"ALL SAINTS DAY: MARY STROUPE, BERNICE HIGGINS, JAMES JEFFERSON"

 “ALL SAINTS DAY – MARY STROUPE, BERNICE HIGGINS, JAMES JEFFERSON”

We are at the time of the year when we remember the dead – the saints, the sinners, people who have had profound effects on our lives, as individuals and as communities.  We have two days in a row for engaging the dead – Halloween (derived from All Hallows Eve) and All Saints Day on November 1, also known as

“Day of the Dead” or “Dia de los Muertos” in Mexico.  The Mexican approach is much communicative and celebrative, whereas ours is often more horrifying and puzzling.  As the old saying put it, “The Victorians repressed sex and were obsessed with death, whereas we in the modern world repress death and obsess with sex.”

Whatever your approach to these subjects, I hope that you will take time this week to give thanks for those who have nurtured you, who have nurtured your family, and have nurtured your community.  Make a list and give thanks for them, and if you are not already doing it, seek to live those attributes that you admire in them.  I’m giving a sample list for me today.  The first saint in today’s list (and in every list that I will ever produce) is my mother Mary Armour Stroupe.  I’m so grateful that Wipf and Stock has agreed to publish my memoir on her and me – it should come out sometime next year.  It’s tentative title is “Mother and Me: A Southern Story of Agency, Race and Gender.”

    Mother was born in Byhalia, Mississippi in 1919 and was valedictorian of her high school class.  She had hoped to go to college, but her family had no money for it, especially in the grips of the Great Depression.  She scraped up enough money to go to beauty school (now cosmetology school), and she worked in that profession until her retirement in 1986.  During the last 10 years of her work life, she was the lead instructor at the school of cosmetology at Phillips County Community College.  There she worked with many women – and a few men – seeking to become cosmetologists, helping them to navigate that journey but also assisting them on managing their life journeys.  But, for me, her sainthood lies in her raising me in a patriarchal world as a single, working mother after my father abandoned her and me.  She dedicated so much energy and time and love to me, and I will ever be grateful to her for all the gifts that she shared with me.  She died on October 28, 2004.

The second person on my list is the other woman who helped to raise me in the patriarchal world, my great-great aunt, Bernice Higgins.  My mother and I moved in with her in her smaller house in Helena, Arkansas, in 1947, when I was a year old.  “Gran,” as I called her, was my great-grandmother’s sister, and she was a formidable force in our lives until her death in 1959.  For all intents and purposes, she was a grandmother for me. She was born in 1880 in Cayce, Mississippi, and she often regaled me with tales from her mother, Mrs. Brown, about Civil War days.  She cooked supper for us on weeknights, and she was there at home for me when I came home from school.  She was a conservative Presbyterian and sometimes refused to take the Lord’s Supper (served 4 times a year in my childhood church) because she did not think that she had lived a life worthy of the sacrament that quarter.  I was sitting with her at the breakfast table when she died of a thundering heart attack on May 20 at age 79.  

The third saint for me this year is an African-American Oakhurst member named James Jefferson, part of the foundational Jefferson family at Oakhurst – last year I featured his sister Azzie Preston.  “Jeff,” as he was called, was a retired Air Force veteran and worked at Lockheed.  Though he was conservative, he was a great leader for us as we sought to make the transition from a white church with Black members to a multicultural church, where power was shared.  He was elected as an elder on the Session (our governing body), and he helped us to navigate tricky waters.  We brought a recommendation to the Session in 1989 that we change the color of the stained glass Jesus from white to Black, and he was a strong supporter of that. We brought a recommendation in 1990 to the Session about openly welcoming LGBTQ+ members, and I was afraid of a difficult discussion ahead because the culture had not yet changed on this issue.  Jeff spoke up first and said: “I just think that we should welcome anyone whom God sends to us, no matter what their classification is.  We’re in the saving business, not the judging business.”  His statement ended the discussion, and we began to advertise that we welcomed all people, including LGBTQ+ people.  Unfortunately for all of us, Jeff died of a rare blood disease in 1991, but he left his mark, including the fact the Fellowship Hall at Oakhurst is named after him.  

So, it’s All Saints Week, All Hallows Eve, and Day of the Dead.  Find time this week to name and remember those saints who have helped to give you life and vision.  

