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Monday
I have become a fan of Joseph Fasano, who regularly shares his poetry on BlueSky. The following poem reminds me of the George Herbert sonnet that I shared for Good Friday. At a time when rightwing Christians are applying their political muscle to put down fellow Americans and demonize immigrants, Fasano calls out a hypocrisy that Jesus too preached against.
In “Redemption” Herbert talks about searching for Christ in “cities, theaters, gardens, parks, and courts”—in other words, upper class neighborhoods—but ultimately finding him amongst murderers and thieves. That poem came to my mind as I watched White House spokesperson Katie Leavitt, wearing a gold cross around her neck, jeer at the young men who are being sent to a Salvadoran concentration camp. “We are encouraging illegal immigrants to actively self-deport to maybe save themselves from being in one of these fun videos,” the smirking Leavitt said at one point, referring to footage of guards shaving and shackling men who have been convicted of no crime and provided with no hearing.
Later, thumbing her nose at the fifth amendment, she said of Kilmar Ábrego García, “If he ever ends up back in the United States, he would immediately be deported again.”
Fasano’s poem functions as a passionate and principled response:
To Those Who Call Themselves Christian
but Seek to Divide and Conquer the World
By Joe Fasano
My god you think
that’s what love is?
Go
to your little, bitter meetings,
your callous rallies,
your palaces of gold.
You think you can choose who is beautiful?
Your country is open
to the chosen–
while somewhere, in the shadows
of your houses,
the one you believe
you are hearing
is hanging
in a crown of thorns, in agony,
burning the world with mercy,
his arms in an embrace he cannot close.
While American Calvinists regard themselves as “the Chosen,” the true Chosen include those that Emma Lazarus points to in her Statue of Liberty poem. Put another way, God does chooses to love us all, even when people use nails in an attempt to prevent Jesus’s arms from closing around us.
To the rest of the world, America is a golden palace currently controlled by people who don’t know what love is.
