Chapel Speech Revisted: I Wasn't Prepared for What I Saw, Heard, and Felt

What follows is a speech I gave a long time ago in chapel at Abilene Christian University. Speaking in Moody Coliseum is typically a challenging thing because the students set the bar high as to what was important and to what they would listen and to how long they would tune in. It was with conviction that I spoke the words of this text. 

The most curious thing I recall? Actually there are two:  1) I could hear a pin drop, it was so quiet, and 2) a student who challenged me afterwards.

Here are those words (with a few modifications).

It was Friday morning, early August, and I was in a southern state.  I’d used one of those internet maps to find my way to the farmer’s house.  I’d been hired to consult with various members of a black farmers' association, assessing damages due to discriminatory actions on the part of FmHA.  I simply followed the “X” on the printed out map.  In the middle of downtown, I found the railroad, “MMMM.....this must the right way,” as I crossed over into the poor section of town., noting the change in economics, names of churches.  After going in circles, I asked three men, three African American men, where I could find these folks.  They looked at each other, then at me, and then gave me directions.  I was seven miles off base.  The computer and my assumptions had led me astray. 

Following the directions as carefully as I could, I retraced my steps south of town, made the right turns, and then stopped, just to be certain, at a house where the elderly, toothless gentleman sat on the couch on the front porch.  More than willing to help, he told me I was just a mile or two away, just to turn right at the second road up ahead, and the house would be on the right.  He was right, and I was thankful.

 

The farmer and his wife were both in the nursing home, their son was in the military up in another state and so I visited that day with Auntie, the farmer’s sister and care taker.  She was delightful, introduced me to dirty rice, and we laughed about all the people watching us, young and old, mostly black, in that quaint but favorite restaurant of hers.  “They’re wondering what a young white man like you is doing with an old black woman like me.  Probably up to no good, they’re thinking.”  She chuckled and we talked more about the farmer and his situation.

On Saturday morning, the farmer’s son and grandson went to get the elderly couple.  I wasn’t prepared for their entry into the house nor into my head and heart.  He walked with a limp and carried a handkerchief for his constant drool, the results of a cerebral hemorrhage.  She walked spryly into the house, a child’s mentality in an elderly woman’s body, the result of a psychotic break several years earlier.  The doctor’s evaluations?  All the result of the intense stress of attempting to farm under adverse and racially motivated conditions that no white farmer had to face.

 

While Auntie was putting their favorite meal on the table, the farmer and I sat over in the corner, discussing matters.  Through tear-filled eyes, he looked at me and asked, “How do you think this is going to turn out?” I told him I did not know.

 

The reason I was there in the first place: consultant.  He had no reason to trust me.

 

I was touched by what I saw, heard, and experienced; their stories were earth-shaking and heart-moving for me. The farmers from three southern states.

 

Broken bodies and relationships, lost farms and equipment, torn between hope and despair.

 

I’m a child of the South, grandfathers fought for the South, one in the revolutionary war

That means holding on to some values. That means releasing others.

These struggles of broken humanity, though, don’t exist just in the South, but around the country and around the world.

 

As God’s children, we’re made to self reflect on these things: “Lord, what needs to be rooted out, thrown away, repented of?

These farmers and their families could all be described: rooted in the soil, deeply influenced by slavery, held up by their church and their faith, nurtured by their families, and buoyed by a confidence in their country and its people.

 

The color of their skin held them back: weren’t treated like white farmers, didn’t get the same economic and advisory support.  Details are in the reports, on C-Span, and in the newspapers and magazines.

Is theirs the story of our country?  In many ways, yes.  Are the same things happening around us, just in different contexts?  Rather than farming, in our churches, in our cities, on this campus?

 

Are there other stories forming?  Stories of healing, repentance, forgiveness, working side by side for important causes?  Yes, without a doubt.  Those stories are also in the books, magazines, and are even found in our churches and our communities.

If prejudice is a human condition, making decisions or forming opinions before we have all the information, and it is, let’s ask God to remove it from us.

 

If racism is a human condition, seeing others only through the color of skin and making judgments accordingly, let’s ask God to remove it from us.

 

If racial discrimination is a human condition, treating people unfairly because of the color of their skin, let’s ask God to remove it from us.

 If racism is societal, institutional, and personal, let’s be about the business of change.

If there are steps, and there are, to repair relationships between groups and people, let’s ask God to give us wisdom and then courage to proceed.

 

I can still hear the sounds of their silence as they listened. I can still feel the passion to tell those stories in places and spaces that need to hear what they deserve to be told.