"SHE MADE A WAY"

 “SHE MADE A WAY”

The advance copy of the book has arrived – yay!  “She Made A Way:  Mother and Me in a Deep South World” is published by Wipf and Stock (they did my book of sermons “Deeper Waters” in 2017), and it should be available now at their website (orders@wipfandstock.com), bookshop.org, Amazon, Thriftbooks , or from me.  Let me know if you want to get one from me.  And, of course, I’ll be glad to do a book-signing/talk with any group of which you are a member.  Let me know, and we’ll line something up.

The liner notes from Wipf and Stock have this to say:

“She Made a Way is a memoir of survival and growth under the twin threats of white supremacy and male dominance. It is an intimate story of perseverance and coming of age: how a single, white working mother and her only son made their way in the patriarchal and racist world of postwar Helena, Arkansas, a Mississippi river town. It is also a story of transformation: a lifetime of journeying together out of captivity to white supremacy and toward the deeper truth of compassion and liberation. In an era saturated with forces of racism and sexism, we find here a mother and son struggling in their relationship to each other and to America, maintaining love while living toward a new vision of themselves and the world.”

My friend John Blake (if you haven’t read his memoir “More Than I Imagined” about his relationship to his mother, please do so!) wrote the Foreword to “She Made a Way.”  Here’s part of that Foreword:

“I know this story so well because I was one of those journalists who

stopped by Oakhurst to write about Nibs and the church. But unlike the

other journalists, I stayed and joined Oakhurst. And what I discovered

was that the story behind Nibs’ conversion on race was no racial kum-

baya story. It was much richer, confounding, and ultimately more inspir-

ing than any brief news report could capture. And today I would make

another argument: At a time when the United States is more divided than

arguably anytime since the Civil War, Nibs’ story is more urgent than

ever.

Nibs is one of the most insightful and thought-provoking com-

mentators on race and religion in contemporary America. His range of

experience is virtually unmatched by any of the leaders that the media

traditionally go to for commentary on race and faith. He has a visceral

understanding of how racism warps the souls of White America, and

the psychological games many play to deny their complicity because he’s

played those games himself. As Nibs once told me, he grew up in the

“belly of the beast”—the segregated world of Helena, Arkansas where

White supremacy was widely considered to be normal and ordained by

God. ‘I know this stuff; it’s in my veins,’ he once told me.”

I had wanted for so long to write this book, mainly to express my gratitude to my mother for raising me as a single, working mom in the midst of a patriarchal and racist time.  Yet, in doing so, I discovered a key nugget in my work on combatting racism – most of us who are captured by its power learned it not from mean and nasty folks, but from good folks, people like my mother who loved me, and whom I loved.  I learned it from my church and my school system.  To use St. Paul’s provocative metaphor from Ephesians 2, we breathed it in, as part of the power of the prince of the air.  Because we learned racism through loving, it makes it so much harder to engage and to find liberation, because we risk not only our loving relationships, but we also risk changing our view of ourselves, our history, and our way of living.  

This book “She Made A Way: Mother and Me in a Deep South World” is the story of one constellation of that journey of loving, of captivity, of seeking liberation in complex and essential work.  It is multiplied many times in America, and I urge you to get a copy of this book, read it and let’s talk!

"50 YEARS!"

 “50 YEARS!”

Caroline and I were married 50 years ago on May 18, 1974, in Ed Loring’s back yard in Decatur, with Ed and Caroline’s long-time friend Sandy Winter officiating.  It was an outdoor “hippie” wedding, though we did not think of it in those terms then.  We asked people not to bring gifts but rather to make donations to four non-profits that we designated – if they did not like any of those, we asked them to make a donation to a non-profit of their choice.  We had a potluck, covered dish lunch, and many people brought dishes and Corningware.  They did not clean them up and take them home with them.  We wondered what was going on – how would we get all those dishes back to the owners?  Then it dawned on us – they had left them as “unofficial” wedding gifts for us.  We are still using some of those Corningware dishes to this day.

Caroline did not want to be a June bride, so we got married in May in the middle of my final exams at Columbia Seminary.  We only had a couple of days for a honeymoon, and we are ever grateful to Erskine and Nan Clarke for allowing us to use their apartment for it in Montreat.  During that time, we went in to Asheville (long before it became so hip), and we toured Thomas Wolfe’s home there.  As we were approaching the Wolfe home, we saw a man who had huge hands and who looked like a Wolfe.  He introduced himself, and it was Fred Wolfe, brother of Thomas Wolfe.  We had a great and somewhat awed conversation.

