"ON CHANGING HEARTS AND MINDS"

 “ON CHANGING HEARTS AND MINDS”

Caroline, Susan and I attended Emma’s graduation from Brown yesterday, and it was a grand occasion!  I graduated from college in 1968, and the world has changed dramatically since then, so I’m wondering what Emma’s world will look like 50 years from now.  More on that another time.  

We are also heading for New York City on the way back from Providence to Baltimore, and thanks to our friends David Billings and Margery Freeman, we will be staying in a friend’s apartment while there.  My first trip to New York changed my life, and I want to share some of that journey in today’s blog.  David Billings and I went up to Brooklyn in 1966 to work in the summer program at Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church.  We had both been raised in the white supremacist culture of  Arkansas on the Mississippi River Delta. We had believed the lies of white supremacy because they had been taught to us by people whom we loved and trusted – our families, our churches, our schools.  Yet, we had been in college for almost 2 years, and we had both begun to believe that there was a deeper and wider world out there than our white supremacist worldview.  Lest our motives sound too noble, our main motivating factor was to get out of small town life for the summer and go to NYC to experience the excitement of the big city! 

Our summer at LAPC changed our lives.  It was there in 1966 that the hold of white supremacy began to be loosened in our hearts and in our perceptions.  The supervisors of the summer program were African-American, and many of our co-workers were African-American.  For a short while, we tried to hold on to the white supremacist beliefs that we brought with us, but that did not last very long.  Though we had grown up with African-Americans all around us in the neo-slavery South, we had never considered that they were human beings like us.  Our summer in Brooklyn in 1966 changed all of that.  It showed us why the segregation of neo-slavery was so important in maintaining white supremacy.   In Brooklyn, we worked with and were supervised by African-Americans, and it did not take long for us to recognize that they were human beings just like us.

I remember going a field trip to Prospect Park with the workers and students of the summer program.  As we walked from the subway station to the Park, and as I looked out over the rainbow coalition of our group, I thought to myself for the first time that I was experiencing a new world here, and that I was excited about it.  Later on that day, David and I shared some of these perceptions, and we discerned that we would not be able to go back home and pick up the mantle of white supremacy again.  We would have many more lessons to learn about the depth of racism in our own souls, but we made a huge step that summer at LAPC in Brooklyn.  We could no longer accept the white supremacy that we had been taught.  We were excited about that, but we also knew that it meant trouble for us – we could not go home again.  Just by returning South to our family and friends, we would be getting into some good trouble.  It was the beginning of our changing our hearts and minds from the white supremacy of the South to a larger and deeper vision of the humanity of all people.  It was the beginning of our working to seek to change that world of white supremacy into a world that valued diversity, equity and inclusion.

I later found out that this was part of LAPC’s history – they often hired young white adults from the South, seeking to show us a different way of life and a different way of perceiving ourselves and perceiving others.  It worked for David and me, and we have been trying ever since to work out a new way of life, and the  new way of being anti-racists in the world.  LAPC and NYC changed our lives forever, and for that we are profoundly grateful. 

As it often has in north American history, that power of white supremacy is trying to re-assert itself again, with the Trumpster leading the charge.  In these days when white supremacy has become fashionable again, let us remember who we are as children of God – siblings of all kinds of colors and sexual orientations and genders and economic classes and nationalities, all called to build a culture where al are valued and included.  So, let’s get to building that new world.

"BIG WEEK!"

 “BIG WEEK!”

Yesterday was Caroline’s and my 51st anniversary – a calm day compared to the great whirlwind and ado of our 50th anniversary last year.  We postponed our 50th a bit last year because our granddaughter Zoe was graduating from high school at Interlochen Arts Academy on the same weekend.  We went up for that grand occasion and had our 50th on June 22 at Hawkins Hall at Legacy Park in Decatur.  That building had previously been the dining hall for the former Methodist Children’s Home in Decatur.  We had a great time, with over 135 people attending, and many who could not come shared a video about us.  We then went on a 50th anniversary tour, stopping in Edisto Island, SC, then Norfolk, Virginia (where we had our first church together as a clergy couple), then to Baltimore, DC, and Pennsylvania.  We are grateful for Susan and David organizing it for us.  We got married on May 18 in 1974 because Caroline did not want to be a “June bride,” and I teased her at our 50th that after all these years, we were celebrating our 50th in June, not in May, so our wedding got connected to June after all.

