“AMERICANA”
A few weeks
ago Atlanta Interfaith Broadcasting (AIB) showed an interview that Angela
Harrington Rice had done with me in the spring of this year. It is part of a series that they are doing on
long pastorates and our spiritual journeys.
The interview was about 90 minutes in the Oakhurst Presbyterian
sanctuary, and they did a good edit to bring it down to about 28 minutes. If you’d like to see it, here is the You Tube
link:
In another
shameless advertisement, my book of sermons, edited by the great Collin
Cornell, and entitled “Deeper Waters:
Sermons for a New Vision” has just been published by Wipf&Stock
Books. You can order it from them or
from Amazon or from me.
This
process brought back a lot of memories, and it fit in well with a journey that
Caroline and I recently took to Baltimore and DC, in which we experienced a
microcosm of American history. We drove
up to Baltimore through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, so important in the
Civil War. We cut through part of West
Virginia, passing by Harper’s Ferry, remembering John Brown. We went up to celebrate Susan’s birthday, and
we had a great time doing it. We
visited with our long-time friends Ed Loring and Murphy Davis and shared a
basketball game in the back of the new Open Door Community Baltimore. Susan took us to a play centered on black
people and HIV/AIDS, and it was very powerful.
The play was interactive, and we all began in a crowded clinic, with a
lot of waiting. When the nurse asked for
our insurance cards, I gave her a blank sheet of paper, and she said that it
had nothing on it. I replied that it was a Trump Insurance Card!
We also
visited the Babe Ruth Museum in honor of my love of baseball – yes, it has been
my lifelong dream to play professional baseball, but alas, I was done in at
about 12 years old, when the pitchers began to throw curve balls! I am a baseball fan because it is so much
like life – the best hitters only succeed 30% of the time, and there is no
clock to time the game and pronounce that it is over. We also ate supper one night at a new
restaurant named Ida B’s, after the great Ida B. Wells. I was reminded of her powerful witness, a
witness so relevant to today’s world.
On our last
day in Baltimore, Susan graciously arose at 6:30 AM to seek online tickets for
that day for the National African-American Museum in DC, and she got some for
us! We had been there last year but were
able to see only the bottom 4 floors. We had only a couple of hours this time, so
we went to the arts/sports/food floor, and it was once again so powerful! The best part of DC, however, was staying
with our friend Dr. Gayraud Wilmore.
Some of you may know Gay, and some of you may remember that he
volunteered to be my adopted father – yay!
So, thanks to Caroline, we presented him with an “official” certificate
of adoptive fatherhood. He was meeting
the next week with a PHD student at Vanderbilt, who is doing his doctoral
dissertation on Gay and his ministry. If you don’t know Gay’s long and fine
ministry, look him up online!
We closed
out our DC trip with a visit to Frederick Douglass’ home in Anacostia. It evoked many feelings, as we re-visited the
history of the most famous African-American of the 19th
century. He bought this house on Cedar
Hill in 1877, a momentous year in American history, when Congress voted for
Rutherford B. Hayes as president in exchange for his pulling the last Federal
troops out of the South. Douglass bought
this home in an all white neighborhood, and I’m wondering what he thought as he
moved in such a difficult year. We give
thanks for his witness!
On the way
home we spent the night in Mt. Airy, North Carolina, and took time to visit the
Andy Griffith Museum. It was at the
other end of the spectrum – whiteness all over the place, and I remember being
such a big fan of his show and of Mayberry when I was in junior and senior high
school. Even though I cringe at them
now, some of his scenes with Don Knotts as Barney Fife still make me laugh!
One caveat
to all this whiteness in Mt. Airy – attached to the museum was a smaller museum honoring
Eng and Chang Bunker, the first “official” Siamese twins. Born in Siam (now Thailand), their parents
sold them to an American sea captain in the 1800’s, and they became a media hit
of their day. They eventually settled in
Mt. Airy, married sisters and had 22 children between them!
In all of
this, we missed the visit of Hurricane Irma to the Atlanta area, and our home
escaped damage too – thank you! Let us
all remember and pray for the people of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean who were
attacked by Irma and Maria – and let us practice what we pray!
Great post and great interview! Book's in my cart! Thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThank you!
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