Anticipatory action
Combine a damp, grey, chilly morning with Elizabeth Stuart's chapter indicting lesbian and gay theologies for failing to address HIV/AIDS, and a memory arises.In October 1992, the AIDS quilt was displayed in its entirety on the Mall in Washington, DC.
It was a heady time; certain of a Clinton victory in the coming month, tens of thousands of us clutching candles surrounded the White House chanting, "Four more weeks! No more Bush!" That night, Liza Minnelli led us in the Lord's Prayer as the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial refracted the candlelight into a universe of stars.
Later that weekend, a cold rain fell all night and into the morning. At dawn, a friend dropped me off at the Quilt display on the Mall. It was a ghost town.
I ducked into one of the canvas tents where merchandise had been sold one day before.
Inside was an old lady, nearing her 81st birthday. She had come to see her son's quilt panel. We chatted briefly, wondering if the Quilt could be pieced together in the rain.
Then we were quiet, listening to the rain drum on the tent while icy water swirled around our ankles.
After a while, a soaked man without a jacket or hat pushed through the tent flap. He sloshed in, clutching something wrapped in a black garbage bag.
"Where do you turn in panels?" he asked, anxiously. He was in his mid-30's, younger than I am now. "I have to catch my plane in about an hour."
He was from San Francisco. His partner's panel had been finished for more than a year, but he had not been able to part with it. Something had changed over that weekend, though, and he impulsively caught a red-eye flight to DC to hand over the memorial.
As minutes passed and no volunteers arrived at the site to receive quilt panels, he grew more and more agitated, pacing back and forth wordlessly in the cold water.
Finally, he stopped and looked at us. "I've got to go. Could one of you . . . ?" He held out the plastic-wrapped package.
The old lady reached for it. "I'd be honored," she said. She unwrapped the plastic bag. "May I?" she asked, reaching inside.
"No one but me has ever seen it."
There is a dramatic and graceful choreography to displaying the Quilt, in which volunteers dressed in white silently and purposely unfold each section like the opening of a lotus, turning a quarter turn after each movement. When the section is open, they lift it into the air where it billows like a parachute, settling slowly to the ground.
Without discussing it, we three strangers spontaneously performed that liturgy, unfolding this secret panel the size of a grave, turning as each petal opened, finally thrusting it toward heaven and letting it billow down until it was stretched between us.
It was gorgeous.
We stood silently, looking. Tears streamed down the man's face, and without a word or sign we began to fold the panel closed.
When we were done, he held it to his chest and looked at each of us, a penetrating gaze directly into our eyes. "Thank you," he whispered.
He handed the folded panel to the woman and slipped out of the tent.
That moment, for me, has always been a foretaste of God's reality, what my colleague Nancy Gorsuch calls "anticipatory action," in which kindred folk enact an eschatological reality, living for a moment the ultimate destiny of all things.
It was a moment of solidarity and justice, of grief and honor.
Simply put: grace.
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Saturday, October 08, 2005
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