Praying for Lightning to Strike the House of God
The world we made is wrong; here is a moral case for letting it burn
by T. Bloom [above: photo by Donna Heimbecker]
In the tarot deck, The Devil easily triumphs over The Pope. In fact, nearly everything does. The suit of twenty-two trumps (sometimes called the major arcana) are arranged in the style of parades held by ancient Romans to celebrate military victories: each element in the procession would be more impressive than the last, “trumping” whatever came before, presenting the crowd with a grander and grander spectacle. That which comes first is valued least; that which comes last triumphs over all.
The cards for The Emperor and The Pope appear early in the ranks — fourth and fifth, respectively, a subversive comment on their true place in the great cosmic pecking order. These earthly figures, granted godlike power by other humans, represent the lowest forms of moral authority. Their domain is easily capsized by the cardinal virtues such as Strength and Justice (which predate Christianity) following later in the suit, by the caprices of Fortune, and yes, even The Devil.
The hooved and horned figure presented on that fifteenth card is not meant as a literal one; it is merely representative of the human world’s predisposition for delusion and entropy. It depicts not just the way we fall, even despite our best intentions, but also our blind acceptance of that fallen state, followed by our rationalization of that acceptance. Our insistence that this is as good as things get, actually. It is rot presented as ambrosia; it is the stench of burned bodies regarded as sacred incense.
This is a spiritual illness that can befall anyone, but those who strongly believe in their own inherent goodness or holiness are especially vulnerable to it — and to the extent that religion is the seat of influence and government on a massive scale, the potential for calamity is near limitless.
This has all been well-documented by history.
I began struggling to compose thoughts on this subject back in May, after the remains of 215 Indigenous children were discovered in unmarked graves at a residential school in Canada. These were state-funded Christian schools, in some cases operational through the 1990s. As this CBS article summarizes:
“From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 First Nations children were required to attend state-funded Christian schools as part of a program to assimilate them into Canadian society. They were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused, and up to 6,000 are said to have died.”
In the aftermath of this discovery, it was immediately possible to register among the public both a growing outcry and also an ominous, defensive silence. Throughout the Indigenous communities in Canada (as well as in the U.S.) there was pain and shock, but not surprise. They had known, they had never stopped speaking of it. That’s why specialists had been sweeping the school property with ground-penetrating radar in the first place. It was part of a commission designated to finally expose the truth.
A month later, another 751 bodies were confirmed at the site of another former school in Marieval, Saskatchewan. The headstones had been removed from these children’s graves by members of the Catholic church in the 1960s.
Just this week, another 182 unmarked graves were discovered near the site of a former school in Cranbrook, British Columbia. Numerous other sites are currently being reviewed, and additional emergency funding is being provided on a state and federal level to assist in locating all the remaining graves. There is so much more evil here than can ever be discovered — so carefully have the specific details been erased.
It would be an understatement to say these discoveries appear to be renewing a widespread crisis in Canadian identity, not to mention religious identity, but somehow it’s also an overstatement: the crisis already existed. The lightning had already struck long ago; everything else is just the thunder that follows.
via Tanya Tagaq on Twitter
The more closely I followed these events, the less it seemed appropriate to say. I am not Indigenous. I am not Canadian. I am not Catholic, no longer any form of Christian. No share of the “discourse” surrounding these events belongs to me. As a subject for discussion, they are bound to just twist out of my hands like a stage prop.
What properly belongs to me, however, is the reaction (or lack thereof) from white people. There have been many tiers and sub-tiers of this in past weeks; even the silence has its subtleties, ranging from the well-practiced variety that serves as a cover for tacit approval of genocide, to the anguished liberal who sympathizes but refuses to hold a firm opinion, ultimately finding the ugliness “on both sides” too distasteful.
As for the vocal, they are legion, and their responses seem to be unconsciously ruled by a series of layered reactions. To wit: they aren’t in charge of how this suppressed history is being reviewed, or how justice will be meted out, and they simply can’t stand it. In fact, it appears many are being driven mad by it.
In short: this gradient of reactions is a ladder that has its bottom rung in hell.
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Last week, on the same day that 751 unmarked graves were confirmed, a cathedral in downtown Sasketoon was struck by a graffiti artist. Bloody smears and handprints were left on the doors, as well as writing: WE WERE CHILDREN.
It was a powerful statement, one which arguably should have been embraced, preserved for posterity — by the church itself no less, as a public form of atonement.
The photos will have to suffice though, because within 24 hours the graffiti had been washed away — a relief to the concerned “two wrongs don’t make a right” scolders around the world, who perceive symbolic attacks against any church as a possible threat to their own faith and identity, somehow on par with this specific religion’s literal attack against thousands of defenseless children.
Elsewhere throughout Canada, there has been the now-familiar wave of public outcry over statues, monuments, names, and holidays; notorious colonizers and church figures are finally being dethroned from lofty positions, in some cases forcibly at the hands of protesters.
