PROFESSORS OF PRACTICE--EPISTOLARY PRACTICE--SESSION 4

During the month of April, Jeff Chang and myself co-taught the module “Living Democracy: Image and Culture” of the Professors of Practice course at the Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley.

Below is the epistolary practice I closed each session with—entitled Love-Lectures—in hopes that these letters could bleed from my heart to yours. Here is letter #4.

Breathing | Being | Praying Meditation 6

Yohana Junker, March 21, 2020

Beloved Comrades, Beloved Friends, if I may,

It’s me again.

I have been thinking a lot about the end of our journey with you and wanted to extend a gift. I have been practicing this breathing-being meditation and one of them was around something I have been grateful for… virtually exchanging many “I see yous” with folks on this journey. This phrase, A troca de olhar, involves a bit of invocation, it entails an exchange of gazes, of deep regard, a scanning, probing of one another’s being, a profound act of presence, of saying I see the entirety and the miracle of you. As I drew each of these eyes, I offered a prayer to you, a silent exercise of slow and deep seeing, a prayer for our collective well-being, and I extend that to you today.

I have also been thinking a lot about this word: Acolhimento. And I offer that to you. It lives and breathes in the embrace we receive when the load is unwieldy when experiences are felt-with. It’s sort of a deep regard, too, an honoring of all that we are and go through. It’s a welcoming. A word that condenses the “Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.” How have we practiced and offered each other acolhimento in our relations?

Breathing | Being | Praying meditation 17
Yohana Junker, April 30, 2020

One of the ways I do that is through the practices of writing letters. You’ve heard a couple of them so far. Not the type where you give some kind of news on the state of affairs. I’m talking about the letter we write to be-with. To feel-with. To move against loneliness, to share beauty, joy, music, musings. The delight of eating. That desire to have my hand touch yours. I want this sheet of paper I am touching right now to be touched and handled by you—I have nothing more important to give you but a troca de olhar, my full intention, which is filled with deep meaning. Beyond everything you will hear from me today, my most singular hope is that you feel held. Acolhide, hugged, touched. Letter writing reminds me of aspects of this pandemic. A hand that writes a letter wants what is absent. A connection betwee two lonelinesses. Rubem Alves taught me that long ago. He said that letters stores words we can come back to when loneliness hits us hard. Think of yourself holding this letter to your face. Could anything be more tender? More loving? More sacramental? A palpable presence of that which is invisible and physically inaccessible right now? They are ways of archiving our deepest hungers, our most intimate desires… and the blasphemies of our times…

Letters are not neutral. They are filled with what makes us pulsate. They encapsulate the worlds in which we live. Right now we are living through the scandal of this Pandemic. This letter not only holds tenderness, acolhimento, but the disaster that ensues from holding on to the myths of power… of perpetual growth, expansion, unlimited progress, displacement, disease… Some of us have transformed our relations into transactions. We are living through illness. Despair. Angst. Instability. Hunger. Death. Pain. Trauma. I am metabolizing all of this as I write to you. And I know deep in my bones that the foundations upon which we have built our societies are not all right.

I hope this letter offers you a material way to reflect while assuring you that you are not alone. I have read many letters these past few days and would like to share some excerpts with you that bear an infinity of traces about how life is going for some of us. This is what Freire called an archeology of our pains. These letters were gifts of prophetic discernment, as my mom, Debora Junker put it, of being simultaneously aware of the word and the world, that denounces the myths of power, supremacy, settler-colonialism and the illogic of neo-capitalism. These are letters from folks who are carrying a lot of heartaches, indignation, political rage. May we listen to these powerful voices with presence.

“I spent countless summers in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Precious days of my childhood were spent stooping and working alongside my parents, brothers, and cousins. We were essential links in a supply chain that kept America fed, but always a step away from detention and deportation. Today, hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Mexico and Central America are doing that work. By the Department of Agriculture’s estimates, about half the country’s field hands — more than a million workers — are undocumented. Growers and labor contractors estimate that the real proportion is closer to 75 percent. Suddenly, in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, these “illegal” workers have been deemed “essential” by the federal government. America still wants it both ways. It wants to be fed. And it wants to demonize the undocumented immigrants who make that happen.”