"CONGRESS AND THE WILDCAT GROWL"

 “CONGRESS AND THE WILDCAT GROWL”

In 1995 Georgian Newt Gingrich was elected Speaker of the House after the Republicans had taken control of the House in the 1994 elections for the first time in 40 years.  He drove the second nail in the coffin of American democracy, the first having been driven by the Reagan Revolution in 1980.  Gingrich had been a back-bencher in Congress, but he came to understand the power of the media (CSPAN) and the growing anxiety and anger of white men who felt that they were being replaced and being pushed out.  Gingrich was not so much interested in governing as he was in airing white grievances.  He lasted as Speaker only 3 years and was replaced by his own party in 1998.

Gingrich’s pattern of complaining and whining became a part of American culture, and Fox News and other news outlets latched onto that method – there was money to be made and votes to be had in this approach.  That led to the third nail in the coffin of American democracy – the election of the ultimate grifter, Donald Trump, to be President in 2016.  The two-term presidency of Barack Obama and the possibility of Hilary Clinton as the first woman president sent chills into the hearts of white men, especially white supremacists.  The election of Trump by a slim Electoral College margin (though he lost the popular vote) led us into the wilderness in which we now find ourselves.  Trump, like Gingrich, had no interest in governing or in the common good of the country – as he has continued to demonstrate, he only cares about himself and the grift that has been his approach to all of his life.  

The current chaos in the Republicans seeking to find a new Speaker is directly related to this whining and complaining culture established by white men, who feel like our entitlement is slipping. Kevin McCarthy was part of this, and it is a sad reflection of where we are, that now we wish that McCarthy were still the Speaker.   As his record indicates, Jim Jordan was not interested in governing, just dictating, modeled by his hero and mentor Donald Trump.  I don’t know if Tom Emmer will be able to gather the votes this week or not to become Speaker, but he at least knows something about governance.  Perhaps the Republicans will see a light and will work with Democrats to craft a somewhat coalition government, but in our age of juvenile white males running around proclaiming about blowing everything up, that does not seem likely.  All we seem to be getting is the “wildcat growl,” as Bob Dylan put it in his song “All Along the Watchtower.”

All of this makes 2024 seem like a really scary year.  Joe Biden has been a good President, but his age is showing, and his ego is showing – he can’t turn loose of the power to a younger leader.  Biden’s fragility and vulnerability gives life to Donald Trump’s bid for election for another term as President.  Again, perhaps the Republicans will come to their senses and nominate someone who is not so thoroughly corrupt and narcissistic as Trump.  At this juncture, that does not seem likely, though I do find some solace in Sidney Powell and Ken Chesebro pleading out here in Georgia rather than going to trial next week.  Perhaps Trump’s criminal liabilities will bring him down after all – that wildcat is growling too.

As many have said, if Trump is elected president again, we can kiss democracy good-bye, because he intends to be dictator this time.  Our white supremacist culture has coupled our complaints and fears with a narcissist who intends to rule his own way, not to govern in a democracy.  I indicated a few years ago that the 2020 election was crucial, and it was.  Now the 2024 election seems even more crucial.  We all have work to do.  Yet, I can’t let the moment pass without sharing the lyrics of that powerful Dylan song, written in 1968, that includes the wildcat growl.  It is entitled “All Along the Watchtower,” and it was given a great cover by Jimi Hendrix, but for me, no one gets the essence of this song like Bob Dylan – go listen to it.  

“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief

“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief

Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth

None of them along the line know what any of it is worth”

“No reason to get excited,” the thief, he kindly spoke

“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke

But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate

So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late”

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view

While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl

Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl

"THOUGHTS ON THE MIDDLE EAST"

 “THOUGHTS ON THE MIDDLE EAST”

In the spring of 1967, my college friend Sidney Cassell and I decided to  take an extended summer tour of the West.  He was from Tunica, Mississippi, and he had attended the University of Michigan, but his mom got seriously ill, so he transferred to Southwestern (now Rhodes) for a year.  During that time, we became friends, and I learned that his was the only Jewish family in Tunica.  His parents ran the Tunica Motel.  On June 5, the Six Day War broke out between Israel and Egypt, eventually drawing Jordan and Syria into it.

