-in-hand" – with particular attention to the voices of people sidelined or excluded under Empire's skewed arrangements of top-down power. (After all, those of us "closer to the centre" have a vested interest in sustaining the status quo whether we acknowledge it to ourselves or not, and this can make us blinkered to experiences outside our relative comfort). By "build[ing] communities committed to undoing the grip of imperial power, in solidarity with any who are alert to the conditioning of Empire," the church can witness to, and offer a foretaste of, "God's alternative empire, Holy Anarchy" (p117).
On a good day, I do believe this. The way things are is not the only way; it is possible (God makes it possible) to provisionally, imperfectly, increasingly embody an alternative in which "the work of anti-domination bears fruit, and life in its fullness can flourish" (p69). Still, even on some of those days I look at the world, and the church, our entanglements, our edited narratives, myself, all the ways I've been harmed, and the ways I've done harm, and I'm tired, and if I'm honest I'd quite like to just finish my sandwich and shut my eyes and have someone wake me when it's time to get off. I can't, of course (though privilege puts me nearer to that option than most). [2] But Holy Anarchy has helped remind me that I'm not (or needn't be) alone; that others like Adams have gone on ahead, and others ahead of him; that I'm not the only one feeling shaken, and that if I let myself be opened by it maybe I will notice opportunities to enter into forms of solidarity that stand in faith and hope and love together in the face of "There Are No Alternatives."
[2] Funnily, in between writing and posting this I got to a bit in Jacques Ellul's The Judgment of Jonah where he describes Jonah's sleep (Jonah 1:4-6) as a refusal to "contemplate" the storm and a failure to enter into solidarity with the sailors. "When all the world is in danger, the man who flees from the word of God seals himself off in his solitude, willing neither to see nor to hear anything of what others are doing. His destiny is no longer their destiny. He sleeps." (p29)
[Thumbnail image cc. by Hanson Lu on Unsplash.]
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