Nanci Griffith Song | What Democracy Looks Like |

Friends,

Two weeks since my achilles surgery and I'm very impatient. I want to move around.

Otherwise I'm doing fine, working is rewarding, my family is well. I hope the same for you.

-Elizabeth

Maybe This is Exile.

I need to revisit Isaiah, all of chapter 5, because there is more I want to say. The text is here if you prefer to read it first.

Here is the thing I see. We think that the our oppressive society is awful because of our present administration. And that makes us accidentally think that it was wonderful before our present administration. And that mistaken idea is, I think, what got us to where we are today. Many voters were voting about the fact that things were not good.

(For sure there's a bunch of wealthy people who ran a candidate that can do their bidding and help them stay wealthy and powerful. I'm not talking about them. We should deal with them. This is not that article.)

Today I am writing about ordinary MAGA voters. Poor voters. Working class voters. Rural voters. Voters who are depressed and lonely and can't get ahead. Voters who have little access to health care and lots of access to drugs. Voters who are treated like they are uneducated, unwise, and hateful. People who find the US system so impossible to live within that they liked the idea of tearing down our government.

In the middle of our nation there is little access to health care. When my brother-in-law needed heart surgery, the only place for him to get it was 5 hours away. He needed to buy flight insurance because there was no hospital nearby and no ambulance for an emergency. When a friend of my family had leukemia they had to buy a camper and drive to a five hours to hospital and essentially live in the hospital parking lot to get treatment. I interviewed at a church that had an airplane, and private pilot, so the pastor could do hospital visits. I have a friend who did street ministry in a county where there was not a single recovery program. Not one.

Things are bad right now and so we remember how much better it was before. But there is a whole group of people for whom before wasn't good.

Isaiah 5:8 is about poor landowners being taken advantage of by those with more wealth. They need help, and someone offers a loan with the land as collateral. And then, when the help is not enough, they take the land. The US has a history of this with small farmers and especially small farmers who are black. Our government has not prioritized protecting these people. Those of us outside the farmlands of our nation rarely even know this is happening.

Isaiah 5:11-12 sounds like it is about drunkards (who we generally assume are poor) but the conclusion in 5:13-15 makes it clear this is about wealthy "nobles" wasting their excess with parties rather than using what they have to help those with less. Today we worry that our "nobles" will be hurt by high taxes that could be used to help people with less.

Finally, Isaiah 5:23 is concerned with an unfair justice system, where those with power and money can be acquitted for their crimes. Right now we are all talking about Cornell University's failure refer a significant crime to legal authorities. I do not downplay that case as I mention that crimes in rural communities, and among poor people rarely get this much coverage. A study in 2022 showed that a shocking 94% of rural people with significant legal issues did not get legal help. I have never heard this number in the news.

Our present times call for a prophet like Isaiah to call us back to justice, righteousness, and systems that protect the poor and oppressed. But it is possible, perhaps it is likely, that these prophecies have been proclaimed for years. For decades. For centuries. Perhaps our present administration is not our warning but our exile. Perhaps we are already taken over by a foreign government because of our failures back in those times we remember as the good ol' days.

This is important because the end of exile required the people to stop imagining a return to the past, and instead to imagine a new and completely different future. In the early parts of Isaiah the goal was to stop the bad government. In the middle the goal is to create something brand new.

We must dream of, plan for, building a new metaphorical temple, one dedicated to the possibility that the point of a government is to care for it's people, all of its people, all the time.

What is your church doing, or thinking about doing these days? How are you being here in your particular place? Just reply to this email to let me know what's happening. ​
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What would it take to remake our national government into something ethical and responsible? CREW (Citizens for Responsible and Ethical Washington) has produced a comprehensive guide to what steps to take. It's long, but the first page summary is interesting.

During the dust bowl, hundreds of small farmers lost their land. Here is Nanci Griffith's Trouble in these Fields. (3:18)

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