News with Nuance: Nov. 24, 2023 - Thanksgiving

Your Friday dose of News with Nuance: the week's biggest stories, unpacked + more ..

Hi Readers,

Special Thanksgiving/Black Friday edition of News with Nuance coming your way!

I really liked reading

Diana Butler Bass

’ recent take on Thanksgiving, in which she names the complexity of the day, the way it has been increasingly privatized and commercialized. I also liked how she invited us to use this weekend in a celebration of gratitude - of the now - which might also be a bit of an antidote for all of the Christmas consumerism we’re all about to be subject to as well.

I’ve realized that I’m often weighed down by the news of the day, particularly as our world confronts wars and deaths of civilians on multiple fronts, including in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza. I feel overwhelmed at the magnitude of death and destruction, especially in the face of the daunting ongoing threat of climate change, which lurks in the background of all our human conflicts. I also sense the frustration with which I read so many articles about the current state of politics in America, and the ways in which too many politicians use God or their “faith” as an excuse to further enrich the powerful and silence the voices of the vulnerable and oppressed.

And into this swirling mix comes Thanksgiving, a holiday we know now is based on a false depiction of the past, painting over the atrocities inflicted on Indigenous Americans by European colonizers.

Into this swirling mix comes Thanksgiving, during a year in which our world and our country’s future remains fraught, uncertain, and destined to intersect with violence.

On this day I must then share with you the story of 33-year-old Russian peace activist and artist Alexandra Skochilenko, who this past week was sentenced to seven years in prison. Her crime? Covering up supermarket stickers with anti-war slogans.

Treated cruelly in prison, and denied treatment for several medical conditions, Skochilenko refused to give in to the dehumanizing treatment of her Russian government captors. Instead, she said that her imprisonment must be her “greatest work” as an artist, an “involuntary protest.”

It’s Skochilenko’s words that are resounding most powerfully in my head this week, as I think about Thanksgiving - and especially time with close family and friends, basking in the glow of love and mutual support and joy. This is life. It is all we have.

Skochilenko said it best:

“Yes, I think that life is sacred. Oh yes, life! Strip away the world’s frippery like money, power, glory and social status, and all that’s left is life. Oh yes, life! It’s persistent, tenacious, moving, incredible, powerful.”

Amen. Let’s get to the news … with nuance …

Activist and sage Alexandra Skochilenko. Set her free now!

Photo by Anton Vaganov, Reuters

The Headline: Extreme weather can hit farmers hard. Those with smaller operations often suffer most

None of us would be celebrating bountiful Thanksgiving meals this week without the work of farmers around the world to supply food and sustenance to our tables. I wanted to begin with this story this week because it hit really close to me. I’ve been thinking a lot about Thanksgivings past this week, especially as the past three years I was “on duty” for a Thanksgiving Eve service. I learned a lot about gratitude from the farmers and small town Christians who I ministered with in rural Minnesota from 2019-2023. This article made me think a lot of them, and it also mentions the destructive storms in Kentucky that damaged a lot of family farms.

While I was serving at Grace Lutheran in Brownton, Minn., our Church Council made a commitment to “tithe back” 10 percent of the funds we received during COVID for the payment protection plan. We worked to split that tithe between people in need locally, nationally, and internationally, which meant that one year we shared 1/3 of our tithe with a local church community in Kentucky that was impacted by the storms. But what made this even more special was that one of church members, Jan, stopped by to personally deliver the check and meet church members in Kentucky, as she made her drive down to Florida that winter. Jan is by nature a gregarious, giving, joy-filled person - despite going through personal tragedies in her own life, including the loss of her husband to cancer at a young age - and Jan made such a perfect representative of the love our church wanted to share with our siblings in Kentucky.

By all accounts, Jan was received with joy and gratitude. We all felt so good about even the little benefit we could share with one another, with our friends in need. The world’s challenges can seem so overwhelming, especially in the face of climate change, especially for small farmers and poor and working-class people all around the world. Still, there’s hope. You - and me - and our communities - are not insignificant. I’m so glad this article reminded me of what we can do when we share what little we have with one another.

The Quote: “(Keith) Lowry has a relatively big operation — 3,000 acres, mostly in corn and soybeans, along with another 2,000 acres his son farms. Although he took some losses, he says that he and other farmers are used to dealing with uncooperative weather. “That’s the nature of the beast,” he said.

But without the grain elevator or on-farm storage and with limited transportation options, Lowry explained that his neighbors would have been stuck with soybeans in their fields. That’s why a cloudy day this November found him helping out on a much smaller parcel of land, to bring in a harvest from about 250 acres.”