    We had planned to leave for our trip on June 6, but on June 5, Sidney called me from Tunica to tell me that he might not make the trip because he might have to go to Israel to defend what he called “the homeland.”  We delayed our trip for a week to see what would happen, and as it is called, it only took 6 days for Israel to defend itself and secure its borders.  I did not realize then that this was a second “Nakba,” or “catastrophe” for the Palestinians (the first being in 1948) when they were forcibly removed to form the state of Israel).

    We then went on our trip out West for two months. I was impressed with Sidney’s dedication to Israel – it was at a level that I did not have for my country.  Ironically enough, I would have to make the same decision 3 years later during the Vietnam War, and I became a conscientious objector and did two years alternative service.

    Because of my enlightening friendship with Sidney and because of the Jewish connections that my Mother and I had in my hometown, I have always leaned towards Israel in any Mid East conflicts.  But, over the last few years, Israel has gradually turned into an apartheid nation, and that has given me great pause.  Having grown up in a land where the original residents were either killed or dispossessed of their land by my ancestors and then that same land was worked by people who were enslaved, I have trouble keeping the same level of support for Israel, which dispossessed the original Palestine peoples without compensation.  The “Palestinian problem” continues to plague the nation of Israel, and it led directly to the horrible and brutal attack on Israel by Hamas on October 8.  Here are a few of my thoughts, as I try to take in the depth of the attack and Israel’s response to it, which is ongoing as I write this blog.

    First, Israel became a modern  nation in 1948 in some of its original territories as a result of lobbying by Jewish leaders, but most of all because of the horrors of the Holocaust, horrors which were a culmination of centuries of mostly Christian oppression and brutal policies toward Jewish people.  The problem is that there were people already living in those lands, and for the most part they were removed.  They have become known as the Palestinians.  Since Israel took their lands 75 years ago, no adequate provision has been made for the Palestinians.  They have been squeezed into the West Bank and into Gaza, much like the Native Americans were squeezed into “reservations” in our country.  There does not seem to be a viable solution to this issue.  The “two state” theory has long since been dropped, and Israel continues its repressive policies towards the Palestinians – Jewish settlers continue to move into Palestinian areas.  

    Even those who support the Palestinians were shocked by the brutal, terroristic nature of the attacks by Hamas on October 8.  It is hard to justify the killing of so many civilians at a music concert, and nothing justifies the killing of babies.  Yet we must also recognize the level of desperation and rage that was at the heart of those attacks.  That level does not come because the attackers are savages, as the mainstream Western media is calling them.  That level is reached because of a deep and continued wounding of the human heart, a wounding so deep that it makes the attacker willing and able to do inhuman acts.

    I am not justifying the Hamas attacks, but I put their rage on the same level that Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, and John Brown had in their attacks on the institution of slavery.   Until there is adequate compensation and justice for the Palestinians, these attacks will continue to rise.  At least two things must happen in the Middle East for any semblance of peace with justice to arise.  First, the nation of Israel must be recognized as a legitimate state – many Palestinians still see Israel as an occupying force over these 75 years.  Those who attacked Israel on October 7 did it as a liberating act against the occupying oppressor.  That can no longer be the rubric of the Middle East.

    Second, justice must be found and established for the Palestinian people.  I don’t know what that would look like at this point, but Israel and the West must make a strong commitment to it.  I have not seen such commitment from the leadership of Israel since Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in November, 1995.  Yet, that commitment must be renewed, or the war that is now playing out in Israel and Gaza will be repeated many times.  

There is deep hatred, anxiety, and fear now in the Middle East.  May God raise up the justice and peacemakers, and may we all listen to them.  If not, hell awaits us.

"INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY"

 “INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY”

{The following are short excerpts from a much longer work of poetry and prose by Layli Long Soldier from her book “Whereas,” drawing on the official US government language of the Resolution and Apology.  She is a recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Native Artist Fellowship, and a Whiting Award.  She lives in Santa Fe.  I was introduced to her work by one of her poems in worship at North Decatur Presbyterian Church.  As I write this, Israel and Hamas are at war, and I am thinking of the many parallels of the white treatment of Native Americans and the Israeli treatment of the Palestinian people.}

“WHEREAS” BY LAYLI LONG SOLDIER

“On Saturday, December 19, 2009, US President Barack Obama signed the Congressional Resolution of Apology to Native Americans.  No tribal leaders or official representatives were invited to witness and revive the Apology on behalf of tribal nations.  President Obama never read the Apology aloud, publicly – although, for the record, Senator Sam Brownback five months later read the Apology to a gathering of five tribal leaders, though there are more than 560 federally recognized tribes In the US.  The Apology was then folded into a larger, unrelated piece of legislation called the 2010 Defense Appropriations Act.

