Join the Fam

This past weekend, I learned about the relationship between two unlikely partners: Pope Francis and The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.

It all began at a very simple workshop with a very long name, “Purple Rain Yoga: Prince Tribute Asana Flow and Relaxation Soundscape with Reggie Hubbard.” Despite the many words, the content of this event was actually pretty straightforward.  I joined a bunch of people who danced and sang together to songs by Prince. Yes, there were yoga mats. But they quickly became non-essential, as our teacher Reggie encouraged us to move freely, to skip and dance and shout, and to embrace words from The Artist himself:

Let's go crazy

Let's get nuts

Let's look for the purple banana

Until they put us in the truck, let’s go….

But before all that happened, Reggie had explained his love for Prince’s music in part by noting a similarity between Prince and, of all people, Pope Francis. It turns out that both men died on April 21st, the first back in 2016 and the second just over a week ago, the morning after delivering the Easter blessing to crowds in Vatican City and enjoying a drive through St. Peter’s Square in his open-topped popemobile. This calendar coincidence delighted Reggie. He went on to cite song lyrics, give anecdotes, and quickly convinced me that Prince and Pope Francis are indeed kindred spirits, with more in common than simply having had the ability to draw large crowds and make impactful use of the color purple.

Prince was raised in the Seventh-day Adventist tradition and baptized as a Jehovah’s Witness in 2003, at age 45. And just like the pope, Prince enthusiastically used his public position to declare and defend a concept that is not only Christian but one that human instinct can also embrace: the public expression of joy, especially when expressed in the face of fear and intimidation, is essential to a free and healthy society.

Episcopal priest Andrew Thayer helps elucidate the theological aspect of joy in his recent writing for The New York Times:

Christians begin Holy Week by celebrating Palm Sunday, when Jesus entered Jerusalem for the final time before his death and resurrection. To mark the day, Christians recreate Jesus’ procession, often starting outside churches and winding down sidewalks and city streets waving palm branches.

Celebrations like this often miss an uncomfortable truth about Jesus’ procession: At the time, it was a deliberate act of theological and political confrontation. It wasn’t just pageantry; it was protest.

On that first Palm Sunday, there was another procession entering Jerusalem. From the west came Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, riding a warhorse and flanked by armed soldiers bedecked in the full pageantry of an oppressive empire. Every year during Passover, a Jewish festival celebrating liberation from Egyptian oppression and slavery, Pilate entered Jerusalem to suppress any unrest set off by that memory.

His arrival wasn’t ceremonial; it was tactical — a calculated show of force…It displayed not only Rome’s power but also Rome’s theology. Caesar was not just the emperor; he was deified and called “Son of a God” on coins and inscriptions. His rule was absolute, and the peace it promised came through coercion, domination and the threat of violence….

Jesus wasn’t killed for preaching love, or healing the sick, or discussing theology routinely debated in the Temple’s courtyards, or blasphemy (the punishment for which was stoning). Rome didn’t crucify philosophers or miracle workers. Rome crucified insurrectionists. The sign nailed above his head — “King of the Jews” — was a political indictment and public warning. Like with the killing of the prophets before him, the message sent with Jesus’s death was that those who demand justice will inevitably find themselves crushed.

And so, the trajectory from Palm Sunday to Crucifixion to the joy of Easter morning is meant to demonstrate to the world that we were not made for death but for life, for a full cycle of experience that goes beyond what is apparent to human eyes and includes what seems impossible. Pope Francis once lamented Christians who behave like it’s always Lent and never Easter, getting stuck in a sense of limitation. And his final blessing (called Urbi et Orbi, meaning “to the city and the world”) goes on to offer this open-hearted invitation:

On this day, I would like all of us to hope anew and to revive our trust in others, including those who are different than ourselves, or who come from distant lands, bringing unfamiliar customs, ways of life and ideas! For all of us are children of God! I would like us to renew our hope that peace is possible!

But if Christian theology isn’t your jam, you may yet agree with the fact that fear and intimidation are indeed weapons of oppression. Like virulent parasites, they sap the vital energy that makes trust, hope and progress possible in the first place. Perhaps you have experienced this yourself. As you sit on your phone doom-scrolling (or doing any other fear-based habit that you have tried to kick, for that matter) do exhaustion, numbness, and hopelessness take over? Do you feel that the die is already cast, that there is no action you could take to make yourself, or the world, better? Such gloom is enough to block any individual’s vitality.  Writ large, this soul sickness eventually produces a feeble populace of zombie-like individuals that is easy to control.

However, the moment we refuse to see ourselves as isolated and useless--when we allow ourselves to be unified and useful--joy is the appropriate response, whether it looks like song or dance or waving tree branches around while others are carrying swords. Joy is not a distraction from reality. In its highest form, joy is an assertion of fearlessness in the face of reality. Not only that, but it’s a natural, inherent state of mind, one that we can tap into at any time. Like Reggie himself announced, “I’m not being political. This is spiritual!”

And so we shimmied and down-dogged our way through “Kiss,” “Erotic City, “7,” and “America,” among others, before ending (of course) with a “Purple Rain” savasana. The afternoon may not have been what Pope Francis had in mind when he delivered the Urbi et Orbi, but I feel confident that he would have approved. “Joy adapts and changes,” he once said, “But it always endures, even as a flicker of light born of our personal certainty that, when everything is said and done, we are infinitely loved."

You are infinitely loved. Whatever vibrations you raise are naturally part of the urbi and the orbi. If you are willing, you can also be part of the fams (what Prince preferred to call his fans, as a way to highlight family and deny fanaticism). Here are a few links to get you moving, get you feeling. Maybe it begins by singing in your kitchen or car but, soon, let that feeling spill over into your public life. Because oppression exists everywhere, including inside your own mind, opportunities for joy abound. Don’t overlook them, no matter how small they may seem.

Read the whole "Urbi et Orbi" message.

En-joy the playlist!