We’re now about to head out on a similar tour, though this one will center on our granddaughter Emma’s graduation from college at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.  We’ll head to Baltimore for a day, and then we’ll drive with Susan up to Brown, where we’ll meet up with David, Erin, and Zoe (who has just completed her first year of college at the University of Colorado).  We’ll share an Airbnb, celebrate Emma’s hard work, and watch her graduate on Sunday, May 25.  Then David will get ready to be inducted into the American Academy of Science in DC before he and the family head off to Finland, where he will be doing some lectures on science education.  

    Caroline, Susan and I will make a stopover in NYC, for a few days.  Caroline has never spent much time there, so we’ll be tourists for a few days, thanks to Margery Freeman and David Billings, who have found a place for us to stay in the Village.  Caroline has a visit planned to the Statue of Liberty;  I want to see Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, which changed my life in 1966; and Susan has found a play for us to see – “Lights Out” about Nat King Cole’s final TV show.  So, a lot to see!

    It has been quite a ride over these 51 years for Caroline and me – many ups and downs, many joys, some struggles, but most of all a great adventure.  I’m now working on a book about our pioneering ministry as a clergy couple – we were the first clergy couple to serve in a local church in the former Southern Presbyterian Church. It is tentatively entitled “Better Together: Pioneers in Ministry and Partners in Marriage.”   It is fun (and sometimes painful) to revisit all those stories and streams in our lives together.  If you have stories, memories, insights about our ministry or our marriage, we’d love to hear from you – maybe they’ll appear in the book!  For now, I give thanks to Caroline for all her gifts to me and to so many others!

 

"DAVID BILLINGS!"

 “DAVID BILLINGS”

In mid-April, Caroline and I traveled to Baltimore to see Susan and to see the play that she directed at her university (UMBC).  The title of the play is “John Proctor Is the Villain,” an answer to Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible,” from the early 1950’s.  It is quite a good play – indeed, the Broadway version has just been nominated for 7 Tony awards.  Susan was prescient, and Caroline and I are hip because we have seen this highly regarded play, as well as being proud of Susan for her fine direction of the play.

Several of our friends came down to see the play, including my long-time friend David Billings and his spouse Margery Freeman, who traveled down from the Bronx to see us and to see the play.  David and I were remembering that we had known one another for 70 years!  I remember meeting him in the 4th grade at segregated Helena Junior High School (it was 4th-8th grade at that time).  He had moved from McComb, Mississippi, leaving his family home to go west.  Over the years, we became good friends.  I was drawn to him by his mind, by his sense of humor, and by his kind heart.  He was a “regular” guy – liked sports and played them, dated a lot, was religious and a solid citizen, and like me, believed in white supremacy.  I was more on the periphery – shy, didn’t date much, believing in white supremacy, but wavering a bit as I hit high school.  We hit it off because of our love of ideas and because we knew that there was a deeper and wider world out there.  He also loved being around my mother, who encouraged our nascent free thinking.

We went off to college – David to Ole Miss, me to Rhodes (then Southwestern at Memphis) – but we stayed in close touch.  We both had experiences in our first year that began to break down the hold that white supremacy had on our hearts and our minds.  David loved history and literature, although he was a math stud as well.  I was a math whiz, but my heart leaped when I took a philosophy course.  I remember sitting at Nick’s Cafe in Helena with David during Christmas break of our college sophomore years.  We had both done hard physical labor the summer before, and we were determined to do something different in this upcoming summer.  It was 1966, and through various contacts, we ended up being accepted to work in a summer youth program at Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, and we were ecstatic!  New York!  Getting out of the South, getting out of small-town Arkansas – finding a new world.

It was a huge leap – I don’t know that either of us would have gone up to NYC without the other, but together we felt like we could do it.  Indeed, a few nights before our departure to Brooklyn, I almost backed out.  I had begun dating a young woman in Helena, and in my lack of experience, I dreamed that we were falling in love.  I did not want to leave Helena and risk losing her.  I remember sitting on the hood of David’s car on a summer night on a dirt road in the middle of a cotton field, telling David that I did not think that I could go to Brooklyn because of my love for the young woman.  David stepped up that night and convinced me to follow that dream that we had discovered earlier in the year.  If the love was true, he said, it would be there when I returned.  “Besides,” he added, “this is a chance of a lifetime to see a brand new world – in New York City!”

