"AND JOSEPH FLEW IN ANGER"

 “AND JOSEPH FLEW IN ANGER”

When Mary says “yes,” to Gabriel the angel, says “yes” to allowing herself to be the vessel for the birth of Jesus, she puts herself at great risk.  Engaged to Joseph and soon to be pregnant by someone else, she would be subject to humiliation, exile, and even the death penalty.  Her path was made much easier by her fiancé Joseph, who decided to stay with her and claim the child as his own.  He was not without his struggles, however.   Whereas Luke’s gospel gives us Mary’s version of the events,  Matthew’s gospel gives us Joseph’s approach.  He seems to be a decent guy, so when he finds out that Mary is pregnant by someone else, he decides not to take her to the elders for punishment.  He decides to divorce her quietly.

Matthew tells us that an angel also comes to Joseph in a dream to tell him to claim the baby in Mary’s womb as his own, to hear that this baby will bring a sense of God’s presence with humanity in a new way.  Joseph decides to stay with Mary and to claim the child as his own.  He decides to stay with her and to give her and the baby male protection, bringing them just a bit closer to the center of the power of patriarchy.  This story has been sentimentalized in a thousand different ways, so we must be very careful with it.  On Mary’s end, author Margaret Atwood captured the danger and terror of the story in her chilling novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,’ drawing on the earlier English translations of Mary’s response to Gabriel when she says “Yes”:   “I am the handmaid of the Lord.”

Joseph’s simmering anger at being forced and cajoled into accepting Mary and the baby did not make it into the New Testament, but it has been portrayed in other stories and songs.  “The Pseudo Gospel of Matthew” was written about 650 CE and obviously did not make it into the canonical Bible, but it became part of the readings of the church for a long while.  It is the basis for a Christmas song “The Cherry Tree Carol,” whose lyrics were first known around 1500 CE.  The song portrays Joseph and a pregnant Mary on a trip (some lyrics have Bethlehem as a destination, another the flight to Egypt, others just a stroll in a garden).  

In the song, the couple passes a grove of cherry trees, and Mary asks Joseph to get some cherries for her, since she is pregnant and cannot reach them.  Joseph feels the anger and resentment swell up in him, and he responds to Mary:  “Let the father of your baby gather cherries for you.”  As that anger simmers, the baby Jesus speaks out from Mary’s womb to command the world to change:  “Then up spoke baby Jesus from out of Mary’s womb: ‘Bow down you tallest cherry that my mother might have some.”  The cherry trees bow down, and Mary is delighted and lets Joseph further know his place:  “Oh, look now, Joseph, I have cherries at command.”  

In a song whose verses are constantly being altered and adjusted, there is a sense of the power and the complexity of what seems to be a sweet and sentimental story:  the vulnerability of Mary as a teenage pregnant before marriage, the lingering anger and resentment of Joseph, and yet the power of God moving even in these complicated story lines.  There are many versions of “Cherry Tree Carol,” but one of the loveliest is Peter, Paul, and Mary’s cover of it . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5ClJpQDRRA   The song traveled through Appalachia to modern times, and Jean Ritchie’s version of it is powerful  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7FeXU7PlWc

Whichever version you prefer (or another one, which I’d be glad to learn from you), please hear the great news of this last week of Advent:  “For unto us a child is born, and they shall be called Bringer of Peace, Wonderful Counselor.”  In the midst of all the craziness and terror and anxiety of our present age, may each of us and all of us know the power and grace of this message and this event, complicated as it is. Complex as our lives are, may we find its peace and love.  

"THREE WISE WOMEN: MARY, IDA WELLS, STACEY ABRAMS"

 “ THREE WISE WOMEN: MARY, IDA WELLS, STACEY ABRAMS”

      Battered by the Roman Empire, crushed by a heavy system of corruption and taxation, dominated by a patriarchy that sought to make her a baby-factory only – in this highly charged and oppressive air, a young teen-age engaged to be married, hears a stunning voice that asks her to see a different vision and to proclaim that vision to others.  Not only is he asked to proclaim that vision – she is also asked to embody it by becoming pregnant with the Human One.  To say “yes” is to risk the death penalty, since she will be pregnant by someone other than her husband.  Fortunately for all of us, Mary said “Yes,” and a new vision of hope and possibility was conceived and born into a world of despair and crushing domination.

    In our time of Advent and Christmas two millennia later, we are experiencing some of that same hopelessness and despair.  Many of us were heartened last week when Stacey Abrams officially announced her run for governor of Georgia in 2022. Though she is not the savior, she is an unusually gifted politician, and we sorely need her leadership and vision in Georgia and in the nation.  With the Herod-like Trumpster still looming over us, Stacey’s vision is a powerful opportunity to help us all move past the petty, narcissistic politics which seem to dominate us so much in these days.  If you can support her in any way in these next 11 months, please do so.

    Stacey preached at Oakhurst several times, and she also spoke at my retirement, so I have a special affection for her.  She also agreed to write the Foreword to the book on Ida Wells that Catherine Meeks and I wrote.  Stacey joins Mary as one of the three wise women whom I’m highlighting this week.  The third is Ida B. Wells, and I’ll gratefully borrow from Stacey’s words of part of the Foreword to highlight Ida Wells:

“Because of the witness and work of Ida Wells and those she girded for the fight, we as a nation have made critical progress.  Yet, we find ourselves at a crucial turning point in our history, when the forces that sought to silence her and to re-establish oppression seem to gain strength each day.  From the tragedy of family separations to the glib invocation of nativism, those charged with maintaining our progress have instead reignited the most infernal instincts of past.  In these moments, Passionate for Justice serves as a welcome and timely reminder of  power of witness in our nation’s history. I am grateful to Nibs Stroupe and Catherine Meeks for bringing forth this testimony to the life and ministry of Ida Wells. In this work, they reflect upon the power of Wells’ life, as well as the dynamic of race and gender that sought to limit her and continues to constrict access into the present age. 

I have been awed by Rev. Stroupe during his long and effective ministry at multicultural Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, where he met scripture with action. Together, with the scholarship and insight of Dr. Meeks, they have produced this critical work to help revive the heroism of Ida Wells, not only restoring our understanding of her unflinching example but reminding each of us to find our place in the perennial fight for justice. Through their exposition, we rediscover a model for diminishing those forces of repression and oppression in our individual and communal lives. In her honor, we are called to acknowledge the depth of those oppressive powers in our time, and to be like Wells – to seek a new way of liberty and justice for all.  

Ida Wells confronted the evils of her time with a determination to compel America to live up to its highest ideals. Her example continues to guide the work of millions, including my own, as we in our own ways work to reaffirm the humanity of all and the potential for more. I applaud Nibs and Catherine for their efforts, a robust inquiry that produced such a transformative statement about the meaning of Wells’ life for the twenty-first century. They honor the life of Ida B. Wells, a life carved out of the hard scrabble ground of slavery, white supremacy and oppression of women, especially black women. In Passionate for Justice, we find a compass that points us to the future, where we can each give voice and action to justice, equity and life-giving community.  Ida Wells would have had it no other way.”

"WE ARE CHRISTMAS"

 “WE ARE CHRISTMAS”

When Caroline and I were pastors at Oakhurst, we were privileged to be part of church group who attended the annual Spelman-Morehouse Christmas Concert on the first weekend in December.  It would be held twice in King Chapel on Morehouse campus and once in Sisters Chapel at Spelman.  It was always crowded, and it was always a moving experience.  The power of the voices, the arrangements, and the sheer joy of being in Black space to welcome the season – these drew us many times to this annual concert.  Covid forced last year’s concert to go online rather than in person, and that is the case this year too.  

    Their 95th Annual Christmas Concert will be shown on their websites beginning on December 15.  If you have not experienced this magnificent concert, please treat yourself this year.  There is nothing like being in person, being incarnate for this concert, but you can still feel the power online.  Check out the Spelman or Morehouse websites for more information.

I have many favorite songs from these concerts, but this year, a song stands out:  “We Are Christmas.” It is co-written written by the Spelman Glee Club Director, Kevin Johnson, and by student Sarah Stephens Benibo. Here is the link to Ms. Stephens Benibo as a soloist on the song with  the Spelman Choir (with handbells that year in 2006).  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj33F8ZBQCM

    Since her graduation, she has come back to sing this at the annual concert.   The idea for the song comes from Sweet Honey in the Rock’s song “We Are,” and it is based on Mary’s experience in the Christmas story, as well as her vision (“The Magnificat.”). At first the music lulls us into thinking that we have another “Sweet little Jesus boy” song, but the lyrics lead us into something quite different – it is up to us to bring this story to life in our day and in our time.  Let it speak to you, and plan to watch some more of their work.  Then let us find ways in our lives to make the vision of Christmas come alive.

"HAIL TO YOU!"

 “HAIL TO YOU!”

I must admit that I was surprised with the verdict in the outcome of the Ahmaud Arbery case.  I had been hoping for some sort of conviction in the Rittenhouse case in Wisconsin, and when that verdict turned out to be “not guilty” on all charges, my hopes for the Arbery case outcome dropped.  I had slim hopes anyway – the most that I had hoped for was a hung jury, so that there would be a re-trial.  I was really surprised that a vastly white jury in south Georgia found three white men guilty of killing a Black man.  There might be some hope after all.  

