I was a champion fit thrower as a child. Anytime I felt there was an deep injustice in the world, and if I was with an adult I deeply trusted, I would let one fly. At my house, at the mall, in the church narthex, it didn’t matter where, if something was happening (okay almost always to me) that I thought was unfair I would yell about it, cry about it, stomp my feet and make my face turn red. This….never ever actually worked, and about twenty minutes after everything was over I was generally sort of wishing I hadn’t made that huge scene (though I very rarely admitted that). It was a thing I grew out of. Mostly. Or maybe, more accurately fit throwing evolved into other things.
I was at a retreat about a decade ago with people I had known for a few years on the internet. There was a thing I really wanted, like really really wanted and I wasn’t sure it was going to happen and I knew all of the reasons it maybe couldn’t or shouldn’t happen but I just…I wanted it. I started crying pretty hard. It was embarassing. And I still really wanted the thing, and then I was crying because I was crying because I wanted the thing.
The next morning I was still embarrassed. I confessed to some friends that I felt like I had thrown a fit. First they reassured me that wasn’t how they saw it. Then, and this surprised me, one of the women looked me dead in the face and said, and if you had so what? There isn’t anything BAD about a fit Abby. Sometimes they happen and sometimes they SHOULD happen.
The thing I didn’t realize as a fit throwing child, was that more often than I could have ever imagined, the grown up (always my mother or father, I only threw fits with my safe people) actually thought I had a valid point. I bore a fit throwing babe, one who inherited the same sense of justice and distaste for wrong-doing as I have. I’ve been on the mom side of things. And very often, even as I am telling the kiddo that she needs to knock it off, I also understand exactly where she is coming from. That thing IS unfair. I DID say we could maybe go do that fun thing. It IS terrible that we ran out of time. A five day school week IS too many days when the weekend is only 2.
Lately I have been thinking a lot about fit throwing because I wish my elected officials would do more of it. I am wondering if why more Americans aren’t throwing a fit and falling in it? I am wondering if it isn’t the time for those of us born being good at making a scene.
Everything I have to say about the state of my political world feels extreme. It feels absurd almost. This week I am wondering if the SAVE act will actually pass and if changing my name at 21 because I got married will make it significantly harder, and maybe impossible, for me to vote. That’s crazy, right? I am wondering if due process is a thing that we will be able to depend on. I am wondering if student loans will exist when my kid starts applying for them 4 years from now. And it IS crazy and it IS absurd and it IS extreme. And this is happening. Along with all kinds of other extreme and absurd things designed to strip money and power away from the rest of us so a few people can have all of it.
When your government is taking people off of the street, putting them in a prison in El Salvador and then refusing to bring any of them back, it might just be time to throw a fit. A big one.
Tomorrow marks the beginning of Holy Week. It was, a pretty extreme time in the life of Jesus. It seems to me he knew what he was marching toward, his own death. It seems less clear to me he was sure about the resurrection. But there were other things he was sure about. He was sure the people in both political and religious power were abusing it. He was sure God loved us. He was sure that there could be a better way of organizing life, where everyone had enough and no one hoarded power. So Jesus spent a week throwing fits.
In the great tradition of the prophets who did things like walk around naked for a few years, wear a cattle yoke everywhere, or shave their beard off with a sword, Jesus had a few stunts of his own. He rode a donkey through the streets when everyone was expecting a white stallion; he sat under a tree and braided a whip and then chased people around with it in the temple. He flipped tables. He yelled at fig trees and also at religious leaders trying to trap him. He returned to where he had raised Lazarus from the dead just a few weeks before. Jesus made a giant scene.
Was this all extreme? Maybe. Was it absurd? For sure. But also, I think it was the appropriate response. The things being done to Jesus and his people were extreme. Having some people starve while others have bread going bad in their storehouses is absurd. Maybe anything less than matching that was the inappropriate thing to do.
I am, I think, living in the most intense political time of my life. And I am somehow worried about sounding too intense when I talk to people about it. In reality, my measured speech is perhaps the thing that is absurd, inappropriate even. The Department of Education is being shut down, but it can’t be that bad? Do I hear how dumb I sound? Our president is going to the supreme court to ask permission to do human rights violations, but maybe he won’t do it again. That doesn’t even make any sense!
I have been heartened by the protests and the filibuster. I am grateful for the town in upstate NY that protested until the family in their community was returned from a detention center. I am reminded this week, Holy week, that some people will tell us to settle down, that our actions might get us kicked out of places we love, that yelling the truth at people in power might get us in trouble. It won’t always look like what we are doing is working. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. We are in extreme times. The things that are happening are absurd. Extreme and absurd might just be the appropriate response. Maybe the holy one.