God bless America.

We just got back from a trip to the US, visiting friends and families and supporters.  It was lovely and exhausting, life-giving and life-draining, fun and boring and delightful and Good.  As always.  We've been really thankful to have a budget that includes a yearly trip back to America -- it's helped keep relationships closer to friendships than to long-lost strangers.  And for that I'm really, really thankful.

But this trip felt different.

I remember when we first moved to Romania, someone told us to be "careful" because there is a "spirit of darkness" in former Communist countries.  My previous trips to Eastern Europe had all started in the vibrance of summer, so I'd never had that sense (except for the literal darkness when we first arrived in Bucharest on January 3, 2013, since I think the sun set at, like, 4:45pm).  Perhaps my radar doesn't function as sensitively as it should, but I've just never noticed a great sense of oppression, spiritual or otherwise, here.  Sure, there are things in Romania that are sad and broken and troubling.  But that's everywhere.  And on this trip back, I felt it in the US.  I am sure part of it was due to cloudy skies and rain.  But largely for other reasons, it felt heavy.  

The inauguration is tomorrow, and although this blog is supposed to be about our life in Romania, I would be lying if I said my head and heart will be anywhere but Washington, D.C., this weekend.  The women's march on Washington is happening and I wish I could be there; the first president I ever voted for is leaving office and I mourn that; and a man and team who seem to support much that is wrong and evil in the world are taking power instead.  I feel sad, and angry, and frustrated to be so far away.

For some bizarre reason, the old song "God bless America" has been running through my head today.  So I have been chewing on those words.  All three of them.  And here's what I have been thinking.

God: as in the triune Creator.  Creator of the universe, of the good and beautiful creation: the prairies being mowed under for new buildings and the forests being logged around our ropes course.  God the Father, the all-powerful one, who doesn't tolerate sin, and who David cried out to in Psalm 109, "They repay me evil for good, and hate for love.  Appoint an evil man to testify against him!  May an accuser stand at his right side!  When he is judged, he will be found guilty!  Then his prayer will be regarded as sinful.  May his days be few!  May another take his job!"  God the almighty, who does hold the earth in the palm of his hands, and who has already won the war (even if we lose the battle).  God who is victorious and just and will lift up the meek and the humble.

God: as in Jesus.  The one who became flesh, who walked gently in the midst of violence and Roman oppression.  The one who turned the whole idea of "victory" upside-down.  The one who suffered -- oh, how he suffered -- who descended to hell -- who knows the tears of abandoned Romanian orphans, who knows the fears of the refugee, who hears the prayers of the lonely -- that Jesus.  The Jesus who sought out the outcast, the leper, the unloved and uncared for, and touched them before it was safe, before they were healed.  The Jesus who refused power and wealth and safety, even when he could have had it.  The Jesus who took shame and pain for the sake of truth and love.  That Jesus.

God: as in the Holy Spirit.  The holy mystery who somehow gives peace amidst pain, who convicts of sin and keeps our hearts soft -- even as we laugh with the late-night comedians (how we need to laugh) and scream at the news of injustice taking hold -- and somehow pushes us back to grace.  Who rouses us to action.  Who fills us with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness... and with the prophetic gifts, which are not quiet or status quo, but truth-telling and provocative.  The Spirit who moves in unexpected ways, building unexpected alliances, uprooting our assumptions and dismantling our lies.

Yeah.  That God.

Bless: as in blessed are the poor in spirit.  Those who mourn.  The meek.  Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.  The merciful.  The pure of heart.  The peacemakers.  Those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.  For they will receive the kingdom of heaven, they will be comforted, they will inherit the earth, they will be filled, they will be shown mercy, they will see God, they will be called children of God.

Bless: as in "to pronounce holy."  Blameless.  Or, "to request God to bestow divine favor."  We Americans like to use that second definition, often forgetting the first.  We want God's favor, usually on our existing way of life.  We don't so much want to be holy.  We don't so much want the Beatitudes.  We want the easy, soft gospel; we want the symbols of piety without the sacrifices of holiness; we want to "be on the right side of history" without doing anything about it.  I'm not sure we'd ask God to bless America so often if we read the Beatitudes more.

And America: we mean the United States, but we claim the whole continent (or two).  America: the land of the free and the home of the brave, the land of mass incarceration and the home of the guns.  United we stand, divided we fall -- and divided we are, unable even to talk to each other about why we voted the way we did.

Oh, America.  May God bless you and keep you.  May he make his face to shine upon you and give you peace.

May he bless you with meekness and peacemakers, with humility and hunger for righteousness.  It's gonna hurt.  We probably deserve that.  We definitely need it.

May he keep you -- not because you are a "Christian nation" (what a ridiculous notion; the whole idea was dismantled when we Gentiles were welcomed into the Church) -- but because we are a country filled with God's children.  All of us are God's children, not some more than others.  All of us are created in his image.  (This includes the Evangelicals who voted for Trump, and the LGBTQ community, and members of the NRA, and gang members in the 'hood, and Donald himself, and little old ladies in nursing homes, and your local plumber.)  God loves his children, even if we don't always love him back.

May he make his face shine upon you -- although that seems pretty dangerous, if Moses and the book of Revelation are any indicators.

May he give you peace.  Not fake peace, the unsettled quiet of burying things under the rug... but rather, the hard, gritty, true peace of reconciliation.

Oh, may he give you peace.