We did go to Brooklyn in that summer of 1966, and it changed our lives forever.  The shackles of white supremacy began to loosen their hold on us, and before we returned to Arkansas at the end of that summer, we acknowledged to one another that we could not go home again – we were not the same.  As I have written elsewhere (see my most recent book “She Made A Way: Mother and Me in a Deep South World”), when we came back to Helena, the whole world looked different.  We could no longer abide in the white supremacy that held us when we headed to Brooklyn, and for the next few years, David and I would be fellow pilgrims on a new journey towards liberation and wholeness – many miles to go before we slept, but on the journey, nonetheless.  David writes the story of his journey in his book :“Deep Denial: The Persistence of White Supremacy in United States History and Life” – if you haven’t read it, get it and learn from it.

David and I have remained friends and colleagues and comrades over many decades, and I’ll be writing this year about some of our journeys together – seminary days, Nashville and New Orleans, anti-racism work, Ole Miss football and Nellie Fox and the dreaded Yankees (how could a man of such insight be a Yankees’ fan?), writing days, and now in our latter years, looking back over lifetimes of friendship, engagement and encouragement, pushing and pulling, supporting and celebrating one another and our life together.  We’ll have a chance to visit again when Caroline, Susan, and I spend a few days in NYC in late May on the way back from granddaughter Emma’s college graduation.  I look forward to that, but for now, I want to say:  Thank you, David, for all your gifts to me and to so many others!

"MOTHER'S DAY"

 “MOTHER’S DAY”

Last summer, Wipf and Stock published my book on my mother and me, entitled:  “She Made A Way:  Mother and Me in a Deep South World.”  For Mother’s Day, here is a tribute to my mother from that book.  If you haven’t gotten your copy, please do so.  It will make a great Mother’s Day gift!  

    As I have noted before, I was raised by a single mom, Mary Armour Stroupe, and we lived with my great-great aunt Bernice Higgins (I called her “Gran.”) My father abandoned my mother and me for another woman when I was an infant, and I never met him again until I was 23 – he never contacted me or ever came to see me. 

    Though we lived in a patriarchal world in Helena, Arkansas, my mother escaped much of it because she worked as a beautician at Ted’s Beauty Shop in downtown Helena at the other end of Porter Street, about a mile from our house.  I don’t know how or when Mother started that job at Ted’s – she was there when my memories began.  In my younger days, I thought that it was owned by a man named “Ted,” but Mother let me know that it was named after the woman who owned it – Ted Bostick.  I can remember nothing else about Ted, but as I write this, I am just realizing that such female ownership reinforced the sense that beauty shops in the 1950’s were a woman’s domain, whether one was classified as white or Black.  No males, except salesman, were to be found in those beauty shops.  

    Ted’s was located in the Cleburne Hotel, which had been opened in 1905 and named after Confederate General Patrick Cleburne.  It had a colonial revival style with huge columns in the front, facing Cherry Street, the main downtown street.  In its youth, it was quite a grand place, near the railroad depot for travelers to stay, housing barber and beauty shops and other stores. I would often stop by Ted’s Beauty Shop on my way home from school.  It was a fascinating place to me – a woman’s world!  All women beauty operators, and all kinds of white women there, getting their hair done, getting pampered, getting listened to, getting a chance to share their stories and local gossip, getting a chance to exhale and be accepted without the censoring or lustful eyes of men to put them in their places.  

    It was a refuge from patriarchy, even though they were often getting their hair done and having themselves made up for their men (and other women).  When I would enter Ted’s, there was an intriguing set of smells wafting through the air, a mixture of perfume, shampoo, dyes, chemicals, hair spray, and cigarette smoke.  As a young boy, the women there - both operators and customers – would fawn over me, and I loved the attention.  Part of it was my relationship to Mother, and part of it was that in my childhood, I was still in my innocent youth, a young male fascinated by being allowed to enter this women’s world, not yet so tainted by the crushing patriarchy (and sexuality) that awaited them outside the confines of the beauty shop. 

    I remember when I was about 6 years old, waiting on our front porch for Mother to come home from work.  We had no car, and she had to walk a mile home from Ted’s after being on her feet all day.  I was waiting with great anticipation because I wanted her to play catch with me, to toss the baseball around with me.  I remember feeling excited when I saw her - in her white beautician’s uniform and heavy white shoes - climb the big hill on Porter Street, now only about a block from our house.  I would run up to her and say, “Mama, let’s play catch!  I’ve been waiting a long time.”  I do not ever remember her saying to me: “Nibs, I’m just too tired. Let’s do it another day.”  My memory of her is that she always said “Yes, Nibs, let’s do that – let me change out of my uniform, and we’ll throw the ball around.”  

