Read this whole post if you want a powerful example of creative nonviolence…
De-nuding Shame
“Nakedness was taboo in Judaism. Shame fell not on the naked party but the person viewing or causing one’s nakedness (Genesis 9:20-27)” –Walter Wink, Jesus & Alinsky
You sow trying, trying, trying
Too take
Everything, and them sum
In deed, my dignity
That which is holy
Knot your own
Shame on you
Shamin’ me
Left soully with a preyer
To drop that shit
Living in the guilted age
Wear the powers that be
I peer to resist
In what might be called
A turd weigh
With out violence
Abut stripped of what
A peril
Loosing won’s humanity
Awe that I truly have
In efface of naked in just us
Without you offering
Nary a fig leaf
Shame leaves you
Bound to return
Wile eye
Caste away guilt
Free
This poem was inspired by the expositions of Walter Wink, a theologian who considered the domination system as the fount of sin, and creative nonviolence — a third way — as the answer to this system. This poem is based on one of three of his examples of creative nonviolence that Jesus lifted up in his teaching: 1) “turning the other cheek”; 2) stripping naked in court to shame the shameless creditor; and 3) “going the extra mile.” I particularly relish these examples because they turn the “dominant” understandings upside down. This poem is a tip of the hat to the second, more obscure example, elaborated in this excerpt from “Jesus and Alinsky” by Walter Wink [read the other two examples as well from this link]:
The second example Jesus gives is set in a court of law. Someone is being sued for his outer garment. Who would do that and under what circumstances? Only the poorest of the poor would have nothing but an outer garment to give as collateral for a loan. Jewish law strictly required its return every evening at sunset, for that was all the poor had in which to sleep. The situation to which Jesus alludes is one with which his hearers would have been too familiar: the poor debtor has sunk ever deeper into poverty, the debt cannot be repaid, and his creditor has hauled him into court to wring out repayment.
Indebtedness was the most serious social problem in first-century Palestine. Jesus’ parables are full of debtors struggling to salvage their lives. It is in this context that Jesus speaks. His hearers are the poor (“if anyone would sue you”). They share a rankling hatred for a system that subjects them to humiliation by stripping them of their lands, their goods, finally even their outer garments.
Why then does Jesus counsel them to give over their inner garment as well? This would mean stripping off all their clothing and marching out of court stark naked! Put yourself in the debtor’s place; imagine the chuckles this saying must have evoked. There stands the creditor, beet-red with embarrassment, your outer garment in one hand, your underwear in the other. You have suddenly turned the tables on him. You had no hope of winning the trial; the law was entirely in his favor. But you have refused to be humiliated. At the same time you have registered a stunning protest against a system that spawns such debt. You have said, in effect, “You want my robe? Here, take everything! Now you’ve got all I have except my body. Is that what you’ll take next?”
Nakedness was taboo in Judaism. Shame fell not on the naked party but the person viewing or causing one’s nakedness (Genesis 9:20-27). By stripping you have brought the creditor under the same prohibition that led to the curse of Canaan. As you parade into the street, your friends and neighbors, startled, aghast, inquire what happened. You explain. They join your growing procession, which now resembles a victory parade. The entire system by which debtors are oppressed has been publicly unmasked. The creditor is revealed to be not a “respectable” moneylender but a party in the reduction of an entire social class to landlessness and destitution. This unmasking is not simply punitive, however; it offers the creditor a chance to see, perhaps for the first time in his life, what his practices cause-and to repent.
Jesus in effect is sponsoring clowning. In so doing he shows himself to be thoroughly Jewish. A later saying of the Talmud runs, “If your neighbor calls you an ass, put a saddle on your back.”
The Powers That Be literally stand on their dignity. Nothing takes away their potency faster than deft lampooning. By refusing to be awed by their power, the powerless are emboldened to seize the initiative, even where structural change is not possible. This message, far from being a counsel of perfection unattainable in this life, is a practical, strategic measure for empowering the oppressed. It provides a hint of how to take on the entire system in a way that unmasks its essential cruelty and to burlesque its pretensions to justice, law, and order.