And, that hope, of course, is one of the main themes of the Advent season into which we are now heading.  The turnaround in the Arbery case came because a lone woman, Wanda Cooper-Jones, mother of Ahmaud Arbery, kept at the case, even when the police and two county DAs had refused to prosecute the case.  She kept on proclaiming, kept on poking, kept on insisting that an injustice had been done.  Many of us knew that she was right, but the problem was to get the authorities to believe that too.

Her role is a reminder of the importance of women in the Advent story and in the civil rights movement. The Biblical story is that a young woman named Mary, engaged to be married, had a vision of an angel of God coming to her saying “Hail, Mary.”  The angel was a messenger from God, asking her to agree to a astonishing and dangerous mission – she was asked to carry the Human One, the special child of God, as a baby in her womb.   It was astonishing because she was a “nobody” from Nazareth, asked to be the Mother of God.  It was dangerous because she would be pregnant by someone other than her fiancé Joseph.  In saying “Yes,” she would risk receiving the death penalty.  We don’t know her internal processing of this request, but she said “Yes.”  After she visited with her cousin Elizabeth, she even counted herself “blessed” to be asked to do this, and her famous song about the potential turning of the world is found in Luke 1:49-56.

     This Wednesday, December 1, marks the 66th anniversary of Rosa Parks’ decision to refuse to move to the “white” section of the bus, a decision that led to the Montgomery bus boycott.  There has been a lot written about her decision and about her motivation for it.   She been prepared for it – the previous summer she had attended workshops at Highlander Folk School in Tennessee about these issues.  There she encountered Septima Clark and came under her  tutelage.  Septima Clark encouraged her  to listen for God’s voice and to find her voice in response.  As far as I can determine, she had not gotten on that bus ready for civil disobedience – no Henry Plessy moment for her.  But, her moment came – she heard the angel’s voice: “Hail, Rosa!”  And she responded.  She was not the first to do this – many others like Ida Wells and Claudette Colvin had preceded her.  But, this was the moment, and like Mary before her, when she heard “Hail to you,” and responded by saying “Yes,” the world began to turn.

    The Advent season is about these kinds of moments, about us preparing to hear God’s voice calling to us:  “Hail to you!”  There are a lot of other voices out there (and “in here”) in this season.  The products call to us to tell us to touch the hem of their garments and be healed.  The sentimentality of the “baby Jesus” asks us to leave behind all the struggles of the world - all the calls to justice, all the murders of Ahmaud Arbery – and come to rest in this “sweet little Jesus boy.”  This is a time for meditation and preparation, and even silence at times, but the goal of the story is this:  we are asked to listen for God’s voice to us in this time so that we can join in the parade to seek to turn the world around.  May we hear God’s “Hail to you” in this Advent season of 2021, and may we find the vision of Mary, the determination of Wanda Cooper-Jones, and the courage of Rosa Parks to say “Yes,” when God’s call comes to us.  

"WE MAY BE SIBLINGS AFTER ALL"

 “WE MAY BE SIBLINGS AFTER ALL”

In light of the terrible but not surprising news that Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges in Wisconsin last week, I wanted to share a glimmer of good news from the heart of the South.  Last month Dekalb County approved the removal of the “Indian Wars Cannon” that had been placed in the Decatur Square in 1906 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC).  It was removed on October 19.  While some of us had been working on this for a long while, we give thanks for the Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights, which took up this cause and brought it to fruition.  They were also instrumental in getting the Confederate Monument removed from the Square in the summer of 2020.  

    We also give thanks for our friend, Dekalb County Commissioner Mereda Davis Johnson, who was a powerful force behind the removals of both of these symbols of white supremacy.  As she put it in a statement when the cannon was removed:  “Dekalb County and the City of Decatur are places of love, not hate.  Of inclusion, not division.  And, so any sign that is divisive or is hurtful to others, or is a sign of oppression, we shouldn’t have in the county.” We give thanks for Mereda and Ted Terry who co-sponsored the resolution for removal.  Mereda is a long-time ally of Oakhurst Presbyterian, and she is the daughter-in-law of Christine Callier, longtime Oakhurst member.  She is also the spouse of Congressperson Hank Johnson.

The Indian Wars cannon memorialized the removal of Indigenous Peoples from this area following the Creek Indian War of 1836.  The war was rooted in the Indian Removal Act of 1830, supported and backed by President Andrew Jackson.  In 1821, the state of Georgia forced the sale of Creek (and Cherokee) land in Georgia, giving it at little cost to those who were classified as “white.”  The Creek and the Cherokee did not take this well, and violence broke out.   The Native Americans sued in federal court, and SCOTUS even ruled that their land should not be stolen in this manner, but President Jackson refused to enforce the SCOTUS ruling, saying infamously that if SCOTUS wanted its decision enforced, they should send their own soldiers to do it.  Under our Constitution, however, SCOTUS can have no soldiers.  The result was the horrifying Trail of Tears, removing many Indigenous People from their ancestral lands.

The UDC placed the cannon in Decatur Square in 1906, even before they had the Confederate monument installed in 1908.  Why this connection of the “Indian Wars” cannon to the Lost Cause?  Because both are monuments to white supremacy, and they are a reminder that most of us who are classified as “white” feel threatened by the presence of anyone categorized as “non-white,” most especially those seen as Black or Indigenous.  In this sense, the verdict in the Rittenhouse case is not surprising at all – he, as a “white” boy, had put himself in the presence of Black people.  His travel there across state lines with an illegal automatic weapon was not seen as endangerment.  The dangerous people - from the view of white supremacy -are not boys like him with automatic weapons, but rather are people of color.  As the judge so infamously put it in his instructions to the jury, consider this case from Rittenhouse’s point of view.  That point of view is that all people of color are threatening in all times and in all places.

This verdict is a grim reminder of the danger in which we live, as white supremacy regains its strength.  But, we should also remember other visions.  In 1854, Chief Seattle, after whom the city is named, gave a powerful speech of lament about the taking of their lands (and ancestors) by those classified as ‘white.”  He added these words of warning and prophecy about the necessity of seeing one another as siblings rather than enemies:  “Even the white man, whose God walked and talked with him, as friend to friend, is not exempt from the common destiny.  We may be {brothers} after all.  We shall see.”

We may be siblings after all – that is a powerful phrase and a powerful thought.  In these days of growing danger, let us be watchful, but let us always remember this vision and seek to be guided by it.  We may be siblings after all.  We are siblings after, and even before, all is said and done.  We have a common ancestry and a common destiny.  We belong to one another.

"ON SEEING WITH NEW HEARTS AND NEW EYES"

 “ON SEEING WITH NEW HEARTS AND EYES”

The Atlanta baseball team recently won the World Series, in a surprising run.  I was surprised on several levels, the main one being that I had declared that the Atlanta baseball team would never win another World Series because the team refused to change its racist name from the “B-word” to something like the “Atlantans” (my preference) or the “Hammers” (as my son David and others advocate).  Keeping “Hammers” would allow them to keep the egregious “chop” by changing it to hammer strokes, and of course the greatest Atlanta player was Hammerin’ Hank Aaron.  For more on this struggle see our friend John Blake’s fine CNN online article about this.  https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/31/us/atlanta-braves-history-racism-blake/index.html

The baseball gods were not with me, however, and the Atlantans won the World Series in convincing fashion.  There was some controversy generated by their name, but the white owners of the team responded that they would keep the “B-word” as the name.  They even brought out Chief Noc-a-Homa to defend the name and the chop.  When we first moved to the Atlanta area in 1983, we would take 

David and Susan to see the Atlanta team play in old Fulton County stadium.  In the stands behind left/center field, they had built a teepee, and they had Chief Noc-a-Homa, a Native American,  bless the field before each home game.  When the Atlantans hit a home run in those days, Chief Noc-a-Homa would run around the field and whoop and celebrate.  He is still alive at age 79, and Atlanta TV stations played a recent interview with him.  He strongly defended the “B-word” as appropriate, defending the “chop” as well.  

It reminded me of a trip that Caroline, Susan and I had made to the Eastern Shore of Maryland a couple of years ago to look for Wallace ancestors and to look at Easton, Maryland.  Easton was now claiming Frederick Douglass as an ancestor, on the approximate 200th anniversary of his birth in the area.   We went into a used bookstore in Easton to seek to find some postcards to send to our granddaughters.  The white, male proprietor of the store noticed my Baltimore Orioles baseball cap, and he asked me if we were from Baltimore.  When I replied that Susan was but I was not, he asked why anyone not from Baltimore would wear the cap of the last place baseball team.  I replied that it was a gift from my daughter, but also that I could not wear the cap of my home team, the Atlantans, until they changed their racist name and images.  He looked puzzled and asked if I meant “the Braves.”  When I replied that I did, he then launched into an explanation of why the name “Braves” and its accompanying tomahawk chop and images were not racist, but were rather honoring the fierceness and courage of Native American peoples. 

