A little lower than the angels

Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly, by James Hampton. Folk art in the Smithsonian American Art Museum (National Portrait Gallery), Washington, DC, USA. _________________________________________________________________ ____________________ The name of your drum group is Southern Moon. You joined a year after you started working at the Indian Center as a janitor. You're supposed to say custodian now, or maintenance person, but you've always thought of yourself as a janitor. When you were sixteen you went on a trip to Washington D.C., to visit your uncle - your mom's brother. He took you to the American Art Museum, where you discovered James Hampton. He was an artist, a Christian, a mystic, a janitor. James Hampton would end up meaning everything to you. When I read this passage in Tommy Orange's novel There There , I switched my iPad to search mode and immediately put in the name of James Hampton.  I wanted to know about this arti...

                                      I was in the restroom at the evangelical church my brother Stephen attended near Portland. It was the day of Stephen’s funeral. Stephen had died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 49, leaving a shocked and grieving spouse and six grieving sons. I immediately recognized the man who walked in as I was at the sink. He was a friend of our family who had been a member of a church my father had pastored some thirty years previous. Apparently he recognized me as well, for as he stood at the urinal doing his business his rich baritone voice boomed out: “So Jonathan, I hear you’re hanging out with those liberal Episcopalians!” I left the restroom and went back to my family. I recall this event as a manifestation of the kind of us-versus-them binary so encouraged and promoted in the church culture of my youth  In my youth I was told o...