PREACHER A.L. WITHEE’S FAMOUS HISTORIC SPEECH REGARDING THE VILLANIE OF THE SOUL-GRAFFITI TRADE.
[as transcribed from the early meetings of The Church Basement Roadshow: A Rollin’ Gospel Revival]
As you may know, they call me Preacher A.L. Withee– that’s Allen Lockwood Withee–W. I. T. H. double E. Hailing from Wessington Springs, South Dakota. Called to be preacher when I was a tender 12 years old, I’ve traveled far and wide to proclaim the kingdom of love at hand in these present times. I’m the son of a farmer, a proud son of the American plains, and by God’s mercy and holy ghost power, a son of the living God– hallelujah!
I haven’t got much time tonight, so I will get straight to my point. I am a plain speaking man endeavoring to speak to plain and sensible folk. Kind ladies and gentlemen I wish to address the present controversy over the illicit soul Graffiti-trade. — a blight sweeping like wild fire across our great nations public streets, civic buildings and private dwellings– this tagging, scratching, spraying– the questioning of values and assumptions that mars the air-tight and lilly white vistas of our religious landscape. Why the silver bugbear. That’s what’s the matter with this country.
Now I’m sure you know that in every literate society since ancient times we human beings have acted on the impulse to scratch our names, our questions, our wisdom or our subversions upon the floors and walls of public spaces– in both public discource and private consciousness and conversations. The vile pestilence and dirty work of the graffiti-trade is causing a panic that threatens to defile and upset the common decency and fragile sensibilities of the status quo of religious life in these United States that has been so daintily wrought over so many years.
Be it ever so humble there no place like home… without the illicit soul graffiti-trade
Now I ask you, and please be honest with yourself, “If no one was looking –and you could do so annonymously–What would you dare– what would you be tempted to write on walls or sidewalks about your deepest spiritual longings, your doubts, or your questions?
I don’t blame you for the lump that comes to your throat when I ask you this– because I know that you have been tempted by the graffiti-trade. I know i speak to people with discontent and hearfelt questions about what it means to be truly spiritual in the times and places where we live.
Would you confess your dissatisfaction with the substance or limitations of the religious life you have inherited?
Would you admit that secret longing for a larger story that helps you make more sense of all that you see?
Would you confess your illicit longings for community, justice, simplicity, and peace?
Would you admit that you have often found yourself in the valley of the shadow of death? That dark night of the soul called deconstruction?
I believe the villanie of the graffiti-trade, this trafficking in questions and conversation, is a medium of deconstruction, revealing an utterly primitive hunger for renewal that some might say makes space for what is emerging. You and I, ladies and gentlemen, are alive during a time that many believe to be one of the great turning points in history—a time when previous constructions are breaking down and we search together for solutions in an increasingly complex, mobile, interconnected, and fragmented world. This is a time of great possibility– for healing, reconciliation and greater awareness about how we can live together in harmony with our Maker on the planet we call home.
Yet these changing times have created fault lines, particularly within our religious communities. Surely you have heard about the widespread intrigue and controversy over what some have describe as “the emerging church”– one of the main instigators of the illicit-graffiti-trade. But is this really something new?
I suggest to you, dear brothers and sisters, that this phenomenon, rather than representing a particular organization or comtemporaneous movement, is the historic and pervasive process of our collective response to an ever evolving and emerging flow of human consciousness. Show me a time when faithful people have not aganized over the meaning of the gospel of Jesus Christ in their day? The church of Jesus Christ has always been emerging—wrestling with what it means to follow his message and teachings faithfully in particular times and places.
Don’t let anyone fool you. The soul graffiti-trade, this discontent and heartfelt questioning about what it means to be truly spiritual in the times and places where we are living, is dangerous business– utterly and dangerously alive. And I defy anyone to say otherwise. The soul graffiti-trade in its most provocative form, is a tool for revolution that sounds the alarm and calls men, women and children to action. The Graffiti trade reveals tremendous dissatisfaction with religion as usual–it betrays a vile quest for perspectives and practices that integrate, body, mind and spirit with moral, social and political consciousness to address tanglible needs and opportunities in our world. The graffiti-trade leads people down a slippery slope in search of a spiritual path that is not merely a way to believe, but also a way of life.
Well, by the Grace of God I am going to give it a push, with a whoop, for all I know.
You say that the graffiti trade is just an innocent and innoucuous venture in cultural relevance or theological inquiry. Alas, All be damned to hell, if we forget that soul-graffiti is the most potent and vile form of vandalism known to humankind. There is nothing more disruptive, scandalous, or criminal than the very possibility that God the eternal being might actually be speaking into our history and humanity, spraying a message of subversion onto the hard as a brick walls of our hungry hearts, disrupting our assumptions, guiding us toward a new way of being and inviting us into the freedom we fear through the frailty of a trickster, messiah prophet. I mean to tell you this is not child’s play, watch out for this long-haired fanatic from Nazareth whose life, message and sufferings continue as an enduring scandal.
You might as well try and dam Niagra Falls with toothpicks as to stop the raucaus revolution that is being caused by this Nazarene love fiend.
Let me assemble before your minds the possibility that is before us. Experts debate at what point the soul graffiti-trade crosses the line from art-crime to art work. Gradually the voices of dissent can become the voices of hope, generosity and beauty. It is my hope that we can move from being “haters” to creators—imagining and working towards a different and better future together. If we don’t like the direction things are going in we can collaborate with our Maker’s good dreams to seek the kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.”
In the land of the free and the home of the brave, its time to make beauty with our lives. I am on the side of love. Everybody fall in! Come on, ready, forward, march. right, left, here we come with all the courage we can muster….we can make beauty with our lives. We can expand the boundaries of love in forgotten and unlikely places. By the Grace of God I am going to give it a push, with a whoop, for all I know.
In the name of your pure mother, in the name of your manhood or womanhood, in the name of your wife and the poor innocent children that climb up on your lap and put their arms around your neck, in the name of all that is good and noble, will you pledge yourself to cause of beauty?
WIll you pledge yourself to the cause of the kingdom of Love? Let me hear you say, AMEN!
Will you plege yourself to the path of the Nazarene? Let me hear you say, AMEN!
God is conspiring through a new generation to re-imagine and create new expressions of discipleship, community, church and mission and to make a difference in our rapidly changing world. At this festi-val of imagination, we will bring together leaders from the emerging, missional, mosaic and monastic streams of renewal to explore new models, discuss tough questions and create ways to be a difference and make a difference in our churches, communities and God’s world. As far as we know, this is the first time that such a broad range of new conspirators have come together to communicate, connect and create with one another.