            My response was that the Atlantans had not consulted with the Native American tribes of the land (mostly Creek and Cherokee) about their opinions of the baseball traditions.  Indeed, the comments of Native American culture are that such usage is demeaning and racist, especially since those tribes do not receive any of the millions of dollars generated by the use of their images.  He replied that the Native Americans should not be insulted by it, because it was not intended as racist.  Since I did not know him, I wanted to add, but I did not, that it was arrogant but not surprising of us white men to believe that we knew better about the opinions of other cultures than those cultures themselves did.  We have pronounced it, and it must be so. 

            In this Native American Heritage Month (or American Indian Heritage Month), let those of us who are classified as “white” be reminded of our terrible history in regard to Native Americans.  Let us remember our emphasis in the system of race that our intentions are much more important to us than the outcomes of our actions.  As this Anglo man stated, if white folk didn’t express an intention of racism, then our actions couldn’t be seen as racist.  Lest this seem like ancient history, it is the current SCOTUS position.

            But, as we experience this Month, let us also consider the many positive gifts of Native American heritage, and at this time in our lives, none seems more important that their reverence for Mother Earth compared to the Anglo ravaging of the earth.  As the icecaps and glaciers melt;  as the fires of the West burn;  as the typhoons and hurricanes and tornadoes blow;  as the temperatures and sea levels rise – in light of these and so much more, nothing seems more vital to all of us than to go back and learn from these cultures who understand the powerful and complex links between all circles of life in the earth and the universe.  I’ll look at this more next week, but for now, let us hear that our ancestors and our grandchildren cry out to us to learn and live this respect.  Let us see with new hearts and new eyes.

"VETERANS' DAY"

 “VETERANS’ DAY”

I have a complex relationship with Veterans’ Day.  I honor people who have served this country, and I had two high school acquaintances killed in the Vietnam War.  My mother’s love, Bob Buford, was killed in World War II, and my father also served in World War II, but I think that it scarred him deeply mentally and emotionally – I am surmising that part;  I only met him once and did not know him at all.  

And then there is my own personal history with Veterans’ Day.  In 1970 I decided to withdraw from seminary and to challenge the automatic exemption from the draft that ministers and seminary students had.  I was among a group of people who felt that if we could challenge the draft-exempt status of church-related folks, then we could deepen resistance to the Vietnam War.  The draft board in Helena was only too glad that I had offered up my body to the sacrifice of the Vietnam War.  I was faced with three choices (other than going into the army):  become a conscientious objector, go to Canada, or go to jail.  I felt like the CO was an educated person’s draft exemption, but the other two options did not seem feasible.  

            I loved my country, but I felt that the Vietnam War was not a just or honorable cause for our country.  After several months of wrestling (and after being AWOL for the army physical), I decided to seek conscientious objector status.  I was approved for that, and I worked at Opportunity House in Nashville as my alternate service, which the CO required.  Opportunity House was a halfway house for men getting out of prison, and I learned a lot there about the injustices of the prison system in the USA.

           When I wrote my blog on Veterans’ Day  a couple of years ago, my longtime friend David Billings responded with a wonderful comment about the men in his family who had served in World War II, and with his permission, I am sharing those comments now to complete this year’s blog on Veterans’ Day.  If you have not read David’s powerful book and memoir on race and fighting its power – please find a copy.  It is entitled “Deep Denial: The Persistence of White Supremacy in United States History and Life.”  Here are David’s fine reflections on Veterans’ Day from 2019:

“My father was awarded the purple heart during his service in WWII. He was hit by a bomb fragment in the chin and survived chin and all. I remember choking up at his funeral when the 21 gun salute was fired and when the U.S. flag was presented to my older sister before he was lowered into the ground. I have often thought, as I have grown older, about the sacrifices people like my father made that allowed me to live a much different life than he and others like him lived. I felt ashamed sometimes that my risks were so much safer than the ones he took.

           In the first two decades after WWII, the South was ablaze with racial violence. In fact my Uncle Harry (also a veteran) was murdered in McComb, Mississippi in 1962. The murderer was a young Black man. Uncle Harry was a white man from a working class but well-known white family (largely because all the Billings worked for the railroad and because there were so many of us--7 brothers and 2 sisters.) Now, 6 brothers survived at that time.  Within hours of the arrest, the representatives of the KKK came to the house. They wore no sheets or masks. Everybody knew everybody else. "What would you have us do?" was their question. 

            Those who were home were gathered in a circle, and each was given the chance to respond.  No one did until it was my Uncle James' turn to speak. James was a decorated war hero. He had seen death up close and personal. War was not yet a video game. You looked your adversaries in the face, so to speak. He replied, "We don't want you to do nothing. "We are not that kind of family."

             I credit that statement from my war hero Uncle James with giving me permission to fight white supremacy which I have attempted to do in my life -- like my father's family had fought Hitler. Free of Hitler, I was now free to fight my own battles.  Salute."

"ALL HALLOWS DAY"

 “ALL HALLOWS DAY”

For over 1200 years the Western Christian church has celebrated November 1 as All Hallows Day (“hallow” as in “Hallowed be Thy Name”), or All Saints Day.  It is a time to remember and to give thanks for those saints who have gone before us – as one writer put it, All Saints Day enables us to keep alive those who have passed on, as long as we are alive.  In some traditions, the night before All Hallows Day was a time when the mean and dangerous spirits were released. It became All Hallows Eve, or Halloween as we now know it.  In the Irish tradition, these mean spirits emerged from the ground to seek to do harm to those who had been their enemies in life.  In order to avoid these spirits on All Hallows Eve, people would disguise themselves with costumes and other ways – leading to our present day costumes of Halloween.  There are many other origin stories of Halloween, and one of the different ones is the Mexican tradition of “Dia los de Muertos” or “Day of the Dead,” which is more of a joyful celebration than the European conflicted one.

Today, however, I’m observing the All Saints Tradition and remembering the saints who have gone before me.  I am blessed that there are many in my life, but I’m remembering 5 today:  Mary Elizabeth Armour Stroupe, Bernice Green, Harold Jackson, Harmon Wray, and Azzie Preston.  They are not in order of importance, but rather in the chronological order when they came into my life.

Although I indicated that these 5 saints are not in order of importance, the first one, Mary Armour Stroupe, is by far the most important.  I am working on a memoir of her life and my life together tentatively entitled “Mother and Me: A Story of Power, Race and Gender.”  There will be much more about her in that book, but for now I will just say that she saved my life and gave me love and hope.  It took me a lot longer than it should have to recognize that all the while I was pining away for  my absent and fleeing father, she stayed with me and loved me and gave me a vision of what life could be. 

There were two primary “Bernice” people in my life.  One was my great-great aunt (my great-grandmother’s sister) with whom Mother and I lived after we moved to Helena.  I called her “Gran”, and I’ve written about her elsewhere, including the upcoming memoir.  The other was my great aunt Bernice, named after “Gran,” and while she was technically my mother’s aunt, she and Mother were more like sisters.  I called her “BB,” and I fondly remember her as a strong advocate for me in our conservative family structure.  Even as I moved to the left a bit, changing my mind on race, and growing my hair long, she remained a strong source of support.  She never agreed with me on these issues, but she always warned her husband and many other family members: “Don’t mess with that boy – besides my own sons, he is my favorite.”  

Reverend Harold Jackson was my minister in my adolescent years, and he offered a model to me of a male minister who did not have to give up his masculinity in order to be a minister.  The church was important to me in my youth, and many of the church members told me that I should go into the ministry.  I resisted that notion, with one of the main reasons being that my experience of ministers (all male at that time) was that they had to give up passion, politics, and personality – in other words, they were basically non-persons.  Harold changed that – he brought passion and politics and personality to the church and the pulpit.  Although it would be awhile before I decided that I might try the ministry, Harold gave me a vision of what that might look like.

I met Harmon Wray in college – he was a philosophy major like me, and he was an only child like me.  He was a passionate and fierce, and yet he was exceedingly gentle.  He and I were on the Honor Council at Southwestern (he was the president), and one of our records was that during our tenure on the HC, no one was convicted on an honor code offense – several put on probation but no real convictions or expulsions.  We also refused to prosecute cases of women not signing out to their actual destinations but who instead lied that they were going to their aunts overnight.  Males were not required to do this, so we refused to enforce it, thus helping to end “in loco parentis.”  I still mourn Harmon’s untimely death in 2007.

I’ve written about Azzie Preston in previous blogs – she was an African-American elder at Oakhurst when we arrived there.  She was one of the African-Americans who was not hesitant to engage me as her white pastor, and I remember well a call from her after one of our African-American members died.  Azzie wasted no time in calling me to say:  “I bet that you have never done a Black funeral before – is that right?”  When I hesitatingly said, “No, I haven’t, but…..” She jumped in and said:  “Well, I’ll need to come by and teach you a few things.”  And she did.  Later that same year she agreed to be an agent of change at Oakhurst by helping to shift the nominating committee to ensure that we would get strong Black members on the Session, the governing board of the church.  She was also strongly involved in justice issues at her place of employment, so much so that she received death threats at work.  My heart also leaned towards her because her husband was killed by a cousin in 1985, and she raised her children as a single mom.  Like Harmon, she also died way before her time – in 2010.

