We
have had an incredible month. August 6
was our sixtieth wedding anniversary and our kids produced a wonderful event at
our oldest daughter’s lake house in Ohio.
We spent the whole week celebrating, enjoying family and friends in a
great atmosphere. Rosie sparkled as I
have seen her do for all of these years and that I remember from the first time
that I saw her. I was reminded again
that we have a remarkable family.
Also, our youngest daughter, Heather
is moving to San Diego, California with her fiancé, where I know that they will
get married in the near future. Her
happiness is something that we have hungered for and she is certainly deserving
of it. She has had a chaotic month,
selling her furniture, getting her house ready and getting ready for the move. There has been a lot going on.
We thank God for our family and for
the love that has endured for all of these years. We have appreciated the good wishes that have
been sent our way. We know how fortunate
we are.
Faith has been a large part of not
only our marriage, but also of our family.
We have been constantly upheld by our daughters and we have watched them
grow into glorious women. I know that
God has been watching over us all from the beginning, being with us through all
of the difficult times and giving us strength to get to here.
I love what St. Paul tells the Ephesians in
his letter to trust in God’s power to help us in our troubles. He speaks in frank military terms telling
his followers to put on the armor of God and to know that God’s power is there
to defend us from all of the assaults of the enemy. Sometimes it sounds like those enemies are
all celestial, the allies of the devil and such. I think that Paul is more concerned about the
enemies that we have around us. Sometimes
the assumptions that we make about our culture that leads to great problems. Sometimes, we are the enemy.
There has been an explosion of
concern over the assault on black people by police in this time. We just had the first anniversary of the
killing of Michael Brown on the streets of Ferguson, MO and the policeman who
killed him never indicted for it. There
was a remarkable amount of rationalization around it by the white community;
the kids stealing cigars, as though that was a capital offence. I was struck by the callousness of this
nation when it came to the problems in Ferguson. We stretched every way that we could to find
blame. It was the police, it was the
black crowds, it was anything at all except our culture.
The phrase that has come up through
all of this has been Black Lives Matter! That has been posted on signs and carried
through our streets. Strangely, it has
been countered by another phrase: All
Lives Matter, which in essence sends the black lives to the back of the
bus. Of course all lives matter. We all know that. The cry of the black community though is to
take those black lives seriously. To pay
particular attention to them while this problem persists. To work to care that in our culture we work
to take special care to insure that blackness in itself is not a crime, as it
has seemed to be in so many circumstances lately.
I am appalled at the amount of
violence that we see on television every day.
A lot of this is black on black crime; desperate people with guns trying
to make their way in a culture that often makes no space for them at all. Now, we have instances of white on black killing, not only by police, but occasionally by self appointed vigilantes. Coincidentally, we have more black people incarcerated than
any nation in the world. When I was a
part time chaplain at Western Penitentiary, I saw a yard full of black inmates
trying as hard as they could to make their own way in that place. Most of the guards were white and the
contrast was monumental. It still
is.
What we need so desperately to do is
to take this problem seriously. Not make
excuses for it, not cast blame; but look at ourselves and how it is that we
still segregate in this culture. This is
the enemy that we must counter with our faith.
It is necessary, maybe even essential that we find ways to bridge the
gap between the races and come to some understanding of what is needed in order
for us to live together as a people. We
are really not white and black; we are all a people with an enormous
history. We need to take the history
seriously, look at it and come to terms with what it all means. Inclusion is the necessary issue. Love is what we are called to do.
Putting on the armor of God isn’t
easy. It involves setting aside some
assumptions that we carry with us. I
wasn’t born white of my own volition.
None of my black friends chose their color. It is what we have in common in this
culture. But we have been given more than our
race. We have also been given faith that
is strengthened and sustained by our God over our lives. Faith is what got me to this place in my life. It is also what brought Martin Luther King,
Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu to our attention as magnificent representatives
of humanity. That is what I want to
follow in this world. Black lives
certainly matter. You and I need to be
certain that we all know that.
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