*These words are from Alfredo Corchado and his writing featured here.

“Hey…. So…. I heard you were reading letters to folks over there in the North. Um…

And I don’t really know how to put this… But I guess, I’ll just do it.

I want to tell you of Admário Lucena. Could you add him to the cloud of witnesses you are gathering? Can you let folks where you live that down here in Recife, Adamario was born in 1951. He passed away just a few days ago due to covid, though the record will never say so. Our government is a shit show right now. IT WAS COVID. We all know it was. No need to lie and pretend is was respiratory insufficiency that stole his last breath. My dad was a very emotional man; I can’t even begin to fathom how painful his death was. Not so much because o the physical pain. But the pain of not being able to say goodbye. Yeah.. His young soul was always the life and laughter and light of any party. He wouldn’t miss a carnival for anything. He was such a proud papa. I loved him so much. He was so tender. He was going to be a grandpa to Vicente in just two months. We love you, Dad. We miss you and ache with your absence in unutterable ways. Your daughter, Rebeca.

**This is letter is an loosely based on the memories described by Rebeca, which is featured on this website—an online memorial project dedicated to the stories of each of the Victims of COVID-19 in Brazil.

“I saw this hand-drawn note from another chaplain who has been leaving notes to patients in the ICU here at the hospital. She told me that it’s her way of showing presence in the face of calamity. The Coronavirus pandemic has changed how we grieve. As a chaplain, I have become an intermediary between patients and their families. I try to offer spiritual support by being an emissary of drawings, letters, anything that can be seen through those glasses. Oh, and the hospital staff right now. They are exhausted. Acutely. I asked an elementary school teacher, who is a friend of mine, to inquire whether their students would be willing to send me pictures of messages they would send to their patients. There is just so much power in the hands of children. I woke up to more than 64 images in my inbox. I printed them all out and spread throughout the hospital. Children are so precious, they are so present. One asked how was he to draw something to someone he didn’t know the patients’ names. He demanded we send them a list with names. I sent that list to Miranda yesterday. One note read: I can’t see you but I can hear you. I will pray for you.”

***This letter is loosely based on this report.

“So I heard you are reading some letters, and I am writing with words that are not my own. They come from Indigenous activist Nick Estes. It struck me deeply. I hope it touches you as well. He said in an interview, and I quote: “the primary organizing principle of a settler society is the elimination of the Native, whether it is in Palestine or the United States. Thus, the organizing structure of the United States’ economy and its political institutions is based around disenfranchisement of Indigenous people — politically, economically and physically. There is a common myth in U.S. history that most Indigenous people did not die because of active killing, warfare and genocide, but rather as a result of outbreaks: smallpox, measles and cholera. However, these epidemics occurred and intensified in times of war, which meant mass forced starvation, depravation of resources, such as access to sanitary conditions… The conditions of war were created by design to intensify these outbreaks of contagious diseases. In fact, epidemiologist Dean S. Seneca claims Indigenous people have the most experience with bioterrorism as it relates to infectious disease. If we look at the response now to COVID-19, it has some parallels to this history. When you examine the Navajo Nation, which is larger than the state of West Virginia, you have the third-largest infection rate after the states of New York and New Jersey, higher not just on the reservation but also off it… Change from within is an illusion. That is simply how class works. We need to construct power from below by elevating a candidate who is a product of social movements, not the corporate party structure.”