Caroline and I met at Robin and Linda Williams’ wedding in Nashville in June, 1972, and I was smitten with her.  I moved to Decatur in the summer of 1973 to resume my seminary career at Columbia, after serving as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War.  Spurred on by Pat Loring (now Pat Hiott-Mason) who played matchmaker for us, we started dating that summer.  Caroline had already been ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1973, to serve as a campus minister at Georgia Tech, with an emphasis on the growing number of women students there.  I had one more semester to complete my seminary career, and we began to look for churches where we could serve as a clergy couple.  There had never been a clergy couple serving in the same church in the former Southern Presbyterian Church, so we started a pioneering ministry there.  Indeed, our pioneering and partnering ministry will be the subject of our next book.

Though the denomination’s leadership discouraged us –(“you’ll never find a call – just let Nibs find a church, Caroline can find something in the area”), we were blessed to find a church in Norfolk, Virginia that was looking for a woman pastor to minister to Navy families in a huge housing complex in Norfolk.  They were willing to add me on as part of a clergy couple, and we became co-pastors of St. Columba Presbyterian Church in Norfolk.  The ministry that we established there became a powerful one, even with only 12 official members.  We were blessed to receive the Presbyterian Women’s Birthday Offering in 1978 to establish St. Columba Ministries, which still is rolling today, even though the church itself is closed.  Our son David was born in Norfolk in 1980.  He was conceived in Montreat – we had gone there to do study leave with Ed Loring and Murphy Davis at the Davis home in Montreat.  It was in April and still cold in Montreat, but being the Spartan people that they were, Murphy and Ed would not turn on the heat.  We found a way to stay warm, and David was born 9 months later.

We left Norfolk for Nashville in late 1980, and it was a difficult parting with St. Columba Church – it had grown, and the ministry was booming, even as we fought the city, which wanted to tear down the apartments to make an industrial park.  The elders and members were shocked and hurt when we announced that we were leaving for Nashville, where I would be working on the staff of the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons.  Our hearts were hurting too, but we missed our families.  That pain lingered for a long time, and perhaps that is one of the reasons that we stayed so long at Oakhurst – we did not want to experience that pain again, nor inflict it on anyone else.

Since it took so long to get pregnant with David, we began pretty quickly “working on” getting pregnant with Susan, and she was born in September, 1982.  I had been a part-time supply pastor at Second Presbyterian in Nashville while they were between pastors.  They were such a great congregation to us, and it reminded me how much I missed being a pastor in a local church.  I began looking for a church, while Caroline stayed home with our small children.  Through Ed Loring, we were connected with Oakhurst, and I was called to be their pastor early in 1983.  Caroline continued to stay home at first, but she came on staff on a part-time basis in the fall, 1984.  We would remain as co-pastors there for 30+ years, and Caroline had to work several other part-time jobs to keep us afloat financially.  But, it worked – Oakhurst became a nationally known leader in multicultural ministry, and the membership grew to over 400.  You can read more about this part of the journey in our book “O Lord, Hold Our Hands: How a Church Thrives in a Multicultural World,” which the denomination asked us to write in 2003.

So, 50 years of pioneering and partnering – quite the journey!  We’ll celebrate our 50 years this Saturday, June 22 – lift up a glass to us, and of course, we’d be glad to see you or hear from you.

"PRIDE MONTH"

 “PRIDE MONTH”

This month of June has come to be known as “Pride Month.”  It started as Gay Pride Month, and then it went to LGBTQ Month, and now it has settled into being “Pride Month.”   Though as a Calvinist, I am a bit squeamish when it comes to affirming “pride,” I understand this to be something deeper than puffed-up ego.  This is a month of celebrating the gift of God’s creation of people whose sexuality and sexual orientation is different than heterosexuality.  In the last decade we have all become aware that there are many permutations of sexuality, and the old norm of heterosexuality is beginning to be expanded to include many other orientations.  We are also recognizing how much oppression and shaming there is of people of alternate sexualities.  “Pride Month” is a time for all people to affirm that there are a variety of sexual orientations, and we are all asked to give thanks for God’s gift of sexuality in our lives, no matter what the culture tells us, or what we tell ourselves.

The month of June was chosen as “Pride Month” because it was the month in which the Stonewall Uprising was held in New York in 1969.  So, yes, this month is the 55th Anniversary of that event on Christopher Street in New York.  The Stonewall Uprising refers to spontaneous rebellion by the LGBTQ community in response to the police harassment of them.  The match that lit the fire was a police raid at the Stonewall Inn bar on June 28, 1969.  Stonewall was a gathering place for gay men, lesbians and transgender folks, and in the early morning hours of that night, police raided the bar in Greenwich Village in Manhattan.  Rather than allowing themselves to passively be arrested for their sexuality, the LGBTQ  community rose up in protest that night and for several nights following.  It was a time when those in the LGBTQ community sought to regain and to re-affirm their God-given sexual selves and to let the heterosexual world know that they would no longer slink back in hiding.  They would claim themselves and would seek to force themselves into the consciousness of the world.