It’s always heartening when those in universities or government who have the power to facilitate these sorts of symbolic changes do so immediately upon demand, setting a broader example for the way that understanding can necessitate action. Although, how much more heartening would it be if they did not wait to be demanded in the first place, since the historical facts are by now very well known? Or if these efforts were accompanied by broader, systemic change?
Meanwhile, among the restless and “powerless” white masses, who fret over matters like “the erasure of history,” one finds endless rancor and obstruction, a seething anger at being interrupted or skipped past in a conversation that used to go only one-way. The eradicators now fear being eradicated, as those are the only two positions they can conceive of. Oddly, there never seems to be any talk of self-correction, depicting their own ancestors more accurately, voluntarily updating public artworks to reflect this increasing awareness of Indigenous genocide.
For example: consider the enduring power of a large statue depicting two Catholic groundskeepers removing headstones from the tiny, poorly-tended graves of children.
Even if one could not take pride in descending from such figures, whether genetically or spiritually, it might be possible to find honor, perhaps even absolution, in underlining the truth, teaching this to one’s children.
But they do not want the truth. It’s the lie — their lie — or nothing.
The tarot card that follows The Devil — triumphing over it — is The Tower, described in some early decks as “The House of God.” People tend to react to this image quite negatively, as if this a calamity or interference caused by the preceding diablerie, when actually it serves as a swift form of correction, stripping away all the delusion and rot. The card’s lightning strike is not intended to obliterate: it is simply a reassertion of the divine order.
Consider this, from a chapter about The Tower in one of my favorite books on the subject, Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey Into Christian Hermeticism:
"What one has built through the autonomous effort of the 'lower self' must, sooner or later, be confronted by divine reality, and undergo the effects of comparison with it."
Those effects can be devastating. If we have pointed ourselves the wrong way, any growth or “progress” in that direction will only take us further from our intended result — like a drowning person who gets disoriented, and begins swimming toward the bottom of the pool. We are not flung earthward by the The Tower’s blast, but out into space, away from those corrupting influences that had soothed and smothered us.
The experience of being reoriented can be shocking, and for some, the challenge of accepting correction is just too great. Those are the instances in which the lightning delivers annihilation; one who has deemed themselves too mighty to fail, or grown too confident in their orientation to the divine, will identify literally anything else as the reason for these perceived attacks.
That dynamic is what establishes The Tower as a significant rite of passage for any spiritual person or institution. Of all those who reach this fateful checkpoint, relatively few will be capable of passing the test, recognizing this strike for what it is, surviving the blow to their ego and their preciously defended ignorance, moving onward to explore the even more challenging heights/depths that await in the stillness beyond the blast.
Those who are ruined by this spiritual reckoning may try it again, and again, perhaps gradually accepting correction, passing the initiation. Or perhaps this is as far as they ever go, in which case they’re likely to experience this persistent roadblock as a state of seemingly endless ruin.
Every human life comes with these kinds of challenges built into it, regardless of one’s beliefs, simply due to the limits of our anatomy. The author of Meditations ponders:
"I have no doubt that death, which saves us from the impasse to which our bodily organization leads, is the action of the thunderbolt of divine love."
Over the past week, coinciding with these discoveries of children’s remains, a series of Catholic churches on Indigenous land have been badly damaged or destroyed by fires.
As of this writing, no individual or group appears to have claimed responsibility or been named as a suspect in these incidents, but as the stories break (and break, and break) the public has been swift to draw its own conclusions, which can be sorted into a few predictable clusters. These reactions aren’t mutually exclusive — in fact, you will find many expressed in the same breath.
Among them, in no particular order:
The churches deserve it
Violence is not the answer
Regrettable behavior “on both sides”
They really do deserve it, though!
It is possible to condemn of Catholic genocide AND speak out against the burning of churches, because “two things can be true at the same time”
What about the risk of wildfires??
The burnings constitute a “hate crime”
White people/bad actors may have set these fires purely to agitate a tense situation
The church is burning their own buildings to cover up evidence of genocide, and lay blame on Indigenous people
If you are more concerned about the burning of a building than the loss and erasure of 1,500+ lives, you are part of the problem!
If you take the law into your own hands, whatever the reason, you are part of the problem!
As you can see, dualities abound. From what I can glean, the main point of overlap among all these responders is: they do not imagine themselves to be part of the problem.
Could that be part of the problem?
From a young age, we are taught to speak up when something is wrong. The act of speaking up is established as something good, something moral in itself, regardless of the speaker’s motivations… which may remain a mystery even to them.
We lend credence to innocent statements of the obvious. This is the power of childish wisdom, as enshrined in The Emperor’s New Clothes. Even a child may serve as a channel for divine lightning.
But the truth is rarely that simple, or pretty, or humorous. It can be difficult for people to look at a photograph of a burning church and reach a conclusion like: “This is good, actually.” It is not inherently intelligent or moral to do so; it might actually be quite lazy, or even reckless to do so. How can we tell for sure?