    On this All Saints Day, I am grateful to all these saints (and many others) who nurtured me and challenged me and gave me a vision of life and love.  As you go through your day on this All Saints Day, name some of the saints in your life too.  Lift up a prayer and give thanks for them!  And, may we live our lives so that someday, someone may lift us up also!

"504 YEARS"

 “504 YEARS”

This week marks the 504th anniversary of Roman Catholic monk Martin Luther posting 95 theses for debate about the nature of the church – legend has it that he posted them on the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany.  His actions were part of a movement to reform the church, but his actions also sparked a revolution in Western thinking and led to what we now know as the “Reformation.” He posted these articles for debate on All Hallows Eve,  also called  Halloween.  I was looking over my former blogs to see what I had said previously about this event, and I discovered that I had not discussed it much.  I did find a blog from the 500th anniversary of Luther’s posting in 2017.  It was written at the end of the first year of the Trump administration, and I am repeating most of that below.  

“LUTHER AND THE MODERN WORLD”

            One of my colleagues and friends from Ecuador, Laura Nieto,  commented  that only 25 years separated the landing of Columbus in the West in 1492 and the posting of Martin Luther’s “95 Theses” in Germany in 1517, a posting which was the match that lit the Reformation.   I was invited to speak with some Lutherans in Atlanta a month ago to talk about multicultural ministries, and one of the speakers addressed the question of whether Martin Luther would approve of multicultural ministries.  While noting that Luther was a man of his times, he felt that Luther had sown the seeds of the dignity of the individual, and that this idea has led to the ability and validity of some of us seeing people of other cultures as sisters and brothers rather than just “other.”  History suggests otherwise, however.

            Some authors like Richard Marius have called Luther the first “modern man.”  While this does seem to be a stretch, Luther’s sense of the lonely individual dominated by anxiety and existential angst, unable to find home and meaning in a brave new world, seems to resonate strongly in our post-modern world.  I am intrigued with Laura’s connection of Columbus with Luther, and it is striking that one of the outcomes of the liberation of the individual from the confines of medieval Europe and the Roman Catholic Church was not greater dignity for all people but  rampant racism and exploitation of peoples around the world by the enlightened and beginning-to-be-liberated Europeans.  The idea of “race” developed post-Reformation in the Western consciousness as a way of acknowledging the dignity of individual European human beings while exploiting those who seemed human on one level but weren’t really human under the classification of race.  To paraphrase George Orwell’s phrase in his futuristic novel “1984:”  “All human beings are equal, but some human beings are more equal than others.”

            The forces unleashed in the Reformation are still rolling through us 500 years later, and the anxiety that drove Luther to his revolution still speaks loudly in our lives, only amplified to the nth degree.  All of our community attachments seem to be disappearing, and there is a strong connection to the fact that in the 20th century when we had such technological advances and empowerment of the individual, we also had more people killed in wars, revolutions, and genocide than in all the other centuries of recorded history combined.   I am not laying this development at Luther’s feet, because he would have never placed the individual above the community.  I am noting that the anxiety that drove his great insight that our sense of meaning and salvation and home are gifts rather than being earned, that anxiety has grown exponentially in relation to the empowerment of the individual and the diminishing and importance of community.

            So, I’m wondering if this is a time of another Re-formation, if someone(s) out there are already feeling and formulating a new way of balancing the importance of the individual with the necessity of authentic community.   We individuals cannot bear the weight of creating our own meaning.  Sooner or later we will turn to community to provide the meaning for our lives.  If we are fortunate, we will be drawn to a community grounded in authenticity, where the values of both individuals and communities are affirmed and valued.  Most of us, however, will be drawn to inauthentic communities where individuals are crushed, where the community is valued over all other entities, and where strong boundaries must be drawn against the “outsider” in order to strengthen the community.   I call this inauthentic community “tribalism,” but I’m hesitant to use this word because it has such strong resonance in many cultures.  For awhile, I tried calling it “clans,” until one of the participants in a workshop I was leading indicated that when they heard the word “clan,” they thought of the KKK.   I’ve stayed with “tribalism,” but I’ll be glad to hear from those who have a better term. 

            By tribalism, I mean the movement to join others in closing ranks and having strong boundaries to keep the “other” out, no matter who the “other” is.   We are seeing that movement now in the Trump election and presidency, as the tribe of Trump seeks to consolidate power and to hold on to it by seeking to make America great again, i.e. to make America white again.  Tribalism means that we must see the other as enemy, or at least a threat.  The anxiety that drove Luther to a great Reformation is now driving us all, and the white supporters of Trump are seeking to return to boundary-fixing, wall-building, “enemy” speech which they believe will end their anxiety and bring meaning to their lives.  There are other alternatives, and we are called to look for ways to answer our anxieties by building communities whose boundaries are fluid and who welcome others.  I’ll look at that possibility in another blog.

"DREAMING OF AMERICA"

 “DREAMING OF AMERICA”

While I’ve been taking care of Caroline in her recovery from back surgery, I’ve had some time to look through my files and papers.  The Presbyterian Historical Society has graciously asked me to archive my papers and files with them, and I give thanks for that.  Rather than send them 6,000 pounds of papers and sermons (or so it seems to me), I am sorting through stuff.  Tedious and time-consuming, but usually fun as I encounter sermons anew;  sometimes painful as I engage places where I was obviously wrong or insensitive.

We started celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday in 1985 at Oakhurst.  One of our former members, Wanda White, had been on Coretta Scott King’s staff, and she remembered the breakfasts that they had with and for the staff.  So, in 1985, we started having a Sunday MLK Breakfast on his birthday weekend, with speakers and/or youth, followed by a sermon on MLK.  That tradition continues at Oakhurst, so we thank Wanda White, Azzie Preston, Choquita McGriff and others for getting it started!

Looking through my files this weekend, I’ve begun engaging the many sermons that I was privileged to preach on Martin Luther King, Jr.  We covered many of his themes, and over our last decade at Oakhurst, we would pick particular speeches and sermons of his and focus on its context and its content.  In looking at all these again, I was reminded of how much MLK believed in the dream of America.  My favorite speech of Dr. King’s was “Drum Major for Justice,” but the one that influenced me the most was “I Have a Dream,” delivered by King most famously at the March on Washington in August, 1963.  It was the most influential in my life because it helped me to see a different vision of America, of Black people, and of myself.  I first listened to it by myself in my house on the day that King preached it in DC – I was deliberately by myself.  My mother was working, and I did not want any of my white friends to know that I was listening to it.  I had begun to feel some churnings in relation to the racism that I had been taught – and that I believed.  I had heard and had believed that King was just trying to make money off unsuspecting people.  I also believed that all those who agreed with him – Black and white alike – were fools.

Something drew me to him and to that day, and his speech was one of the motivating factors in my beginning to step out of the bounds of the racism which held me captive.  His eloquence, his ideas, and his emphasis on the American dream all touched me deeply.  And, with 250,000+ people there, it was hard to think that all of them were fools.  This speech was given the week before I began my senior year in high school, and although I did not make any real changes in my life in regard to race at that time, I did decide that there was more to the story than I had been told.  And, I did decide that I would make an effort to learn that different story.

Dr. King believed in the American dream when he gave that speech in 1963.  As he engaged the racism that is so deep in the American character, he began to lose hope in that dream, in the capacity of those classified as “white” to hear the truth, to receive the truth, and to begin to change our lives and our minds and our actions in relation to race.   His overall mood about the American dream - especially in regard to the Vietnam war and the racism that undergirded it – began to change.  His belief in the power of the arc of history to move towards justice began to be shaken.  By the time of his assassination by the very people he sought to love, he was deeply depressed and angered about the possibilities of America.  As the fine writer and theologian James Cone (a fellow Arkansan, I might note) put it so well in his book on Malcolm X and MLK,  King began with love and moved towards justice, while Malcolm began with justice and moved towards love.

That American dream – a dream of justice and equity that is also at the heart of American history – looks shaky again.  Though we have made significant progress since King’s speech, the power of racism remains deep and wide in American culture.  With Donald Trump’s rise on the back of white supremacy, we hear the voices of racism returning to a full-throated blast, and many fear that the next elections will be like those of the 1890’s:  a repudiation of past gains on justice and equity and a return to the repressive forces that have dogged us and shaped us in so many twisted ways.  

    In her 2016 book “Living into God’s Dream: Dismantling Racism in America,” my friend and co-author Catherine Meeks suggests that it is possible to recover the American dream that drove Dr. King and many others.  In order to find such recovery, however, we will need to do a lot of work for ourselves and for the world, and as Catherine so aptly puts it, we are all called to be just a little bit braver each day.  We may not be able to take giant steps each day – I sure couldn’t do it on that day in August, 1963 – but we can all take some baby steps each day.  Let us find those steps to take in our lives and seek to live into God’s dream for us.