Story by Melina Walling, Associated Press

The Headline: Brazil reckons with dark side of açaí: Rampant, dangerous child labor

On this Thanksgiving, we also must remember the real human costs to the (fairly) cheap and ample and even exotic foods we find lining American supermarket shelves.

I was horrified to read this article about the origins of açaí, which we have in our freezer for smoothies on hand almost all the time. Americans know açaí mostly for its well-touted health benefits, which is probably why I always have it on-hand for smoothies. But I so often take for granted all the wide variety of foods available to me as a white, middle-class American living in an urban area. I don’t think about the lives of those who harvest these foods, especially the ways in which child labor is increasingly found at all sorts of points in American food chains.

It is wrong that children around the world must wake up in war zones or risk their lives being sent out as workers to help their families have enough money for basic needs, while American children sleep in late on Thanksgiving and await the newest toys being purchased on Black Friday. I don’t say this to guilt-trip any of us or to “ruin” the joy we share with family on Thanksgiving. But I think it’s important to know and to investigate and to consider, even as we also consider the labor and fragility of American farmers in the face of climate change.

The Quote: More than a year later now, Izaque was preparing to go to school.

An inquisitive boy, he had quickly learned how to read and write and caught up to his peers. But even then, family members said, his past was with him. He often fretted someone was coming to take him back to the açaí fields. Once, he asked his grandmother and aunt what work they wanted him to do. He said he could make food to sell at the market.

“We had to tell him that he didn’t need to work,” Castro said. “He just needed to go to school.”

“He’ll carry this imprint for the rest of his life,” Alemeida Pimentel said.

Story by Terrence McCoy, Washington Post

More Must-Read Stories

A tragic update to last week’s News with Nuance: Israeli peace activist Vivian Silver, whose two sons were featured in last week’s newsletter, was found dead, a victim of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel

This article about Formula 1 in Las Vegas does what sportswriting often does uniquely well, painting a picture of a culture and a city few fully understand, through the lens of a sporting event. Well done, Roman Stubbs.

On the difficulty of waging economic warfare and sanctions in a capitalist system, and how Russian oil is making its way into the Pentagon’s supply chain

During Native American Heritage Month, a reminder to pay attention to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, especially when their captors and murderers and abusers are men with links to power.

A sobering, terrifying, heartbreaking project on the devastation of the AR-15, with quotes from mass shooting survivors, published by the Washington Post

And a letter from WaPo’s executive editor, explaining the process they followed when deciding how and whether to publish these images and stories. Important for helping people make distinction between responsible journalism and objectification or sensationalization.

Always read satire from Alexandra Petri, on Trump’s “vermin” comments. Satire is often the best way to communicate at times of political and historical peril.

After you read Petri’s article, think about checking out Yale historian Timothy Snyder’s short but critical book, On Tyranny. I’m listening to it now and it’s absolutely vital and to the point.

This Week in Christian Nationalism and Religious Extremism

While this newsletter won’t focus overall on Christian Nationalism, each Friday I will include a brief update from that week, as it’s both a continuing focus of my work and also, I think, a critical threat to both American democracy and the faithful witness of Jesus’ Gospel, which exists independently of the United States!

In one sentence: Christian Nationalism is a version of the idolatrous Theology of Glory, which replaces the genuine worship of God with worship of a particular vision of America, often rooted in a revisionist history of white people in the 1950s, before the Civil Rights movement or the women’s movement. Christian Nationalism supports a violent takeover of government and the imposition of fundamentalist Christian beliefs on all people. Christian nationalism relies on a theological argument that equates American military sacrifice with Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. It suggests that Christians are entitled to wealth and power, in contrast to Jesus’ theology of the cross, which reminds Christians that they too have to carry their cross, just as our crucified savior did.

This Week: I’m continuing to spend most of my writing energy lately on reporting and writing chapters of my forthcoming book, OUR BOYS. Look for a post next Tuesday sharing more about the story behind the new book and my process, along with some reporting photos … there’s a great deal of overlap with my work on Christian Nationalism.

This Sunday in the Sunday Stretch post, I will explain a bit more detail about a time I was recently called to put my beliefs in combating Christian Nationalism into action, when I was asked to speak in support of our Jewish neighbors in the Minneapolis Public Schools, in the face of rising antisemitism and a problematic statement from our teachers union that caused great fear among Jewish students, teachers, and families in Minneapolis.

Visit this link to watch video from the event I did recently on Repairing the Breach, speaking before Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, who brought a message of joy and encouragement that was unparalleled.

And now here are some stories to follow regarding Christian Nationalism at work in our world this week …