From within The Tower, we have learned to become wary in the face of a difficult, less obvious truth.
People tend to use their online voices to join a chorus, helping an idea gain popular traction, or expressing a view that others may overlook. When white people do this defensively, in large numbers, the overall effect — conveniently — asserts their dominance. The conversation is reshaped into one that’s convenient and comfortable to them (and despite the outrage, a position of moral indignation is often a very comfortable one to take).
But here’s a fact that very few would consider controversial: Indigenous issues are poorly understood by white North American people.
This should be our crowning embarrassment, since we arrived at this state purely by our own means. And it presents an opportunity to accept correction and guidance, but instead we keep swimming to the bottom of the pool, insisting that the debate be held there, on our terms.
Our insistence on “fairness” when discussing appropriate terms for debate, appropriate forms of action, appropriate allocation of funds, appropriate means of justice — that urgency, writ large across white culture, prevents the possibility of a sincere reckoning with Indigenous grief, of appreciating the devastation of white colonizing and industrialization. It keeps us from discovering how much we still have to learn, how persistently we were lied to; it protects us from our own horror at how willingly we accepted those lies, and for how long.
This ensures that Indigenous and BIPOC communities, even in their grief and the pursuit of reparations, are still forced to engage from a defensive position, in anticipation of further harm. Engaging with the media machinery that protects white safety and comfort, they will be lucky to break even in any “debate” about such matters. They can’t count on “the law” to help them prevail. They can’t count on powerful white institutions — such as the Catholic church, which cites as its mission “to carry out and continue the work of Jesus Christ on Earth” — to intervene benevolently on their behalf, let alone take responsibility for their horrifying role in Indigenous genocide.
All they have is the truth. But it turns out there’s only one thing we find more threatening than a difficult, less obvious truth: a clear, simple, inescapable one.
My intent in writing this piece was not to say “churches should be burned” or “statues should be torn down.” Although I can admit: it has been grimly satisfying on a symbolic level, watching these physical markers of genocide fall to ruin. The Queen lying on her back, her pedestal smeared with blood… Sometimes this ends up being the only sign that anything significant ever occurred at all. In the absence of gravestones for thousands of children, a ruined cathedral serves as a kind of memorial. Something happened here.
Whatever I wish for Canadians, I may as well wish for us here in the States: investigations are already underway at our own residential school sites, to be overseen by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland (who is, herself, part of New Mexico’s Laguna Pueblo tribe).
We already know what awaits: the bodies of children will be found, grief stifled for generations will be let loose. Red paint will flow. Churches may burn.
We can also easily imagine the response that awaits American Indigenous communities as these issues are aired in the media: white silence. White defensiveness. White tears. White obstruction. Catholic bishops have spoken up to welcome this investigation — why wouldn’t they? The law works in their favor. The economy works in their favor. Public sympathy works in their favor. Whatever is uncovered, ultimately they stand to win — and that show of strength, the winning, will be conflated with righteousness, the state of being aligned with a divine power.
In the U.S., we’ve already seen white nationalist agitators grow brazen in staging preemptive strikes — smashed windows, fires, bomb threats — to elicit backlash against the aggrieved and sympathy toward law enforcement and government authorities. We watched this all last year, in the coordinated waves of violence which are still popularly cited as the ultimate indictment against the “Black Lives Matter” movement. We saw the truth ourselves, captured and circulated endlessly on video.
But they do not want the truth. It’s the lie — their lie — or nothing.
What I pray for, as an antidote to the anger and violence simmering in my own heart, is simple: more lightning.
We can’t control where it will strike, or what might get demolished as a result. No one can prepare for the new versions of reality it may uncover, the divine corrections that will be issued. But the lightning itself is never the problem: rather, it is the structure that created these conditions, in collaboration with the environment. And if a powerful person or institution has created structures that persistently elicit this kind of correction, it would be foolish and dangerous to intervene in their defense. Why shelter them from the full impact of being forcibly reunited with reality?
While there are many actions I would take to further Indigenous causes, I will not burn a church, or incite others to burn one. But if one does burn, instead of being drawn into an internal (or, god help me, external) debate about the merit of burning churches, I will instead look for the truth that this specific burning has revealed, and be satisfied with that. And I pray the truth will continue to assert itself, as intensely as it needs to, in order for conditions to change.
This is the best I can do from within my own spiritual tradition, white as it may be. A prayer for the House of God, the intent of which may seem indistinguishable from a curse: May you haste toward whatever is coming to you. May your calamity serve as a thunderbolt of divine love.
It’s a path that requires listening, reflection, and action, but notably, much less dialogue.
More broadly, perhaps we might consider suppressing our whitest instincts — our lazy reliance on a majority rule, our over-readiness to meet conflict, our pathetic wondering aloud — to make sure that the oppressed person receives the greatest portion of the world’s care, and stands a chance of having their voice heard. That which comes first shall be valued least; that which comes last triumphs over all.
As for the fate of the powerful: you are welcome to join me in praying for lightning.