****This letter is retrieved from this interview with Estes.

“Hi. My name is Emilia Brandão. I am an artist, a photographer, and I am have been photographing nurses in the frontlines here where I live, in Madrid, Spain. When I picked my camera to memorialize these processes of living and dying amidst COVID-19, I was expecting to hear stories of losses, of how nurses and doctors, and healthcare workers were attempting to provide cure and assurance to the population. What I witnessed, instead were professionals who were sacrificing their lives. They are exhausted. They are working 16, 18, 20 hour shifts. We have been calling them our heroes. They are not. They are people like you and me. They are suffering, this word puts an incredible pressure on them. They are so close to collapsing, you wouldn’t believe it. All of them. One of the nurses in particular described having to stop nursing her daughter because she said she chose to be with patients right now. She hasn’t touched her baby in 4 weeks. Doctors have left their homes weeks ago in fear of contaminating their family members. One of them told me she gave up being a mother momentarily. She needed to be there in the frontlines for her patients. And the grave tone in her voice made me cry as she confirmed that she knew the bill was going to come for her, at some point in the future. She was ready to face her children’s resentment in the face of her absence. They say they don’t know where they are conjuring up so much strength. I say I know. It’s love.”

*****This letter is based on the work of photographer Emilia Brandão, which can be found here.

“Dear Human Siblings, I hope this letter finds you enjoying a cool evening breeze. Our grounds and lands have been invaded this past month by the deadliest beings we have ever seen. I am still disoriented from it all. I witnessed the death of thousands of our kinfolk. They were all decapitated. Yes, you read it right. Thousands of us were decapitated—in a mass murder of unprecedented measure. The screams, the chaotic buzzing, the fear. I really don’t know how we can begin to grieve this loss, let alone deal with this trauma. You may not know this, but your existence is intimately dependent on ours. We will not be here on this side of the country to pollinate our land if you don’t commit to protecting our lives from these murderers, these giant hornets. This mass murder has shaken us in similar ways COVID-19 has changed your and our lives. You must reconfigure the ways in which your understand ourselves, our bonds, our lives, our values, ways of being, and our relationships to one another and the earth. I hope you think of us next time you hear us buzzing close to your gardens.”

******This letter is based on this report.

Breathing | Being | Praying Meditation 8
Yohana Junker, March 24, 2020

Alas, these are but a few of the ten thousand voices that are heard through the distance. Let us keep these memories alive, let them be the records of our longing, may they archive what we love, create an archive of that which we love and want to safeguard most deeply. Let them be the fire that ignites our capacity for ethical transgressions, for fierce protection of what is most precious. As I bring this letter to a close, for know, I can taste the saudade in my mouth, that sweet alchemy that mixes our melancholia that is drenched with hope, a joy that aches, a hunger that wants to be reunited with that which we love, an acknowledgement of what we have lost but will perhaps one day return to us. Saudade. Rubem Alves said that God exists to soothe this saudade in us. As we think about these peoples, their stories, the place names, their bodies, their ancestral knowledge, may we create strategies for belonging. May we celebrate the life that is still ours to live, our inherent right to live a dignified, free, and creative life. Transformation depends on our ability to hone in and develop our politics through a deep democracy, to be fully present in symbolic, spiritual, and practical ways so that we disturb and trespass the registers of power that don’t allow us to fully be. May the words that were read today become breathing and enfleshed testimonies, archiving the past with traces of infinity, divinity, and presence. We can’t think of tomorrow without engaging deeply with what terrifies us. And we can’t be encouraged to create new worlds if we don’t testify to this deep love we have for life and all our relations. May we find ways to dribble the unbearable isolation we currently find ourselves to become poetic-prophetic presences in the world, as my mom once wrote. May we be responsive, present, aware, drawing from the wisdom of our embodied and pulsating imaginations. Let the wisdom of our desires and joys carry us forward. May we find ways to be together and to feast and to remember the flavors of our dreams, the cadence of our songs, the prophetic- power of our creative work.

And, until we meet again, may we remember that miracles emerge in our communities when we come together to love deeply, commune radically, and act urgently.

With love, tenderness, and an already growing saudade,

Dr. Yô.