My response is directed to the Apology’s delivery, as well as the language, crafting, and arrangement of the written document.  I am a citizen of the United States and an enrolled member of Oglala Sioux Tribe, meaning I am a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation – and in this dual citizenship, I must work, I must eat, I must art, I must mother, I must friend, I must listen, I must observe, constantly, I must live. 

Whereas at four years old I read the first chapter of the Bible aloud I was not a Christian

Whereas my hair unbraided ran the length of my spine I sometimes sat on it

Whereas at the table my legs dangled I could not balance peas on my fork

Whereas I used my fingers carefully I pushed the bright green onto silver tines

Whereas you eat like a pig the lady said setting my plate on the floor

Whereas she instructed me to finish on my hands and knees she took another bite

Whereas I watched folds of pale curtains inhale and exhale a summer dance

Whereas in the breath of the afternoon room each tick of the clock

Whereas I rose and placed my eyes and tongue on a shelf above the table first

Whereas I kneeled to my plate I kneeled to the greatest questions

Whereas that moment I knew who I was whereas the moment before I swallowed”

"PEACEMAKING"

 “PEACEMAKING”

Yesterday was World Communion Sunday, and in the Presbyterian Church, it is also Peacemaking Sunday.  Earlier this year the PCUSA  asked me to write a short meditation on peace as part of a series for the month of September.  I wrote mine on II Corinthians 5:16-21, and here is that Scripture passage and my meditation on it.

II COR 5:16-21

“16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the human point of view. Even though we once regarded Christ in this way, we regard him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, they are  a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to God’s self and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to God’s self, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making an appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake God made one to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Christ we might become the righteousness of God.”

The Biblical idea of peace points us toward a connected community of humanity, centered on inclusion, justice, and equity.  Our Scripture for today reminds us that developing such a community is very difficult.

Paul begins by saying that he previously saw Jesus (and everyone else) from a human point of view, using the categories of the fallen world to judge others.

I grew up with this human point of view – racism, sexism, materialism, militarism, nationalism – I judged others to be inferior to the white, straight guy that I took myself to be. It was deeply imbedded in me because people who loved me and whom I loved, taught me this perspective, this “human point of view.” To use the biblical image, I was captured by these categories, and I had no idea how to find the way to peace.

But, as Paul puts it so well in this letter to the Corinthians, Jesus was coming for me, not the white Jesus whom I had been worshipping, but a new and surprising Jesus whom I had trouble believing.  Jesus sent prophets to me again and again, and I began to shift my perspective to view Jesus and everyone else from God’s point of view, not from my human contextual point of view.  These ”fallen categories of the world” are still deeply imbedded in me, and I am wrestling with them all the time, but I know that Jesus continues to come for me and for all of us in our captivity.

PLAN OF ACTION – We are asked to become ambassadors of reconciliation – to recognize our captivity, to trust others to point out our continuing captivity, to begin to trust ourselves to become those prophetic voices, to be those ambassadors of Christ to others, seeking to build a community built on inclusion, justice and equity.  These are the building blocks that lead us all on a path of peace.

PRAYER

     O God, thank You for calling us to walk on a path of peace.  Send us Your Spirit so that we may comprehend the joy of seeking to see others as You see them.  Strengthen us so that we may persevere in the times when we are asked to be prophetic voices. Help us to hear that we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.  We pray in Your holy name. Amen.  

BRIEF BIO

 I was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War 1970-72. I am a retired Presbyterian minister, having been pastor of Oakhurst Presbyterian in Georgia for 33+ years.  My spouse, the Rev. Caroline Leach, and I were recipients of the Peacemaking Award from Greater Atlanta Presbytery.  We also received the Church Women United Human Rights Award. I am the author of 5 books, including the award winning “Passionate for Justice: Ida B. Wells as Prophet for Our Time.”