"MAY 14, 2018"

“MAY 14, 2018:  CELEBRATION, AMBIVALENCE, AND NAKBA”

            This is a big day in history.  First, there is still the glow of Mother’s Day, and I give thanks for my mother, Mary Elizabeth Armour Stroupe, who raised me as a single mom, while working six days a week.  As far as I knew, her goal was to be both mother and father to me.  She was bright and hard-working – indeed she was valedictorian of her high school class in Byhalia, Mississippi, in 1937, but since they were poor in the Depression, she could not afford college.  My grandfather did round up the money to pay for cosmetology school for her (I believe that they called it “beauty school” at that time), and she became a beauty operator, a job she held in some form for 35 years or so.  After I had my children, I gave much more thought to what my mother had done for me:  after standing on her feet all day and listening to the troubles of others, she would come home, play with me, and listen to my troubles.

            She was an intellectual and loved to read, always seeking more and more knowledge and wisdom.  In the mid-70’s she was blessed to be hired as the lead teacher in the Phillips County Community College of Cosmetology.  She and I had already butted heads by then over race, and she had made a dramatic change.  Indeed, she later hired a black woman co-instructor because so many black women were coming to the school, and they became fast friends.  I later heard that she scandalized her white neighborhood because she welcomed her friend in the front door of the house (this was in the late 70’s, not the 1940’s or 50’s).   All of her students had to be registered to vote, and on election day, if they did not come to class wearing a sticker that said “I voted today,” they could not come to class.  So, a big THANK YOU to my mother for all that she did for me.  And a big THANK YOU to all the other women (and men) who gave me mothering love.  May we all share that kind of love with one another.

            Today is also the 411^th anniversary of the landing of the English at Jamestown in Virginia to start the European invasion of the Americas in 1607.   Almost immediately the natives of the land were pushed back and out, and twelve years later the first African slaves would arrive in North America.  Two hundred and 31 years ago in 1787, the delegates would gather in Philadelphia to begin the process of drafting the US Constitution, in which slavery would be written into the Constitution, and racism too, as those of African and native descent were deemed 60% human beings.  Those decisions are still reverberating in our national lives and consciousness.

            Finally, on this date 70 years ago in 1948, the nation of Israel drove Palestinian natives off their land to establish the modern nation of Israel.  Today the United States is moving our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in honor of the celebration of Israel.  I have no quarrels with the existence of the state of Israel, or with their persistent and insistent quality of maintaining the state of Israel.  Although Israel and Judaism are not the same, those pushing for a religious state of Israel still smell the ovens of Auschwitz and Dachau.  They rightly know that they cannot trust the West, or anyone else for that matter, to stand up for Judaism.  They must be the ones to enforce “Never Again.”  They look like they intend to do it, or to make the world pay a great price if it seeks to return to the Germanic approach of the 1930’s and 40’s.

            Yet, today the democratic nation of Israel looks more like apartheid South Africa or the white South in which I grew up in the 1940’s and 50’s.   Today the Palestinian natives call this day “Nakba,” an Arabic word for “catastrophe.”  It marks 70 years since the Israelis drove the Palestinians from their homes and off their land, never to return again.  Buildings burned and houses razed, and now non-Arab Israelis moving into those places.  I wish that I could say that justice will be served, but I’m sitting on my porch right now in Decatur, sitting on land once occupied and owned by Cherokee people, removed themselves by the Presbyterian president Andrew Jackson.

            I hope that Israel will change its course and will shame us by treating the native peoples with justice and with dignity.  I’m not hopeful, but I also worship the God who is with those on the margins. I hope that like the Mother Bear of the Bible,  she is coming quickly to rescue and stabilize her cubs.  Or at least, to be like my mother and to celebrate, in front of every one, that She is now proclaiming welcome to those previously seen as enemies.  May this May 14 bring that kind of witness by us all.