It’s graduation season and high school seniors all over the country are leaving Last Will and Testaments in their school newspapers. I don’t remember all of the things I left behind, but I do remember making sure to leave one last appeal to my American Government teacher to “vote Dole/Kemp.” 

The specific teacher was from Mississippi and carried an indomitable optimism for life, his students, and the United States. I distinctly remember sitting in his classroom during the news of the bombing in Oklahoma City and his concerned, broken-hearted expression. 

He introduced his classes to movies like Twelve Angry Men and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington with hopeful innocence.

He believed in the system, while believing the system needed good men and women to engage with it using methods that leaned into its best intentions. He thought a character like James Stewart’s “Senator Smith” could take passion and moral courage to the halls of Congress and inspire change through integrity. He held to his conviction that standing by principles could chip away at injustice with the courage of a teacher willing to stand alone or a juror refusing to say an innocent man was guilty to just move along. 

He was also the first person I knew who relentlessly shared the idea that a person could be Southern, Christian, and a Democrat. I saw him a little over a year ago at a funeral and made a point to see him. I pulled him aside and said, “Coach, you were right. I had to tell you. You were right.” His reply was, “Well, it’s complicated.” I could sense he had moved away from his “it’s okay to be Southern, Christian, and a Democrat” speech into new territory. 

I did a little digging to discover he is all in on MAGA, Trump, and by default, undoing any sliver of progress made in his beloved Mississippi. He had given students permission to think outside of the box on his way to cramming himself into a world-view (likely referred to as “biblical”) supporting for-profit detainment centers with less space than those boxes. 

I followed up with the friend who told me he was “all in” on MAGA and asked, “How did that happen?” He replied, “It was all just too much. It went too far.” 

Too far? Too much? Really? 

I’m not buying it. Here are just a few current events I’ve learned about in the past few weeks. SNAP cuts have forced formerly incarcerated people to not be able to afford food and cleaning supplies in the transition homes they live in as they try to figure out life outside of prison.

Lawmakers (could we introduce the term “lawfakers”) in Tennessee denied knowledge of Memphis being mostly populated by Black constituents in their white power grab to remove adequate and fair representation.

Protesters of what appears to be a concentration camp in New Jersey are being pepper sprayed and arrested for demanding basic decency. 

And a current Trump regime proposition exists to take away food assistance of adults with disabilities who live with their parents.

When we elect a man who mocks people with disability, we give permission for those elected to cut benefits to people with disabilities. When we elect people who lie about immigrants eating cats and dogs, we give our permission to locking people up in for-profit detainment centers as well as a license to kill American citizens in the streets who advocate for those who are being lied about.

When we elect people who say there are good people on both sides while a group of people march through towns holding torches and yelling racial hate speech, we give our permission for them to cut voting rights for Black people who are already under-represented in this country—regardless of which region they find themselves living within.

How did my teacher go from giving us permission to question our conservative Republican obligations to not being able to see it? Someone gave him permission to not to see it. 

I’ve thought about the heartbreak of seeing people I love and have received goodness, compassion, and love from choose to support blatant evil in the world. Nina Simone’s tragic classic Mississippi Goddam begs for an answer with the lyrics, 

Do things gradually?

“Do it slow”

But bring more tragedy

“Do it slow”

Why don’t you see it?

Why don’t you feel it?

I don’t know

I don’t know

In his book Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr, author Michael Vinson Williams observed, “For, as civil rights activist John Salter Jr. noted, when it came to civil rights agitation, Mississippi operated “as a garrison state that viewed itself not only as being prepared for war but as already fighting a war.” 

I’ve learned a lot from the past ten years of the Trump Regime. Possibly the most enlightening concept to me has been the concept of permission. My own wiring isn’t set up to put a lot of stock in permission, and I remember finding myself freed by the phrase “I’d rather ask for forgiveness than permission.” But being a pastor for sixteen years while watching Trump for ten, has shown me how desperately many people need permission to do good or to do evil. 

The quote from John Salter Jr. summarizes the reality we are living within—that there is a garrison state already fighting a war against justice, equity, and humanity that is just waiting for permission to assault anyone who would suggest all humans deserve access to all of the resources of society. Permission can be translated as marching orders for this army of insecure, projecting self-contempt to arm itself on its way to killing while pretending to care for life. 

And yet, while permission isn’t a main motivator in my DNA, I can still sense the permission my teacher gave me to live into convictions and resist systems that oppress anyone. And that permission, which freed me from the constraints of the shallow decorum of assimilation, has grown into space where I’m allowed to give other people permission to love. I was shocked to come to an awareness of people looking to me (because of my vocation as a priest) to give them permission to step into what Flannery O’Connor calls “the terrible speed of mercy.” 

Dr. King called this terrible speed, “the fierce urgency of now.” And if you’re waiting for permission to step into it, stop. Receive more than just permission from Dr. King, Medgar Evers, and Nina Simone. Receive non-violent marching orders to see what is in front of you, feel what you see, and act on those feelings. We can’t say we don’t know, and we will all answer for our interpretation of what is “too much and too far.” 

And if you still need permission, here’s Lou Reed: 

This is no time to swallow anger

This is no time to ignore hate

This is no time to be acting frivolous

Because the time is getting late

This is no time to ignore warnings

This is no time to clear the plate

Let’s not be sorry after the fact

And let the past become our fate

This is the time

Because there is no time

There is no time