When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” ~ Acts 1:9-11
I. Haunted
In the early 1990s
French philosopher,
Jacques Derrida,
introduced a new word into the languages of humankind.
The word was
“haunt-ology.”
Hauntology.
If you hear the word “haunt” in hauntology, then you’re hearing rightly.
But hauntology, contrary to what we might think,
isn’t the study of real-life ghosts
(although that would be pretty cool, right).
But, rather, hauntology
(a little bit for Derrida but then especially for some others who would later expand on his ideas)
is the study
of communal and collective experiences of lost futures.
That is,
it's the study of:
the experience of having invested hope
and aspiration in a thing or in a movement or in a person,
and then having the trajectory of that hope cut short.
So that the hopes never come to fruition.
So that those who were hoping never achieve or see or experience what
they were hoping for.
And so:
our hopes end up not knowing what to do.
Instead of hoping, then, the hopes just turn into pain.
And nostalgia
And longing.
A special kind of sinking sadness.
Accompanied by memories that keep coming back,
swirling, around and around,
beyond
our
control.
Sort of like in TV shows when there’s a breakup
and then the person in the show who was broken up with
keeps seeing their former partner
in places like the check-out line
and at the movies
and in the face of a stranger in some passing car.
Even though, in reality,
that person is not really there.
Because they’re gone.
And yet,
the estranged partner can’t help but see them
everywhere that they go.
+++
This feeling: of lost futures,
of sad nostalgia,
and of sinking pain,
says hauntology,
is the feeling of being “haunted.”
It’s a haunting feeling.
It’s distressing.
And it’s heavy.
It’s also a feeling that fixates our attention
in such a way that,
many times,
we can only see the community,
the person,
or the movement that’s no longer there.
And that isn’t coming back.
II. When Jesus Leaves
I think this is how the disciples felt today as we happen upon them
staring
upward
into the sky.
They don’t quite know
what to think
or how to feel.
They’re just staring,
silent.
And sinking.
He was here, they remember.
He was killed and put on display.
We saw it.
We grieved.
And we hid.
He returned.
And we danced.
And we feasted.
And now,
a month or two out,
he’s gone again.
+++
And, so, they looked up.
And as they looked up,
they saw him there:
in the clouds
in the leaves of the trees,
in the stars at night.
They saw him at the movies.
And in the checkout line.
And in the faces
of strangers
in passing cars.
They felt the feelings of
being haunted.
Empty.
Sinking.
A piece of them wrenched out of them.
Gone forever.
And yet there, everywhere, in every passer-by.
III. Redemption Screams
There’s another philosopher whose name is
Walter Benjamin.
Benjamin lived from 1892 to 1940.
And he’s super mystical
and beautifully eccentric and wonderful--
just in case you’re looking for something new to read.
Unlike Derrida,
Benjamin didn’t quite talk about haunting or hauntology.
And he didn’t so much talk about lost futures either.
But,
rather,
Benjamin talked about listening to the cries of those who have gone before us.
Specifically, he talked about listening to the cries of those
who have suffered injustices,
from disease or detention
or heartbreak or persecution
or war.
And he said that these people,
the people who suffered in the past–
he said that if you listen hard enough,
if you listen really closely,
you can hear them.
He said that they’re calling out to us.
We can’t change what happened to them.
He knows this.
And they know this, says Benjamin.
But we can change the present so that pain like that,
suffering like that,
injustices like that,
happen less,
and eventually (we hope) will never have to happen again.
This, Benjamin says, is the work of “redeeming the past”
by creating a better here and now.
IV. Today
Today is Memorial Day.
It’s also the Sunday
in which we remember Christ’s departure.
It also happens to be the Sunday
after two mass shootings in the United States,
one in Texas,
and one in Buffalo New York.
One racially motivated,
springing from racist and supremacist ideologies;
and another targeting young children–and taking aim.
This is also the weekend in which (we know)
violence increases in our communities,
and more lives are lost,
senselessly, and in an instant,
not to mention the ongoing violence and war in countries all over the world.
This is all in the midst of a pandemic that seems just
not
to want
to end.
Amen?
+++
If we are not all the way numb at this point,
if we haven’t found a way to block it all out,
it would be difficult not to feel even just a little bit haunted.
In every photograph of every face of every person and every child who has died,
we see the embodiment
of lost hopes, lost dreams,
and lost futures.
Every parent of every child,
every friend of every person lost,
seeing their loved one
in a theater
in a checkout line
in a car passing by.
Gone,
and yet present
as they stand there staring at the ground
or
staring up
into the sky.
+++
And to be honest, that’s how many of us feel, too.
Amen?
Beyond the fear of “could it happen here?” – the answer to which we already know,
is the grief that the future we hoped for
for our children
has not yet arrived.
Everywhere we look we see signs
and markings
and memories
of the futures we have lost along the way.
+++
And,
if we listen closely,
we can hear their cries:
Do something different.
Make something change.
I have suffered
unto death.
And no one should ever have that happen to them, no child, no parent, no friend.
And no child, no parent, no friend
should ever have to mourn over such a loss.
No parent, no child, no teacher,
should ever have to be afraid.
+++
It would be hard for any of us not to feel the haunting weight of all of these lost lives
and lost futures
not only of the past weeks,
but also of the past several years.
Amen?
+++
And it would also be remiss of us not
to also
hear the cries of those who have died–
calling to us from the grave:
to never ever let this happen
again.
Amen.
Great you did a good job.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much, Anonymous! :)
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