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[T]he people who sat in darkness have seen a great light,
and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.
(Matthew 4:16)
It’s infuriating.
They stand, open their mouths and they lie. They lie again
and again and again.
Their tone, authoritative. Their confidence, sure. Their position, secure, ensconced in the trappings
of officialdom we were taught to trust when we were naïve children.
But no longer. Now, we know.
They are lying about their brutality. They are lying about the
people they arrest and abuse. They are lying about the justification for their
actions. They are lying about the people who leave their homes in the bitter
cold to protest—average, decent human beings who blow whistles to warn their neighbors,
bear food to their doorsteps and ferry their children to school to protect them
from illegal arrest and deportation.
And, now, they are lying about the people they shoot and
kill in front of witnesses on city streets, calling them terrorists and assassins.
They lied in Portland and Chicago and Charlotte, et. al., and
have reached new heights … or depths … of depraved mendacity, in Minneapolis.
We know their names: Noem, Bovino, Homan, Miller, Trump, and
all who attempt to justify the fascistic machinations of this administration.
They are people of the lie, and they will keep on lying, day
after day after day. Possessed by a malignant, narcissistic self-righteousness,
they project their bitterness, hatred, imperfections and inadequacies onto
those they despise and defame.
And we? We live with the disorienting dissonance between what
our eyes see, our ears hear and what our hearts know …. and the world of lies they
narrate, forcing us to deal with the dark and bitter world their lies create.
‘In our country the lie … has become a pillar of the state,’
wrote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn about the murderous brutalities of Soviet
Russia.
‘We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, but they are still lying.’
His words apply to our situation today. But with apologies to
the great Russian author, I wonder if those so deeply engaged in denying and
dissembling lose their capacity to know they are lying. Have they called evil good
for so long that they have lost their souls, unable to find their way back from
the abyss of inhumanity.?
Blessedly, we are not left or consigned to live in their darkness.
All we need do is to look around, especially in Minneapolis.
As a Christian, and I hope a contemplative Christian, the
light of compassion I see in the eyes of my Lord Jesus shines in the life of Alex
Pretti, well-known among friends and colleagues as a nurse who cared deeply for
his patients at the VA hospital where he worked, a trusted and encouraging mentor
to less experienced nurses.
He was no terrorist or would-be assassin, but a man committed
to healing and care. His life gives the lie to people of the lie, unveiling the
darkness of their hearts and illumining a way of life that truly is life.
He died saying ‘no,’ to the brutality and inhumanity of immigration
agents employing unchecked power to push a woman down in the street, attacking
and shooting him in cold blood when he tried to help her up. Our eyes do not lie.
He is not alone, of course. Tens of thousands have gone to
the streets to magnify that ‘no.’ They say ‘no’ to the lie when they take food
to their neighbors, ferry their kids to school, blow whistles to warn of danger
and when they sing and pray and mourn, hoping their voices will move people in power,
finally, to stand up and say ‘no.’
The light of truth and compassion shines in their hearts,
and the darkness will not put it out.
David L. Miller
