This is what Annie Dillard writes in Holy the Firm: “The question is, then, whether God touches anything. Is anything firm, or is time on the loose?”
Like millions of others in the U.S., my mind today is almost completely focused on Ferguson, Missouri. Like millions, I have been awaiting the grand jury indictment of Officer Darren Wilson, and am aghast at the lack of charges that have resulted. Tonight I will protest, but today my response to the grand jury has been one of abstract wonderment: how can this happen? Physically, in this world, how? Maybe the arc of the moral universe bends towards chaos.
Everything I see and read about Michael Brown, Darren Wilson, the Ferguson protesters, the racism promulgated by America’s police forces, including my own police force in St. Paul, MN, reminds me of Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard. Dillard writes of tragedy close-at-hand, and how we cope with it in light of the grand nature of the universe. Her attempt as author is to ask: how can these horrors happen?
Michael Brown’s death was unnecessary. No matter what happened that day, he needn’t have died. We—white American citizens—allowed it to happen. It was allowed to happen by a city, a state, a nation that sees black lives as expendable. How else to say it? Darren Wilson said he looked at Michael Brown and saw “a demon;” he will not face criminal charges.
I make no pretense that I can offer a unique take on what is happening in Ferguson. I just offer a candid view of what I see: white American cops creating human tragedies in Black American communities. Many white Americans refuse to acknowledge these tragedies as tragedies because to do so would threaten the advantages that racism has created for white Americans.
I originally started this little essay two-and-a-half years ago, after Travyon Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman. Zimmerman was acquitted, and that fact belied the racism that allows young black deaths to go unpunished. I return to it now because a white cop who shot an unarmed black 18-year old man will not even have the chance to be acquitted.
Too many other cases follow the same path and a redundant story unfolds: black Americans are killed in our streets; no one is punished. We, white American citizens, allow it to happen.
My culpability creates defensiveness. But that is pointless. So I get abstract. Holy the Firm is about God, and though I may not share Dillard’s vocabulary, I find her words of God valuable. Dillard asks much of her God. If Annie Dillard is going to believe, she is going to seek a detailed accounting for what goes on in this world. Dillard witnesses something terrible—a young girl’s face burned and disfigured—and wonders what kind of God could oversee such an occurrence. The question is whether God touches anything. Today, it seems unlikely.