    I never realized what I was asking of her until I had my own kids – how tired she must have been, how stressed out she was with our tenuous financial situation, how she likely longed to sit down for a while and put her feet up.  Later in her life, I asked her if she ever said “No” to me when I asked her to play catch right after work, and she said: “Of course – often I was just too tired.”  I am intrigued that I do not remember those times – my memories are focused on the “Yes,” not the “No.”

       And, that’s how I remember my mother – the one who stayed, the one who loved me, the one who gave me life.  I know that some people have trouble with the idea of Mother’s Day – bad relations with their mothers, the sentimentalism and commercialization of Mother’s Day, those women unable to have children – but for me, it is an opportunity to say “Thank you” to my mother, to Gran, and to all the other women who provided mothering love to me.  It is also a reminder that all of us, regardless of our gender identity, are called to share that mothering love with one another – comforting, enduring, challenging, nurturing.  Let us be mothers one to the other.

"EARTH DAY"

 “EARTH DAY”

This year marks the 55th anniversary of the official beginning of Earth Day.  I remember when Earth Day was officially recognized in 1970.  It had been semi-officially started in 1969 by Iowa native and later Californian John McConnell.  Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin got it going nationally by calling for a country-wide teach-in on the environment on April, 22, 1970, using the model of the teach-ins against the Vietnam war.  It caught on, and I remember that Caroline and I started observing it in worship in our church in Norfolk in 1976.  As we all know now, we are at a crucial point in the earth’s life, and many think that it is already too late.  I prefer to think that we still have a chance, and in that mindset, I’m sharing a poem by Mary Oliver that may us shift our way of thinking about the earth and all of creation.  It’s called “The Sun.”  The last lines describe Trump and his transactional henchpeople.

“THE SUN”

Have you ever seen

anything

in your life

more wonderful

than the way the sun,

every evening,

relaxed and easy,

floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,

or the rumpled sea,

and is gone–

and how it slides again

out of the blackness,

every morning,

on the other side of the world,

like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,

say, on a morning in early summer,

at its perfect imperial distance–

and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love–

do you think there is anywhere, in any

language,

a word billowing enough

for the pleasure

that fills you,

as the sun

reaches out,

as it warms you

as you stand there,

empty-handed–

or have you too

turned from this world–

or have you too

gone crazy

for power,

for things?

"RESURRECTION!"

 “RESURRECTION!”

We are in the season of Resurrection. Easter was yesterday, and whether or not you believe that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead after he was given the death penalty by Rome, the power of Resurrection still speaks to all of us.  The power of the Resurrection is not so much what happens to us when we die.  The power of the Resurrection is that we are offered the opportunity to experience new life now, to see life and ourselves and others in a new way.  

In this sense, Resurrection is always contemporary, because we are always in captivity.  Those of us seeking liberation can use the power of Resurrection as a metaphor for helping us to find new life and new vision.  In this time when Trump would be king, it is sometimes hard to feel and to experience the power of Resurrection.  There is a hopeless malaise hanging over us, like an early morning fog that robs us of our ability to see clearly.  Indeed, that is what Trump wants – for us to give up and give in to his move for imperial power.  

In this kind of time, let us recall those first followers of Jesus, who felt the power and vision of Resurrection.  They lived under the oppressive power of imperial Rome, and they were so unimportant that no Roman historian recorded their names or their actions or their histories.  They could have been crushed at any time by Rome – they had very little agency in regard to political power.  When the word first began to spread about the Resurrection, Rome did not tremble or even notice – another little sect with some weird theory.  

    Yet, even Rome would yield to the power of Resurrection.  Several hundred years later, Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity as the religion of the Empire.  This was not a good development for Christianity, but it did show the lasting power of Resurrection, once it takes hold.  Many Christians were tortured and executed by Rome, but still they kept coming – they still were driven by the power of Resurrection.  It’s sort of like the Freedom Riders on the buses into the South in the early 1960’s.  Even after all the violence and deals and orders to stop the Freedom Rides, they kept coming – no one could stop them.  They were inspired and fired by Resurrection, and they grabbed hold of that vision and kept riding it.