"TODAY IS INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY"

 “TODAY IS INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY”

When I was growing up on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River Delta, I inhaled the racism that flowed through the physical and psychological air there.  That racism was one of the reasons that I always felt weird about Columbus Day.  Although Americans of Italian heritage had made it into the classification of “white” by my time, that classification had not quite made it down to Helena, Arkansas.  Those of us who were “truly white” (whatever that means) were sure that people of Italian heritage were somewhere in the middle between the exalted category of “white” and the degraded category of Black (most often described by the N-word).

The celebration of Columbus Day was strange to me as a boy – our segregated school system did not recognize many days as national holidays, and Columbus Day was one of the unrecognized ones.  I have since later learned that my feeling of weirdness about Columbus Day was correct – I was just feeling it for the wrong reasons.  As I learned more about American history, it turns out that Columbus Day was a main focus of the savaging of the land and the indigenous peoples of the land by those classified as “white.”  Now it is called “Indigenous Peoples Day,” as it should be.  Though Columbus did not “discover” America, his landing in a place that he thought was India would become the opening for huge exploitation of the native peoples and the land.  

    Caroline and I had our first pastorate in Norfolk, Virginia, and there we learned that American history actually began before the Civil War.  We visited Jamestown several times , and there I learned about the hospitality of the coalition of native tribes led by Chief Powhatan.  While not all native tribes welcomed the immigrants known as “whites,” many of them did.  Or at least they did until it became clear that those classified as “white” intended to do them harm and to take their land and resources.  Chief Powhatan noted this shift in his speech to Captain John Smith in 1609:

“Why should you take by force from us that which you can have by love?  

Why should you destroy us who have provided you with food?  What can

you get by war? And then you must consequently famish by wrongdoing

your friends…….I therefore exhort you to peaceable councils, and above all

I insist that the guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy and uneasiness,

be removed and sent away.”  

I am grateful to John Peacock and Ed Loring of Baltimore for calling my attention to this speech, and our hope is to print the full version in Hospitality Magazine early in 2022.  Chief Powhatan’s speech is part of a long litany of laments and anguish and anger directed at the rapacious appetites of those classified as “white.”  This approach to “non-white” peoples on the land continued for centuries.  Indeed, in a speech almost 250 years after Powhatan’s speech, Chief Seattle gave a similar one to the “white” governor of Washington in  1854:

            “Even the white man, whose God walked and talked with him, as friend to friend, is not exempt

 from the common destiny. We may be {brothers} after all. We shall see.    We will ponder your

 proposition, and when we have decided we will tell you. But should we accept it, I here and now make

 this the first condition: That we will not be denied the privilege, without molestation, of visiting at will

 the graves of our ancestors and friends. Every part of this country is sacred to my people. Every hill-side,

 every valley, every plain and grove has been hallowed by some fond memory or some sad experience of

 my tribe.”

In Chief Seattle’s response, we should note one of the great gifts of Indigenous people to all of us:  his sense that the land belongs to God, that we all are siblings, and especially that there is special connection between the earth and humanity.  As we swelter with global warming, as we worry about the rising sea levels, as we see the dramatic climate change brought on by the human greed noted by Chief Powhatan, let us remember that there is a different way of approaching life, a different way of approaching one another.  

On this Indigenous Peoples Day, let us remember the horrific suffering brought by those of European heritage, but even more strongly let us remember this gift that is still available to us from current Indigenous People, from current Native Americans – a vision of life that sees all of life as part of the same web.  Let us live by the love noted by Chief Powhatan and the connectedness lifted up by Chief Seattle.  It is a calling and a struggle that offers us life.  It is a struggle which we cannot avoid on Indigenous Peoples Day. Yet, it is the way to life.

"100 YEARS FOR OAKHURST PRESBYTERIAN - WOW!"

 “100 YEARS FOR OAKHURST PRESBYTERIAN – WOW!

On September 25, 1921, some 66 people came forward in a tent meeting at the corner of East lake and Second Avenue in Decatur, Georgia, to sign a charter to become members of the newly forming church, Oakhurst Presbyterian.  In those segregated, neo-slavery days, it formed as an all-white church, and it stayed that way for 50 years, almost losing its life to its belief in white supremacy.  When the city of Atlanta took housing from Black people in the 1960’s in order to build stadia for budding professional sports teams, the people moved east and south, many coming into the Oakhurst neighborhood.  As those of us classified as “white” usually do, we fled when Black people moved into the community.  Oakhurst Presbyterian was no exception – its membership dropped from 850 to 80 over a 15 year period. With a huge building, a huge mortgage, and rapidly dwindling membership, the Presbytery gave serious effort to closing the church or forcing it to merge with another congregation.  

The first Black member joined in 1970, and the ministers and members were dedicated to developing that diversity and to keeping the church open.  Dr. Lawrence Bottoms was the senior pastor in the mid-1970’s.  He was one of the first Black ministers in the PCUS denomination to be called as senior pastor of a majority white congregation, and while he was pastor at Oakhurst, he was elected as the first and only Black Moderator of the denomination.  His leadership and ministry enabled the church to survive, along with that of the Reverend Jim Andrews, who was stated clerk of the former PCUS denomination, and later first stated clerk of the re-united PCUSA.  The other pastors, Rev. Jack Morris and Rev. Bruce Gannaway, were also powerful leaders in helping Oakhurst to develop its diversity and to keep its doors open.

Caroline and I were blessed to join in that leadership in 1983 and to stay there until she retired in 2012, and I retired in 2017.  The Presbytery leadership had given us two years of funding to try to get Oakhurst stabilized. Through God’s power and with the hard work of the members and elders and friends of Oakhurst, it worked.  Presbytery continued to fund Oakhurst through 2006, when the membership and budget had grown to a size that would sustain the church.  At that time, the Session asked Presbytery to share the funds with other congregations and ministries.  

Through Christine Caliier’s initiative to contact Sylvester Monroe of Time Magazine, we began to receive national publicity, including a full-page article in Time in April, 1995, which included these words: “Oakhurst, which has a congregation that is roughly half Black and half white, is what diversity is all about:  people of different races coming together not in the mournful, candle-bearing aftermath of some urban riot or the artificially arranged precursor to some political photo op, but because they want to be together.”  That article led to many others in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and on NPR, CNN, NBC News, CBS Radio, and the Christian Science Monitor, and others.

There were many factors in the survival and the thriving of Oakhurst, but today I want to give thanks for Caroline’s powerful, visionary, and dedicated ministry at Oakhurst.  Her leadership enabled us to make tremendous progress in two vital areas:  community ministry and Christian education.  She was a whirlwind in getting the ministry and the building open to the community, motivating people to get out of their houses to come see what all the energy and work was at the church.  She also had the vision to see that if we were to get new members who would sustain the church over the long haul, we would have to have first-rate Christian education programs, especially for families with young children.  She went to work on that and brought it into being.  Her ministry paid off on so many levels for Oakhurst, even though she never received a full-time salary until the last year before her retirement.  On the Sunday of her retirement, Inez Giles arranged for a parade of 75 children and young adults, who had grown up at Oakhurst, under Caroline’s leadership.  They came into the sanctuary and brought her flowers– a powerful moment.

Don’t take my word for it – here’s what one of the books about Oakhurst had to say about her.  The quote is  taken from “We Are the Church Together: Cultural Diversity in Congregational Life,” written in 1996 by Chuck Foster and Ted Brelsford, based on a Candler at Emory study of three diverse churches in Atlanta:

“Caroline, Oakhurst’s associate pastor, greets us also.  Caroline is strikingly friendly in this setting.  For the most part, I have seen and heard of Caroline before primarily in her capacity as minister of outreach: challenging the status quo at school board meetings; taking commissioners to task for feeble and discriminating housing policies; advocating for the community health center, drug addicted children, illiterate adults, low income parents.  This morning she is not carrying those burdens.  She seems excited and buoyant.  She is delighted to meet my family and eager to make us comfortable.”

So, thank you, Caroline!  And, thanks to so many others who made Oakhurst possible and who continue to do so.  Under the leadership of Reverend Amantha Barbee, the congregation just began a celebration of its 100 year history and visioning of its future.  Check it out sometime!

"FROM TALIBAN TO TEXAS: THE PATRIARCHY STRIKES BACK"

 “FROM TALIBAN TO TEXAS:  THE PATRIARCHY STRIKES BACK”

        Caroline is recovering slowly but surely from her major back surgery two weeks ago on August 30.  Thanks to all of you who have prayed and called and written and e-mailed and provided food and respite care!  We’ll keep you posted – her next scheduled doc appointment is October 6 via telemed, and we hope that her progress remains steady enough that she will not need anything else.  After being blessed to have not been in the hospital overnight since 1982, we both have learned a lot in this process.

The headlines move fast in the 24 hour news cycle, so I am a little bit behind in this blog.  Yet this phenomenon of the patriarchy striking back never seems to go away or seem dated.  There are many examples of it in our world, but nowhere more clearly seen than in the events in Afghanistan and Texas, where the same kind of political mindsets seem to have won the day through violence and seizure of political power.  The Taliban truly are scary in their approach to women and to political dissent.  One can admire their staying power – at least 30 years of Soviet and American occupation, and yet here they are, back in power.  Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” seems appropriate reading for these days in Afghanistan, as it is for all days.

