Reconsidering Citizenship From Within

What does it take for US citizens to reconsider citizenship—its fundamentals, its invitations, even its demands for a healthy, democratic Republic? The year 2020, apparently, with its global pandemic and political-media implosions in these United States of America. On Thursday September 24, 2020, a rather soft-spoken Christian spirituality scholar entered into the blogosphere in as public a fashion as she could muster. Blog posts were written. Social media usually eschewed was employed for distribution to a feed with student-alums serving in rural America. Writings from the gut and heart were prioritized over solely intellectual inquiries into government, democracy, politics, etc. With her heart in her mouth, she began what has become a theologically-anthropological project in civic-drag: www.reconsideringcitizenship.com. What might a white cis-gender middle-aged woman (she/her) contribute to the reckonings before us in her capacity as full-professor in a theological seminary, with a long line of alums and students serving in rural America? What perspectives could differentiate and unify from within her own diverse geographical trajectory including Southwestern Ohio (earliest years), Northfield, MN (college years), Los Angeles, CA (during the Rodney King riots), Princeton/Ewing, NJ (gradschool and first jobs), and then back again to Dayton, OH? Our Pandemic Pause has broken us, so many of us. Could this be a time of breaking open, a time to write what comes?

I am this rather soft-spoken Christian spirituality scholar, of course, in the compost-dump of such a project and these questions. It continues to surprise me, even unnerve me, mostly because I would never have chosen such a topic in my traditional-theological calling. I've long been attentive to the specifics of theological disciplines in public settings, knowing to honor the long-inherited norms of critical discourse safeguarding their integrity. Yet this is still a critical inquiry for me in spirituality as we know it—attentive to self-implication, toward a horizon of ultimate value in the Common Good, stewarded by We the People. I'm beginning to argue that reconsidering citizenship means surrendering into an inner journey before or instead of finding outward voice and authority. It is for me a project in which heart and gut are driving the focal points and the contours, instead of filling in the linear structure of what the Mind orders as necessary. With that preamble, then, this essay shares some glimpses on the journey into reconsidering citizenship from the inside out, relevant to our local and global challenges.

The path toward healing the "heart of our democracy"¹ invites, perhaps requires, the welcome of grief, the digestion of projections, a quest for assurance rather than certainty, the cultivation of curiosity, and a disciplined daily surrender of so much we habitually grasp in fear. The toxicity of disdain—so often seeded in the shadow sides of critical inquiry—must be broken down into the grief work that it beckons. New ways of gathering as human beings need to be learned to steward this intimate yet collective griefwork to come. Our quests for certainty must turn inward, soften into the much more rigorous work of a quest for assurance in which love becomes its own sufficient reason, ala Jean-Luc Marion. Several practices undergird this pathway into healing, but the ones to focus on here are identifying judgment, welcoming the energy of projections home, cultivating curiosity and surrendering into the grief released toward healing.

DISDAIN & GRIEF(S) REFUSED: THE SHADOW SIDE OF CRITICAL INQUIRY

"New Yorkers are just so provincial," said the retired Jewish-Studies professor, Eric Friedland, with a smile. He and I were enjoying a collegial lunch, discussing his impending travels to New York City. I had recently returned back to Ohio from an eleven year stint in Princeton, New Jersey, and before that, a couple years of private school teaching in Los Angeles. My husband and I were reeling a bit, being in small-city life after over a decade in metropolitan cities. It took me years, for instance, before I could hear Ohioans complaining about traffic without laughing aloud. "Provincial?" I repeated, incredulous. "Oh yes...