    In John’s version of the Resurrection in John 20, Mary Magdalene comes alone to the tomb of Jesus to anoint his dead body for burial.  The body is gone, however, and she thinks that the body is stolen.  Later in the passage, she sees the risen Jesus standing right in front of her, but she does not recognize him.  She sees him and talks with him, but she does not recognize him, because she is captured by the power of death.  She is not looking for life because her perceptual apparatus belongs to death.  She finally recognizes the risen Jesus when he calls her name:  “Mary.”  Then her eyes are opened, and her heart leaps.  She runs to tell the other disciples: “I have seen the Lord!”  Rome and men still rule over her body, but now she has a new vision of herself and of life.  She is fired up – she has seen the Lord!  Indeed, Mary Magdalene is the primary witness to the Resurrection – she is the only witness mentioned in all four Gospel accounts.

    Her witness now seeks viability in our time, too.  We live in a scary and dangerous time, and for many of us, the great experiment in democracy (flaws and all) now seems in deep peril.  We don’t know what the longing-to-be-king Trumpster will do next, but Resurrection gives us promises about our lives and about life itself.  We are promised that the final word in each of our lives and in all of our lives is not death, but rather life and love.  We are also promised that the Spirit will not fail us, that even in these dismal days, God is moving and shaping possibilities for life and love and justice.  

    Our calling in this season of Resurrection is to acknowledge that like Mary Magdalene, we are captured by the power of death – in these Trumpian days, that acknowledgment is not a far stretch.  Despair has us in its grip, and it is difficult to recognize the work of God that is moving among us.  Like Mary, let us listen for our names being called, and let us hear them and respond as Mary did.  Let us be witnesses for a different view of life, a different understanding of what it means to be a human being.  And, let us join Mary in sharing the stunning news of Resurrection: “We have seen the Lord!”

"LONGING FOR LOVE, BUT BELIEVING IN DEATH"

 “LONGING FOR LOVE, BUT BELIEVING IN DEATH”

On Palm Sunday, 1865 (April 9 that year), General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia, and the Civil War, which began in April of 1861, began to come to a close. There was relief and celebration in DC and in the North (and to some in the South), but by Good Friday, that relief would turn to shock and horror when President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated – he would die the next day.  It was a stunning Holy Week that year.

The biblical Holy Week begins on a note of triumph and expectation.  Jesus of Nazareth, the great healer and wise teacher, is entering Jerusalem during Passover in a politically charged atmosphere.  His followers celebrate him – they have experienced love and healing and a new vision of what life can be.  They are fired up, and who can blame them?  Can this be the time that Jesus will overthrow Rome and reform the Temple? 

           The Roman governor Pontus Pilate has left his comfort in the villa on the Mediterranean Sea and has paraded into Jerusalem with his imperial army – coming to quell any thoughts of seeking liberation by Jewish folk during the Festival of Passover.  These two leaders of very different parades do not know each other, when Jesus enters Jerusalem on the first day of the week.  Their paths will intersect soon, however, and things have never been the same since their engagement with one another.

       These early days of April seem to justify why T.S. Eliot called April “the cruelest month” – so many assassinations and executions.  Jesus, killed on Good Friday.  Abraham Lincoln, shot on Good Friday and dying the next day.  Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated in Memphis 57 years ago on April 4.  The death that closes out Holy Week seems to abide in all places and in all ages.  The followers of Jesus enter Jerusalem longing for love, believing in love, but finding death.  Jesus executed, Lincoln shot down, MLK shot down, children shot down, women disappeared.  Holy Week begins in excitement and anticipation but ends in death, despair and flight – the world indeed seems dominated by death.

    Holy Week shows us the drama of our lives – we long for love, but we believe in death.  We want to believe in this Jesus of Nazareth, but the world seems so much with us, a world dominated by corrupt and egotistical leaders, a world that believes in the power of violence and death.  Holy Week walks us squarely into the midst of this struggle – no fading away here, no sentimentality allowed.  Holy Week looks squarely at one of the most difficult truths of our lives:  we long for love, but we believe in death.  Holy Week asks us to sit with this uncomfortable truth this week – to think about our visions lost or visions diminished, about our hopes being dashed, to think about our compromises that make us gradually lose hold of our dreams and hopes.  Holy Week asks us to stay with that process in our own lives and in the life of the world.

    This belief in death, this yielding to death is so powerful, and it even enters into the incredible story of God with us.  Holy Week asks us to remember that process, to acknowledge it even now.  This power of death is not the end of the story, but it is a central pivoting point of The Story and of our story.  We won’t be left wailing at the Cross, but we are asked to acknowledge that we are, indeed, there when they give Jesus the death penalty.