The fiasco in Texas over women’s rights and the need for safe and healthy abortions are another sign of the patriarchy striking back.  The refusal of SCOTUS to intervene in the Texas law that allows only 6 weeks for legal access to abortion is a portent of more bad things to come for all of us, especially women.  As many people have pointed out, many women do not even know that they are pregnant by six weeks into the pregnancy, so this is clearly designed to end legal access to abortion in Texas.  It is still hard for me to believe that the political party that preaches  individual rights and local governments is now preaching about total control over women and their bodies.  Texas has also picked up a Soviet style manner of enforcement – neighbors telling on (and suing) neighbors.  

One other disturbing aspect of SCOTUS’ refusal to intervene in the Texas law is that such a refusal basically endorses the idea of “nullification,” the doctrine that John C. Calhoun of South Carolina tried to use in order to preserve slavery.  Calhoun  called it out in the 1830’s in response to a federal taxation act, but everyone knew that lying underneath this argument was the struggle over the legality of slavery.  Calhoun claimed that states had the constitutional right to “nullify” federal laws that the state felt were unconstitutional, looking towards a time when the federal government might outlaw slavery.  President Andrew Jackson came down hard on Calhoun and this approach, but Jackson knew that this was no political foil for power.  The antipathy was so deep that Jackson prepared federal troops to enter South Carolina and defend the law if necessary.  Calhoun and his followers backed down on this one, but it prepared the groundwork for the next generation in South Carolina to start the Civil War 25 years later.

Texas used the doctrine of nullification to develop its law on making abortions illegal, and SCOTUS has seemed to endorse the doctrine in its response last week.  As awful as this law is for women’s rights, let none of us think that it will stop there.  In this approach, states can seek to “nullify” federal laws and federal rights in many areas, especially voting rights, as we see happening all around the country.  In striking back, the patriarchy has moved not only to nullify women and their rights but the rights of all of us.  The redistricting battles and decisions of this fall will tell us a lot about where we all will come out in this struggle, but whatever those decisions, voter turnout in 2022 will be crucial.  And, however the patriarchy and Soviet-style politicians choose to strike back next, let us find those Jedi warriors in ourselves and together so that we may find ways to assert the fundamental humanity and equal dignity of all human beings.

"SURGERY LOOMING - OPPORTUNITY AND ANXIETY"

 “SURGERY LOOMING – OPPORTUNITY AND ANXIETY”

Neither Caroline or I have had an overnight stay in the hospital since our daughter Susan was born in the early 80’s.  We are so grateful and blessed that our health has taken us this far without hospitalization.  We have both had outpatient surgeries that did not require an overnight stay, and we are grateful for the surgeons, nurses, support staff, and technology which enabled that.  

Caroline has been experiencing major back, leg, and hip pains since early last fall.  She has been consulting with Emory nurses and physicians and has received spinal steroid injections, which have provided temporary relief but have worn off quickly.  Her pain level has consistently remained at a 7 or 8 level for a long time, and with the advice of the surgeon, she is now scheduled to have major back surgery this Thursday, August 26 at the Emory Spine Hospital.  It had been scheduled for tomorrow, but we learned late this past week that a major surgical X-ray machine had broken down, so the surgery was moved to Thursday – we want the equipment to be working!  We’re hoping that the surge in Covid cases does not postpone the surgery again.  We should find out at her  pre-op this Tuesday.  If it is a go, we will give thanks and get ready for surgery, for the 2-3 day stay in the hospital, and the long recuperation at home.  As pastors, we have seen many people in the hospital, but this will be our first time in almost 40 years as a patient.

In this sense, we are turning a corner in our journey.  Caroline is longing for relief from the pain, so while she is dreading the surgery and recovery, she sees this as an opportunity for new possibilities with much less pain.  Since I am not experiencing the pain directly (though certainly indirectly) and given our different personalities, I am seeing this corner turn with anxiety.  Will she make it OK through the surgery?  Can I be an adequate caretaker for her over the six week recuperation period?  Please be lifting us both up in this turning the corner, especially Caroline who will be experiencing the roughest part of this turn.  We are grateful to many friends who will be assisting, and to North Decatur Presbyterian Church, which has set up a mealtrain for us.

We just had a great visit with both of our children, Susan and David (and granddaughter Zoe as a bonus!)  They were both reminding us of how grateful they are that the surgeons and surgical techniques are available for the procedure, which seems very likely to provide major pain relief for Caroline.  At this kind of corner turning, I am glad that in our rationed health care system, we are one of those who are given the care.  It reinforces our continued commitment to working for this kind of health care for everyone in our society.   

From my point of view, it is also turning a corner to acknowledge fully our aging and the limitations that come with that.  That is a hard awakening, but it is upon us. I am grateful to so many of you who have made that transition so well and who have  modeled it so well – with determination, with commitment to your own humanity and that of others, and with humor!  I am reminded of the closing lines of the Tennyson poem “Ulysses” that I learned in high school:  

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

I don’t know that Caroline and I moved earth and heaven, but we have been trailblazers in many ways.  And, though my heart doesn’t often feel heroic in these days, I do resonate with the poet’s image of continuing to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.   Please be lifting us up in this next big step in our journey.  I know that many of you have come through major surgery well, and your work and recovery and strength are inspiring to us.  In the days  of recovery, I’m not sure when my next weekly blog will be, but I will be posting updates on Caroline.  We give thanks for you and for your friendship and support and prayers.

"WORDS FROM GERMANY"

 “WORDS FROM GERMANY”

At the end of May, the Rev. Andreas Holzbauer asked me to lead one of his seminars for college students in Germany at Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg.  The class was on “White Christianity,” with an emphasis on the rise of white supremacy in USA under the guise of Christianity.  Due to the time change, I had to be ready to talk on Zoom and lead about 30 students at 7 AM EDT.  I was honored to be asked to do it, so I jumped right in!  Andreas had asked me to share my story for the first part of the seminar.

I shared the usual parts of my background.  I had been raised by a loving, single mother in the racist South in the 1940’s and 1950’s.  I learned and accepted racism and patriarchy and homophobia and militarism and other demonic forces.  I had been taught these forces by people who loved me and whom I loved, and because of that, I believed that they were true.

I also shared some of the leverage points where I had begun to change my mind and my heart on these forces.  One was my mother – though captured by these forces herself, she worked in subtle ways to shape me in another view, ways such as not allowing me to say the “N-word” or call Black people by their first names.  I recalled hearing MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech and thinking that there were other realities out there, realities that I had not yet allowed myself to encounter.  I lifted up my college experiences, and I talked about the most powerful experience that changed me:  working for a summer at a church in Brooklyn, where for the first time in my life I experienced Black people as human beings like me.  I also shared how my time as pastor at Oakhurst Presbyterian Church had challenged my continuing captivity to racism, and how it had deepened my understanding of myself and others and of how demonic forces like white supremacy can take us over.

I concluded by discussing the rising tide of white supremacy in the Obama and Trump years, and how such forces seem to be a permanent part of our life together.  When I opened up the seminar for questions, I noticed that all of those who asked questions (about half the students) spoke fluently in English, and I remembered my own provincialism – I speak only English.  The first question threw me for a loop – “Do you think that there will be a civil war in the United States again soon?”

That question had been hanging around the corners of my mind ever since the January 6 insurrection and the inauguration of Joe Biden as president.  It had persisted because Trump promoted the “Big Lie,” and so many people seemed to believe it.  Still, I was taken aback by the question from a German student, until I remembered that Germans have such a better memory than we do on how democracy is undermined.  I had started re-reading David Potter’s excellent book on the prelude to the Civil War called “Impending Crisis 1848-1861,” published in 1976.  In it he names many steps that led to the Civil War, and he emphasized 4 main ones:  the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the horrible SCOTUS decision of 1857 when Dred and Harriet Scott were deemed not to be human beings because of their racial classification, and John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859.

As I pondered the German student’s question, I tried to run through what similar steps might be in our time.  I came up with my four, and I invite you to think of your four.  My four steps are the election of Barack Obama as President in 2008 (triggering a huge surge in racism), the horrible SCOTUS decision in 2013 Shelby v. Holder which eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the election of Donald Trump as president in 2016, and the January 6 insurrection connected to the continuing “Big Lie.”  Added to these four steps is the Covid crisis which has put everyone on edge.

We live in crucial times – will there be a civil war in our time?  At this point, I do not think so, but we seem so divided and so volatile.  The US Census data released last week shows a drop in population for those classified as “white” for the first time since the census began in 1790.  That is not news, but it still gave me pause in these times.  Rather than celebrating this glorious vision of democracy and diversity in USA, I am afraid that my “white” siblings will see this as a time to act in order to preserve the “white” nature of the USA.  

