Milk Thistle

Homily from Saturday morning worship- LREDA fall con

I met a man on my way to the rental car office after landing in Denver. He was probably in his mid 50s- i gathered by his smile when I implied we were peers as our conversation drifted to teenaged children, finding jobs, the value of a degree, and college cost- how much it’s changed since we were young. He is a black man who lives in Las Vegas and sells cars for a living. He shared with me that he loves Las Vegas, and we both looked down as we spoke about the recent shootings. “I think, I said, that we live in a country that values money and profit more than human life.” And he nodded and we both fell silent, until he added, “it won’t change.” 

And then he asked me what I do for a living, and I had that moment that I imagine many of you also experience, where I want to answer with 10 sentences, not 5 words: I am a Religious Educator, i say. And then i feel paralyzed, because somehow his comment - “it won’t change”- made me fear that my work- my faith- must seem like a waste of time to him. A religion rooted in an illusion, that: we can change.

But the truth is, our work is the opposite of that fear that bubbled up in me; to seek change is not illusive work. We will change, it is inevitable. It is simply a question of what that change looks like. I do not believe we have total control, but neither are we powerless. We each have the power to influence change-- at least in ourselves. 

“Milk Thistle teaches guerilla warfare.” Writes Aurora Levins Morales in her book, Remedios. “Adaptogen milagrosa, Milk Thistle works with what is here, the yellow layers of toxins, the charcoal grit, the green bile slow as crude oil pooling in the liver's reservoirs, waiting to learn to flow. Milk Thistle says take what you are and use it. She's a junkyard artist, crafting beauty out of the broken. She's a magician, melting scar tissue into silk. She's a miner, fingering greasy lumps of river clay for emeralds. She can enter the damaged cells of your life and recreate your liver from a memory of health. She can pass her hands over this torn and stained tapestry of memory and show us beauty, make the threads gleam with the promise of something precious gained. She will not flinch from anything you have done to keep yourself alive. Give it to me, she will say. I will make it into something new. She will show you your courage, hammered to a dappled sheen by use. She will remind you that you took yourself over and over to the edge of what you knew. She will remind you that the world placed limits on your powers. That you were not omnipotent. That some of the choices you made were not choices. Use what you are, she says again and again, insistent. You are every step of your journey, you are everything that has touched you, you are organic and unexpected. Use what you are.” 

Brave spaces are honest, and raw, and messy. They require us to look inward and find our boundaries, and then to push ourselves right up to their edge. 

Brave spaces are spaces where every person’s story matters, and is sought out. Where we are conscious of our limitations, and are open to guidance from one another. Brave spaces require authentic accountability, and they require trust- not just trust in one another, but trust in transformation. 

How do we embody milk thistle in our work. How do we recreate ourselves from a memory of health. Where do we find that memory?

What are the yellow layers of toxins, charcoal grit?

Because the suggestion is that it is in this ugly that we find our strength. And this resonates for me, when I look at my own life. It is in the ugly that I find my strength at least as much as in the beauty. The betrayals, the mistakes, the struggles, and losses, and challenges all pour into who I am- I am not me without them, and each time I face a new hardship, I am stronger because I have grown to know my own strength by the times before that I have been tested and survived.

“Give it to me,” Morales writes, “I will make it into something new.” That is the work set before us, dear ones. We are being called to find our courage and use what we are, in all of it’s messy, imperfect grandeur. We are being called to seek the truth and to speak the truth. To push ourselves, and to help others to see their own courage, so they can do the same. Aptogen Milagrosa, my friends. It even sounds like magic.