Week 2

Gospel Parallels - 3rd edition, ed. Burton Throckmorton, Jr.
The End of White World Supremacy: Four Speeches by Malcolm X - ed. with intro by Imam Benjamin Karim
The Yellow Birds - Kevin Powers (he's from Richmond!)

   Where has the Gospel Parallels been all my life? What an awesome resource! Duh, Dave, it's been sitting on the shelf in your dad's office, your mom's bedroom, your granddad's back room, your brother and sister-in-law's front room, your cousin's closet, your auntie's attic. Like, uh, everyone in my family has this book; I've eyeballed it a million times. Why am I just now opening it up?
   In church we tend to straw-man "Biblical Scholars" and "Scholars" in general. How many times have you heard a preacher say, "scholars say...", without any specific reference, and then proceed either to swat away the "scholarship" like a bad joke or to nail it to the cross as irrefutable? Usually it's the former. When we hear "scholars say," we edge up in our seat; our mouths start to water; we know some poor, little ivory-tower straw-person is about to get strewn about. I've played the "scholars say" rhetorical trick plenty of times myself. It's a required skill for all Baptists.
   Gospel Parallels is a great counter to that tendency. I can look up a story or parable, and, wow, there next to it are the similar passages from the other gospels. Thanks, scholars! How convenient. And in the notes are references to other New Testament passages or non-canonical gospels. And if I'm really curious, also in the notes are variations between the codexes, papyri, versions, and whatnot. No one is trying to beat me over the head with a Greek dictionary, or lead me astray with "philosophy and empty deceit" (Col 2:8; oh yes, we have a long and glorious straw-man tradition).
   There's something here for everyone! Or everyone in my head, at least. If I'm feeling like a scrupulous modern, I can comb and sift and strain for the authentic, original truth of Jesus. If I'm feeling like a centrifugal post-modern, I can revel in the variety of perspective and possibility. If I'm feeling like an earnest evangelical, I can thank God that all these people loved me enough to write down the story of Jesus.

   Speaking of loving someone enough to tell them something...here comes Malcolm X! What a preacher-prophet! I didn't realize how evangelical and apocalyptic he was (I know very, very little about his life and work). 
   "They knew he meant what he said," writes Imam Karim in the introduction. "They" refers to the NYPD, with which Malcolm regularly interacted during the protests against the abuse of Hinton Johnson. But, the impression I get from reading this book is that "they" could probably refer to almost anybody that heard Malcolm X speak. 
   "They knew he meant what he said." He sounds like a true believer to me, and I'm just reading the transcripts of speeches. He sounds totally - mind, body, spirit - committed to the Truth as taught by Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. And yet his commitment to the Truth, "naked truth, undressed truth" he calls it, must have gone deeper even than that, because his preaching-prophecy continued to grow and develop even after he broke with the NOI. "Malcolm, always changing, always evolving toward some truth that was ultimately outside the boundaries of his life, of his body," writes Ta-Nehisi Coates in Between the World and Me. A beautiful paradox - unwavering commitment leads to change, growth, discovery.
   This book is my first real exposure to Elijah Muhammad's mythology, anthropogeny, etc.. Did he really believe in the historicity of his version of creation? Regardless, NOI mythology (or as much as Malcolm relates in these speeches) seems designed to turn various WASP racial myths upside down. The story of the white race's creation - prophesied of old, replacing the lost 13th tribe, designed for evil and 6000 years of domination by Yacub - is eerily inverse to a pamphlet I once read that suggested (if I'm remembering correctly) the lost tribes of Israel became part of the Scythians; their descendants migrated west and settled in Great Britain; and their descendants immigrated to America and founded a Christian nation that could finally fulfill Israel's divinely ordained mission.
   Amiri Baraka summarized Malcom's gospel message as "Self-determination, self-respect, self-defence." Malcolm says something similar about Elijah Muhammad's message to black people (that is, by his definition, all non-white people), "1) wake up, 2) clean up, and 3) stand up." As a white man, I need to hear that, too. Malcolm was happy and eager to talk to white folks, anyone that would listen, but he had a special message for whites, more like a John the Baptist message. He says, "White America, wake up and take heed, before it is too late!"
   "But when he saw many white folks coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do no presume to say to yourselves, 'We have George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as our ancestors;' for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children from the Founding Fathers. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." (Matt 3:7-10)
    Did Malcolm X and Franz Fanon ever get to hang out or read each other's work?

   Speaking of authors getting to hang out...have Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds, and Phil Klay, author of Redeployment, ever had the chance to hang out? I highly recommend both of those books, on their own and as a pair. They are both sharp, well-paced, gut-wrenching, first-person-perspective stories about American soldiers in the 21st century - before, during, and after combat deployments. They are both written by veterans of the second Iraq war. But they are very different stylistically. 
   Redeployment (it's been a while since I read it, so I may misremember some things) is a collection of short stories, all involving Marines but from a variety of perspectives and in a variety of settings. The stories are framed by relationships - person to person, person to society, society to society. The dialogue is amazing! That stuck with me. I might tag Redeployment as "social realism." The narrator, the other characters, the setting, the plot - they all weave together to create a world, and the world itself is what speaks.
   The Yellow Birds is a novel, in the style of a memoir, heavy with reflection, perception, description. The narrator's voice is in-all, over-all, through-all. Would you label this as "modernism?" As I read I definitely had flashbacks to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren. I was constantly enchanted by the narrator's language, his similes especially, but I was also constantly impatient, frustrated...what happens next? Powers works with anticipation as much as suspense. The narrator, John, lets you know almost immediately that his buddy, Murph, dies, but it's not until the penultimate chapter that we hear how.
   Ya know I'm not sure where the title, The Yellow Birds, comes from. There is a story in the book about Murph's dad bringing some canaries up from the mine and opening their cages, expecting them to fly away. Instead they just play around a bit and then come back to the cages. Are canaries yellow? I'll google it. Anyway, as always, I'd love any feedback you have. Thanks for taking the time to read all this! Peace and blessings. Hope I make it to week 4!