Words from Germany are provocative at this time, and they leave me wondering. Yet they also make me more determined to work for justice and equity for all of us counted in the 2020 Census, while at the same time giving a loud “YES” to this growing, sprawling democracy, even as the forces of repression and oppression growl more loudly.  

"A MAN NAMED MOSES"

 “A MAN NAMED MOSES”

Amzie Moore was an African-American WWII veteran, living in Cleveland, Mississippi, in the late 1950’s.  After fighting for democracy in Europe, when he returned to his native Mississippi, he owned a gas station, but he was determined to work for democracy in his home state.  He began to work on getting African-Americans to vote, and it was a heavy slog.  He asked his friend, Ella Baker, part of SNCC, to find someone to send to him to help him work for voting rights in Mississippi.

In August, 1960, Ella Baker’s emissary knocked on Amzie Moore’s door.  Moore was astonished at the physical presence of the emissary, a young man named Bob Moses.  Moore later recalled that Moses was frail, wore glasses, and was soft-spoken.  Is this the man that Ella Baker sent?  How could he stand against the Pharoahs of Mississippi, with their armies of sheriffs and police and state patrols and white mobs?  Moore was not the first, nor the last, to be surprised by Bob Moses.  He and Moses would work together with others to change Mississippi and national history.

Bob Moses died last month at age 86, and though he had never sought it, he had reached legendary status as a civil rights organizer and later as the founder of the Algebra Project, which was designed to ensure that “minority” kids received the math skills and thinking that they needed.  He was born in Harlem in 1935, whose parents were a janitor and a domestic worker.  He was a brilliant student and got a scholarship in 1952 to almost-all-white Hamilton College.  There he was attracted to philosophy, math, and the Quaker philosophy of non-violence.  He later stated that he was convicted and inspired by the Black student sit-ins in 1960.  He was inspired that they were no longer being passive in an oppressive and racist system.  He decided to go into the belly of the beast to help secure human rights and voting rights.  And, as Nina Simone once sang, “Everybody knows bout Mississippi.”

He arrived there and began to organize people to seek to throw off the idea of the internalized oppression from the system of race, an oppression that told them that they were inferior and deserved inferior status.  He began organizing in McComb and was beaten up and shot at, because of these efforts.  He was also attracted to Sunflower County, where the poverty and fear were so great.  He organized there, and he ended up taking eighteen people to register to vote in the county seat of Ruleville.  One of those eighteen people was Fannie Lou Hamer.  They were not successful, but the fires were being lit.

After months of frustrating and dangerous activity, Moses made a fundamental decision, which would change the course of history and eventually end neo-slavery in the South.  Black friends had been beaten up and even killed for their efforts, with very little coverage from the media and no support from the federal government.  Moses decided to organize Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, with the express purpose of getting “white” young adults to come and work for justice.  He made the calculated decision that if white people (especially from the North) were beaten up in Mississippi, there would be a lot more coverage and attention paid to the Mississippi movement.  

In 1964, hundreds of white and Black volunteers streamed into Mississippi. And, tragically but not surprisingly, some were killed.  Two whites, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, and one Black man, James Chaney were killed together in Neshoba County.  During the search for the bodies of these three men, many other Black bodies were discovered.  Moses’ non-violent, costly strategy had worked.  One year later, the Voting Rights Act would be enacted into law – it would end neo-slavery in the South.

Moses was also a fierce opponent of the Vietnam War.  He applied for conscientious objector status.  One of the most non-violent men of all, his application was denied – I still can’t believe that I was granted a CO, but he was not.  He moved to Canada and later to Africa, returning to the USA after President Jimmy Carter granted amnesty  in 1977 to those who had left the country in opposition to the war.  

Then, he began his next monumental work:  the Algebra Project, designed to make certain that poor kids, especially poor kids of color, would get the math skills and critical thinking that they needed.  He began the project in 1982 with a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, and it is still going today.  Moses was a giant in so many ways, a non-violent but definitely not passive genius and organizer.  There is so much more to his life and witness, so if you don’t know his story, please look him up.  Like the Moses of the Hebrew Scriptures, he has shown us paths in the wilderness to find our home.

"FINDING EYES TO SEE"

 “FINDING EYES TO SEE” 

I wrote last week about the metaphor of “having eyes to see” and what a gift it is to be able to see realities and patterns that often are blocked from our vision.  As I think of this, the story of Saul (who became Paul) on the road to Damascus comes to my mind (and sight) in Acts 8.  As he goes to Damascus to arrest followers of Jesus (yes, he still has not been able to “see” the risen Jesus), the Lord’s Spirit strikes him, and he loses his literal (and spiritual) vision.   He is taken to Damascus, and there a trembling follower of  the risen Jesus comes to him (as instructed by the Spirit).  Ananias tells Paul who he is, then touches him, and the “scales fall from Paul’s eyes.”  He then becomes the most famous follower of the risen Jesus.

I always wonder about the Biblical metaphors of sight – not using it, losing it, and regaining it.  The Biblical approach is that most of us do not “have eyes to see,” that our perceptual apparatus is captured by the systems of domination and power that make us see others as less than human.  I certainly have been (and continue to be) captured by those systems, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, materialism, and many others.  But, I do have my eyes opened on occasion, and I am grateful for the intervention of God’s Spirit when that happens.  

As we think about how we begin to “have eyes to see,” it is important to remember a couple of points.  First, it is helpful to put ourselves into new places and people who can challenge us and widen our views of others and of ourselves.  In saying this, I am not speaking of the idea of everybody’s opinion being the same, that all truths are relative.  Rather I am speaking of being open to hearing a new and different story, a story that will likely widen our vision, but if it is truthful, it will be a story that challenges our point of view.  The acclaimed author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie made a famous Ted Talk on this – here is the link to it, if you have not seen it

https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en

Caroline any my kids will tell you that I am notoriously conservative in my approach to life.  Early on in our marriage, Caroline developed the “Three Day Rule,” especially in our ministry together.  When she would bring new ideas to me, I would almost always say “No”.  So, she told me one day that we were adopting the “Three Day Rule” in our marriage – when she brought a new idea or project for discussion, I could not say “No” for three days.  After I had thought about it for three days, then we could discuss it!  And, it largely worked.

The second point about finding eyes to see is the importance of seeking to be open to new voices.  My long tenure as pastor at Oakhurst Presbyterian taught me that -  the multicultural nature of the church kept calling me out of my provincial self with a single story.  That community asked me to see different worlds, different realities – and to see myself in a new way, to have eyes to see.  The community becomes such an important part of helping each of us and all of us to find eyes to see.  Without Ananias coming to Saul to heal him, we would not likely have the New Testament in the form that we have it, and it would have taken a long time for the “country” gospel of Jesus of Nazareth to make it to the cities.  Paul found eyes to see, and the urban church was born.  Let us all pray and be open to those kinds of interventions, so that we, too, may “have eyes to see.”

"HAVING EYES TO SEE"

“HAVING EYES TO SEE”

When David and Susan were young children, they loved to hunt for Easter eggs.  We had a HUGE egg hunt at Oakhurst after worship on Easter, and when we got home, we would again hide the eggs for the kids to try to find.  This process of hiding and finding could go on for two weeks after Easter (we learned quickly not to use hard-boiled eggs for this lengthy process).  One of the more memorable parts of this game was to hide the eggs “in plain sight,” where they were both visible and invisible.  Our favorite quote for this part of the game was: “You have to have eyes to see,” meaning that the egg was sort of visible in its hiddenness, but the seeker had to see it in just the right way in order to “see” it and find it.

I was reminded of this saying during the journey of my first cataract surgery this week.   I give thanks that it seems to have gone well, but I am even more aware now of what a gift is sight, both literal and figurative sight.  A day after the surgery, as the cloudiness in my right eye began to clear, I reminded myself of how much I have taken “seeing” for granted, even though I have worn glasses for almost 60 years.  I still have blurriness in reading, and that is frustrating, but I know that can be corrected.  Yet, still, having eyes to see is such a gift.

When I have been resting my eyes this week, I have listened to some cassette tapes (yes, I still have those and the player that accompanies them).  I recorded these tapes in the fall, 2003, when I read to my mother, who was staying with us while she underwent chemotherapy for lung cancer.  She had macular degeneration and could no longer see well enough to read. She loved to read, and this loss of sight was a terrible affliction for her.   She was a big fan of the writing of Marcus Borg, and his latest book on the Bible had just been published.  So, I got the book and read it to her.  As usual, she interrupted me often to ask questions and make comments.  And, I’m so glad that she did, because I can still hear her voice, 17 years after her death.  

    The Bible frequently uses this image of having eyes to see, usually in a negative sense, meaning that those of us captured by the powers and principalities have eyes but cannot see.  In his book, Borg uses this image of “having eyes to see,” meaning having (or being given) the ability to “see” things or structures that had previously been hidden from us.  Mother and I talked about my having observed Black people as a boy, but I had never “seen” them as human beings until my eyes had been opened through several conversion experiences.  She also noted that she had never really seen LGBTQ+ people as people until she discovered that one of our beloved family relatives was gay.  Then her eyes were opened.  We noted in our discussion that this is the dynamic that Jesus and the prophets used when they talked of people who are “stubborn” and refuse to see, even though they have eyes to see.  I’ve thought of this discussion often in these days of Covid denial and anti-vaxxers, as something that seems so simple has become so complicated and so deadly.

