2107 – Schwab – Colonization of the Mind and Atonement - Empire
I have been asked to respond to the following question: “what alternative theologies might we access for dismantling colonization?” When I read this question, I just laughed a hearty laughed and surveyed the bounty of theologies that we’ve got at our tongue tips. Because all of theology intrinsically has but one purpose: to liberate us from these earthen chains, these limited narratives about ourselves and our world which restrict us from stretching out into the divine.
Perhaps, I thought, when talking about colonization, I might offer you the theology of beginner's mind, for we do need newness of thought. Or I could’ve preached to you preachers that the amount of love present in this world is directly correlated with how much love we make. Or, of Liberation Theology’s power to shift the onus of song straight into the throats of the unsinging. Or, I could have simply reminded you of your heart’s own wish, by sounding for you the clear pure note of Universalism.
But no, I have a special theology for you today, a thought that I, too, need to hear right now, because I know I’m not the only one who’s struggling to be the best damn white person I can be. I know I’m not the only dude in here who wants so badly to free his woman from himself, and I know I’m not the only liberal who is motivated by guilt, so today I’d like to offer you a special take on atonement. For what would a conversation about colonization be without a little twisting of the knife?
Touch for a second upon your forehead, this soft smooth warmth along the hairline, where you’ve got a round skull that’s hard to the touch but pulses underneath with a network of veins, a web of a circulatory system gripping the skull in oxygen, and now imagine a knife aching in, tearing across the hairline, fingers dug in to rip back, slice off your scalp.
For what better way is there to colonize the mind than to penetrate it with a knife? What better way is there to force submission than by violating someone’s skin boundary? What better way is there to change hearts and minds of people than to show them the gruesome alternative?
But forgive me for for over simplifying; capitalism and colonization are so much more complicated than simple brute force. Because ultimately, you (who are now in the role of colonizer) can’t get everybody’s scalp...so you have to figure out how to own the rest of the minds, too. But lucky for you, the strategies of domination have been honed over the generations, acquisition skills passed from father to son, son to grandson. For, after all, abuse is an art form. A crafty, tricky, power puzzle that will just have to do in the event of a pesky knife shortage.
Gaslighting and co-option of struggles are easy ways to do just this. Perhaps, you hold up in front of the woman the scalp of her son, dripping with minds and you look her right in her eyes in her most vulnerable moment, and say “these are not the minds of your people, these are the minds of my people. Actually,” you tell her as you shake the hair, “this violence was done to me.” And as this small, brown woman nods from her corner her acquiescence, suddenly every mind involved has been a little bit more colonized, and you can rest assured knowing that you’ve planted a healthy gaslighting seed into her mind, but also into yours.
And forever more, this co-option of oppression will blossom into the history books, the story of struggle twisted, the locus of suffering shifted straight back over this way. For were you not taught that scalping was a native practice? Were you not denied the truth, that scalping was a white tactic that had been perfected in the colonization of the indigenous Irish? And in this way, have you not been impoverished and atrophied by a false narrative of white victimhood? Of male fragility, or the myth that you’re innocent because you’re on the margin?
Because if you think about it, isn’t it just so horrible that you came all this way on a boat only to find that your virgin shores were inhabited by savages? It is uncomfortable to have to stare ahead as you wait for the light to change at the onramp to avoid the pleading eyes. It’s a lot to care for that big old house by yourself, because when it’s all said and done, there’s just a lot your plate right now. Maybe you should shift every conversation back to yourself and your struggles because like, it’s hard to be a minister in the richest denomination in the land and have a shit load of power in a community that reveres you as the moral authority or even, the voice of God.
For we’ve all got blood on our hands. Even if you don’t body check your female partner, or maybe you do, who knows, even if you don’t run a prison, your hands are stained. For we are gloved in a fascia of thought that’s so silky, so close, that it rests and binds upon our skin so smoothly that we don’t know what is us and what is it. No, you cannot wash your hands of this. And guess what, you type those sermons with those fingers, and you wield that pulpit with your word, and it’s all based on the most powerful violence around us, a violence that’s never seen, heard or known. It simply is in your consciousness.
The only thing more painful than facing the truth is erasing the truth, so, if you wish to atone for the original sins of the Americas, then your first task is to submit to the lure of honesty. For, atonement is simply a personal inventory, a radical look at whether or not you are right with the god of you. It's a willingness to ascertain your own capacity to harm, it's a hard look around this room to see how much we really want our theological work to be rooted in reality.
But don’t go thinking this is a one-time deal. Capitalism creeps into even our consumption of forgiveness, and all too often we imagine repentance as a complete and glossy repair, but there is no confession booth for us, there is no such thing as an instant cleansing, no immediate acquisition of salvation, you don't get to get all squeaky clean. For, repentance is not a sharp turn, but a long yield, a slow dawning, an arch that is barely felt, you a captain of a giant ship whose course must be plotted far before a change is going to come.
This is why I turn to the Jewish high holidays’ theology of atonement, for it stokes a slow burn, pulls you down into your wonderment about this world and leaves you there, offering you salvation for the low low price of a lifelong plea. Asks you to offset the colonization of your mind by bringing into your consciousness how callous and neglectful you've been of that which you say is sacred. In fact, when atoning in the high holidays, you don’t just atone for past regressions, but future ones, as well. And not just that, but for regressions that you aren’t and never will never be aware of.
It seems a lil harsh, but, let’s be honest, there are worse things than sitting with your soft, pulsing head in your hands and wondering whether or not you’re going through life unaware of the damage you cause. I know that I am more reverent of this world when I remember that I have betrayed love and could very well again, that I have gone against goodness in my own ways. I am certainly more careful knowing that I have had to gape at the sheer tragedy of finding the source of division hidden within.
So, if you want to be unbound, if you want that shared liberation, want this great weight lifted, then you must rest unassured, savor any chance to writhe away, disentangle, liberate yourselves from the chains that have pressed angrily into your skin since birth. And then, and only then, you will have begun your liberation, which will come bit by bit, you with a front row seat asyouemancipate yourself from mental slavery.
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