Thanks to the work of many activists, we have made some progress on this issue, though with MAGA always lurking in the background, we never seem to be on solid ground.  SCOTUS voted in a 5-4 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that states cannot deny same gender couples the right to get married, but some justices are grumbling and seeking to revisit that decision.  For those wondering about this, there is almost a straight line between the movements for racial justice, gender justice, sexual justice, and economic justice.  From Trump’s venom on immigrants to Harrison Butker’s demeaning of women to the murder of Black people by police and white vigilantes to the oppression of people who love others of the same gender, there is a long and continuing voice of oppression, violence and death.  And, make no mistake about it, the MAGA movement is intent on taking us back to the 1890’s when white men were firmly in control.

PRIDE Month gives us an opportunity to give thanks for those who continue to enrich our lives with the diversity of the great garden which God has created among us.  I know that my life and my perspective have been deepened and challenged and instructed by friends who love people of the same gender.  I am grateful that they have taken the time to engage me and to care for me, that they have deemed me worthy of the struggle to convert me.  So, in this PRIDE Month, let us give thanks for those who see a different world, who see a world where all are welcomed and valued because of God’s grace in their lives and in all of our lives.  May we join in that vision and in that ongoing struggle for the dignity of all, for the blossoming of the idea that we are all children of God, no matter who we love, or what we look like.  Seems pretty simple, doesn’t it?  But, we are in a battle for our lives and for the idea of equality.  It’s up to us to find our places as witnesses to this ongoing struggle – may God give us eyes to see and hearts to act.

"WNEN WILL THE TIDE TURN? OR WILL IT TURN?"

 “WHEN WILL THE TIDE TURN? OR WILL IT TURN?”

Thursday’s conviction of Donald Trump on all 34 counts of improperly influencing the 2016 election is still reverberating, and we won’t really know how it will influence voters until the November elections.  In past times, such a turn of events would automatically eliminate Trump as the Republican candidate, but these are not ordinary times.  Trump understood better than most of us how deep the white grievance is, especially white male grievance.  And, he predicted correctly that his base would follow him no matter what he did, or what he was convicted of.

Perhaps this conviction (and his sentencing on July 11) will turn some independent voters to vote for Biden, thus denying the election of Trump.  Perhaps this will turn the tide on Trump, and we can leave him behind in the dust of the 3 trials left to come.  If they do not, then God help us.  For Trump seems hellbent on bending the American system of government so that it serves him and him alone.  He has already attacked the criminal legal system, which admittedly is skewed towards people like Trump.  As President Trump, he will fill the benches with Eileen Cannons all over the country.  If the Republicans continue to control Congress after the November elections, we face the prospect of their refusing to certify the election results if Trump does not win.  So, Trump has already bent two branches of government – the judicial and the legislative – leaving only the Presidency to go.

If he wins in November, Trump intends to move the Presidency towards the imperium similar to Hungary, and unless the Supreme Court rules otherwise soon, he will not be held accountable for such moves.  For all their talk of being “originalists” in regard to the Constitution, the reigning SCOTUS conservative majority seems to have forgotten that the Constitution was formed to be a bulwark against a President like Trump.  Their decision on presidential immunity, which will be announced soon, will be a huge one.  Roberts, Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch hold the fate of democracy in their hands.

This is a grim rambling, but I do believe that we stand on the threshold of moving towards fascism if Trump is elected.  As I have written earlier, I am so sorry that Biden chose to run again – a strong Democratic candidate (which he is not), would give me much more cause for optimism.  Yet, it is what it is, and our calling is to get ready to work as hard as we can to elect Joe Biden as President and to make sure that the Democrats control the House after the November elections.  

And, perhaps, there is some hope.  Twelve New York citizens did their duty in the trial in Manhattan last week, seeing through all the hype to the truth of Trump’s lifelong campaign of lies and flight from accountability.  District Attorney Alvin Bragg had the guts to bring the case. Though he was excoriated by many for bringing such a “weak” case, it looks like his case will be the only one that will go to trial before the election.  Perhaps Judge Chutkan will allow Jack Smith to bring forward the January 6 case, depending on the SCOTUS ruling.  

So, we are in perilous times – Trump scares me more than anyone who has run for President in my life time, even more than Barry Goldwater.  Perhaps my fear is rooted also in my own childhood – I grew up under fascist governments in the South.  They favored me as someone classified as “white,” but they were fascist towards those classified as “Black.” I believed in this fascist power, though none of us called it that, because it benefitted me and answered the longings of my heart for order.  As I note in my forthcoming book “She Made A Way,” fascism in the South was maintained by good and loving white people.  I do not want to return to those times.  Please lift up our country and our democracy in these next 6 months – it will be quite a dangerous ride.  And, of course, practice what you pray.