As I think about this metaphor of “seeing” this week, I am noting that it is both literal and figurative.  My literal, physical vision has been altered this week by my cataract surgery, and in just this small way, I give thanks for the gift of sight.  I also think of people like my mother and many others who lost most or all of their sight.  A terrible, terrible thing to experience.  Yet, I’m also reminded of the many people who have survived and even thrived with limited or no ability to physically see.  

Listening to the tapes of Mother and me this week recalled the stories of Jesus’ healing many blind people, both literally and figuratively.  Indeed, in Luke 4, in his first sermon at his home synagogue in Nazareth he told of his mission, which included “bringing sight to the blind.”  Those stories are reminders of the depth of our captivity to many powers which seek to blind us and to bind out hearts to death and domination.  They also remind us that conversions, including cataract surgeries, are available, if “we have eyes to see.”  And, of course, that is the major question for our time, and for every time:  “How do we find eyes to see?”  More on that question next time.

 

"IDA WELLS IS IN THE HOUSE!!!"

 “IDA WELLS IS IN THE HOUSE!”

This has been quite a time for Ida B. Wells.  Catherine Meeks and I wrote a book on her in 2019 “Passionate for Justice,” which the Georgia Center for the Book named as one of ten books that all Georgians should read.  Last year Ida Wells was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for her pioneering work in investigative journalism.  Michelle Duster, her great-granddaughter, published a fine book on her entitled “Ida B: The Queen.”  On June 30, a monument, sculpted by Richard Hunt, was dedicated to her in her adopted hometown of Chicago.  The powerful Nikole-Hannah Jones spoke at that occasion, along with the mayor of Chicago and Michelle and her brother Donald, who were the driving forces in getting the funds for the monument.

Wells’ 159th birthday is this Thursday, July 16, and on that occasion, a park and monument will be dedicated in her honor in Memphis, Tennessee, the town which ran her out in the early 1890's.  Wells had just completed and published a long and definitive study of the avalanche of lynchings that were happening all over USA, but mainly in the South.  In her study she noted that the cause of this racial terror was not the sexual predation of Black men on white women, as was usually stated by the White people who were doing the killings.  The real reason, Wells concluded, was the White desire to control Black people and to return them to slavery as much as possible.  The white response was to firebomb her newspaper offices in Memphis and to threaten to lynch her if she returned to Memphis.  She was an exile first in New York and then in Chicago.  She would not return South until 31 years later in 1921 to investigate the massacre of more than 230 Black people in my home county, Phillips County, Arkansas.

She came down to Arkansas in disguise in order to investigate the Phillips County killings that had occurred in 1919.  Black men had defended themselves and their families and their neighbors, killing some white marauders in their efforts.  Twelve Black men had been convicted of these killings and were given the death penalty.  Wells helped the NAACP pick up the case, and a superhero African-American lawyer named Scipio Jones took their case.  The twelve men were waiting on death row to be executed when Wells came to see them, posing as an aunt of one of the men.  She found them dispirited and forlorn, and she decided to speak prophetic words to them in her approach to comforting them in the midst of this huge injustice that had been visited upon them.

Here’s what she said to them:  “I have been listening to you for nearly two hours.  You have talked and sung and prayed about dying, forgiving your enemies, and of feeling sure that you are going to be received in the New Jerusalem because your God knows that you are innocent of the offense for which you expect to be electrocuted.  But why don’t you pray to live and ask to be freed?  The God you serve is the God of Paul and Silas who opened their prison gates, and if you have all the faith you say you have, you ought to believe that he {sic} will open your prison doors too.  If you do believe that, let all of your songs and prayers hereafter be songs of faith and hope that God will set you free; that the judges who have to pass on your cases will be given the wisdom and courage to decide in your behalf.  That’s all I’ve got to say.”

As usual, Wells did more than talk about such freedom.  She worked with Attorney Jones and the NAACP to publicize the cases and to make sure that their case was heard on the Supreme Court level.  Those efforts paid off in 1923 when SCOTUS ruled 6-3 in Moore v. Dempsey that the twelve Black men had not been given a fair trial.  Their convictions were overturned, and eventually all twelve were freed from prison.  Wells had been a lever for another mighty work, using her courage and skill and tenacity to help pull these men out of the jaws of the racist death penalty.

Wells did her work during horrible years in American history, when white Southerners were using all their powers of legislation and violence to move Black people back into neo-slavery.  She fought a powerful battle against the tidal wave of racism that swept across the country.  Her life is an example to all of us of how to do this and of the focus that is needed for such a battle.  Though we are not in the 1890’s when neo-slavery was established, we are in a time when the forces of white supremacy are re-gathering their strength.  It is up to us to respond to this rising force with a sense of equality and strength and vision, as Ida Wells did.

Few of us are Ida B. Wells, but as my colleague and friend Catherine Meeks always says about Wells:  “She was a human being just like the rest of us.  She was an ordinary person who accomplished extraordinary things.  She was able to do this because she  decided to try to be brave, and through that bravery and her tenacity, she was a powerful witness.”  As we think about her birthday this week, let us give thanks for her ordinariness.  Let us give thanks that she decided to be just a little braver one day, and in so doing, she became a light for the rest of us who were coming and who are coming.  As she noted so well, we are the ones we have been waiting for.

"FROM JUNETEENTH TO JULY 4"

 “FROM JUNETEENTH TO JULY 4”

Last week I wrote of two powerful forces in American history that are at odds with one another:  the idea of equality, and the idea of slavery/white supremacy.  These two ideas are not compatible with one another, but they continue to co-exist in the history of the USA.  The tradition is that Frederick Douglass never spoke about equality and justice on July 4, because he saw July 4 celebrations as a mockery as long as people were enslaved in America.  In his famous and powerful speech about Independence Day in 1852 in Rochester, he said these words:  “What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer:  a day that reveals to {him}, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which {he} is the constant victim.”

Douglass finds the essence of the struggle in the tension between the idea of equality and the idea of slavery/white supremacy.  How can we celebrate the idea of equality while still holding onto the idea of white supremacy?  Douglass and others knew well how we do it:  we deepen and refine the idea of race and racism.  How could we believe in equality and still hold people in enslavement?  We developed the idea of “white supremacy,” the idea that people of color, and especially those classified as “Black,” were not full human beings in the same way that those classified as “white” were.  The idea of equality, then, does not apply to those classified as “non-white.”  Jefferson and most of the other “founding” fathers did not believe that those classified as “Black” and “Native Americans” were equal human beings.  It was this belief that led them to hold human beings as slaves and to kill and remove Indigenous people from their lands.

After the Civil War, this idea was revived and deepened even further in order to repudiate the outcome of the Civil War (and to deny the value of the 700,000+ lives lost in that War) and in order to re-establish “slavery by another name,” to use Doug Blackmon’s powerful phrase.  This idea of white supremacy retains its power today, as we have seen in the rise of the Party of Trump, dedicated to the idea that white males should be in charge of everything, not because we are greedy and insecure, but because God and nature made us that way.  Those of us classified as “white” are watching the demographics, and we are aware that the time of plurality is not far away in the future, the time when there will be no majority racial classification in USA.  We are willing to support a despot like Trump because he is telling us what we want to hear:  those classified as “white” should always be in charge, especially white males.  This fear of the demographics is driving the Big Lie of the stolen 2020 election, voter suppression acts, censorship on “critical race theory,” and anti-immigrant work.  

We have had several tipping points in our history in this struggle between equality and white supremacy.  We saw it in the rise of the abolitionist movement in the 1840’s, in the tumultuous decade of the 1850’s that led to the Civil War.  We saw it in Reconstruction when the idea of equality seemed to be gaining strength.  We saw it in the development of the counter-revolution which pushed the Big Lie of the “Lost Cause,” an idea that pummeled the idea of equality.  We saw it in the 1890’s, when political power combined with violence to re-establish the priority of white supremacy.  We saw it in the 1940’s and 1950’s, when Black veterans returning from World War II were determined not to go back to neo-slavery.  We saw it in the 1960’s, as equality once again gained strength, and slavery was finally ended in 1965 with the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

Since the Supreme Court eviscerated that Voting Rights Act in in its Shelby v. Holder decision in 2013, we are once again back in that same struggle between equality and white supremacy.  Last week we noted how powerful is the idea of equality, how many different groups - who were intended to be subservient by the system of race developed in USA – have heard and believed that the idea of equality applied to them also.  We are now at that tipping point again in the struggle between equality and white supremacy.  As we celebrate both Juneteenth and July 4, let us remember the tension between them.  Indeed, in the years to come, let us set aside the two weeks between these two national holidays to be in dialogue on the struggle between these two powerful ideas in American history.  May the profound vision of equality – a vision so frightening that its very authors immediately repudiated it in American history – may this vision go to our own core as individuals and as a nation, and may we live out its creed for all of us.