Encountering the Wisdom of Others

This meandering post is Session 2 in "Reconstructing the Gospel with the Best of Enemies" materials by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrave.  Here is the link to those materials. This is my personal journey of engaging the materials from both his book and the movie as we walk our way to Easter Sunday. I hope you'll find his material in the link of Session 1, download them, go see the movie, and find out what is to experienced in your own personal narrative.

God has a way coaching me up, of moving me into spaces where my discomfort is intense and the learning curve is steep. God oftentimes uses others as instruments of peace, and sometimes leaving me initially troubled. 

Jonathan’s relationship with Ann is fascinating and multi-layered. She lived in the same HUD housing project as she’d always lived and when Jonathan observed her, wanted to learn from her, amongst other things she said yes, and that he would have to become her son. Though she has passed now, and though the Durham integration struggle of 1971 is history, she lives on in his memory and in the stories she told that are chronicled on video for all the world to see. Her philosophy of listening to the other person, getting to know then, and helping them to get what they want, and then half way there, telling them what she wants, so that they both get what they want.

That played out with C. P.  Ellis and the rest is history for all the world to learn.

My own narrative has one starting point with the call from the attorney that Friday afternoon. His challenged of “Sir, I think I have failed to communicate to you the seriousness of our concerns” sent me down a road where I learned much about the Black farmer, and family, and their plight.  I learned much about their struggles and how strong there were against enormous and relentless forces that resisted change.

Along the way, however, I may have learned more about myself than I did about them. While I am pleased to have participated in their successes before the USDA and DOJ, realizing that my role was minimal, nonetheless, I learned much more than I contributed.

Whiteness is a valuable commodity. It is worth a lot in the social, economic, educational, employment, and other places and spaces of the marketplace. With my white skin, though I was dirt poor and wore used clothes handed to me and though I had to work to put myself through high school and college, my whiteness was an advantage. I am not sure how many people of color from my hometown of Trinity were about to step across the color line and the racial barriers set. I hope there are a lot.

Then, when I began to work in the Black farmer movement, one particular gentleman took me under his wing, something like he has done again and again through the years. I will withhold his name for now, given some things we are working on, but suffice it to say that while I was useful for him, I was a person to him. He challenged me directly and indirectly to move away from my prescribed ways of thinking, perceiving, and doing. He was challenging and at times it was intense, and then at some point, it became less intense and more laced with humor and two-way conversations. 

Little did my wife and I know, but we were becoming family. We were becoming a part of a larger cause outside of our prescribed white color and roles and all.

He influenced us in ways similar to the way Ann influenced C. P. and Jonathan. On one occasion my wife and I went to a community meeting organized around the school issue.  Blacks were not getting the same advantages of the whites in their area.  They were organizing to march and to address the school board. He was also mentoring a younger man to step up into the role of a leader of the movement. In the rural south, whiteness is still powerful.  It gets people elected by other white people who vote their convictions and those convictions do not always include people of color. 

On another occasion, I watched from the sidelines as the Halifax Black Caucus marched and protested at a Halifax County Commissioners meeting.  Some spoke and some did not. After that meeting, I met via cyberspace with one of the white women on the commission who had offended people of color with her racist language.  It was an interesting conversation that last three or four months off and on. She was invested in the righteousness of her cause and intentions and was unwilling to apologize for her offensive language. Her daughter even challenged me by saying that her mother was a good woman, and was a product of her times.

I was learning about Black people and causes.  I was learning about white people and retrenchment. I was learning about myself.

C. P. Ellis had concerns that Ann realized. His son was hospitalized with a severe physical and mental condition that precluded the family from taking care of him. His children were not getting the education that they needed. When the Black elementary school burned down, eventually Ann and C. P. were appointed co-chairs to develop a plan. His KKK friends saw him wavering and once the decision was made that he’d vote for integration, he lost his business in the white community and had rocks thrown and a fire started at his gas station.

I do not know someone impacted by our community as Jonathan suggested in his materials. However, I have gotten to know a gentleman who is running again for Denison city council. Rayce “Coach” Guess and I have conversed on at least two occasions and are now connected on Facebook. We talked last Sunday for about a half hour about racial issues and our community.

He told me that there is a predominantly Black area of Denison in which people of color are losing their lots because they have not kept up with the taxes.  Or, the elders have died, the younger are not paying the taxes, or have no idea that taxes are owed, and white people are coming in and building newer and bigger homes and the neighborhood is changing rapidly.  He wants to stop that from happening. From the get-go it sounds like Denison’s version of gentrification.  I’ve seen it in Memphis, Georgetown, Austin, and other places. It looks pretty on the outside but on the inside older citizens who were born and raised in those communities are being forced out.

I do not know what poor and marginalized people in my community want. I do not know them. Mr. Guess knows, so I will follow his lead until I get to know them personally.

I will, however, study that text found at Luke 4:24-26. Maybe Jesus can coach me up there as to the meaning and application of that text.

I do not know precisely why Ann and Jonathan linked up except to say that like me, Jonathan had much to learn and Ann was the designated teacher for him.  That sounds familiar.  For me, the gentleman who is unnamed above became my teacher and remains so to this day.

Women, Sewing, and Re-Creating Shalom

I have watched these women for over two years now. My beloved is one of them. They do their work in a corner of a building affectionately called "The Ark" in two rooms they teasingly refer to as the "sweat shop" in part because it is always warm in there and it is in use much of the time.

These women, Linda, Aline, Charla, Judith, Betty, Nancy, Cynthia, Janet, and Doris are coming as close to re-creating shalom as any group of people I know. And, they are doing it quietly and profoundly, often with a few people and God watching, and perhaps their husbands, but those watching are growing exponentially.

We all know the garden story, pristine place, one man, one woman, one tempter, and then comes expulsion and curses to her and to him and resoundingly to all of us. Peace was broken, shalom was shattered. We moved into the space of "this was not the way it was planned." But this was the way it was and this is the way it shall be until the Lord returns and creates the new heaven and new earth.

Until then, we are charged with re-creating shalom. When we march for justice, that is what we are doing. When we encourage young parents to nurture their children, that is what we are doing. When we work to change laws that advantage the racial majority and disenfranchise the minority, that is what we are doing.  When we tell stories in the public sphere about injustices done to black farmers that reach all the way back beyond reconstruction to the shores of Africa, that is what we are doing.  When we bind the wounds of the broken and connect with the lonely, that is what we are doing.

Re-creating shalom is a big deal. A seriously big deal.

Discrimination and racism are violations of shalom. Poverty is a violation of shalom. Illness in all of its manifestations is a violation of shalom. Children who are cold in the bitter winds of the winter, that is a violation of shalom. Old age and Alzheimer's and dementia and eating alone at the dinner table and dropping food all over are violations of shalom. Children's diseases are a break of shalom. Any type of injustice is a break of shalom. Any break of shalom compels us to figure out how to recreate it, imperfectly though our efforts will be.

And so it is that my beloved and her friends are bringing shalom into the world of these circumstances and many others. They have a righteous cause that is bringing righteousness into the world. Where there are cracks in shalom, they re-institute righteousness. Where people are cold and feeble and frail and diseased, they re-institute righteousness and shalom.

And so, they do more than sew. They are reclaiming shalom and righteousness. Sewing is a beautiful means of bringing about shalom and righteousness.

They sew and sew and sew. Days for Girls (menstrual kits so girls can stay in school), hospital pillows, hospital totes, marble mazes, surgical caps, port pillows, nursing home bibs, baby items, treat bags, scarves and hats for cold kids in Alaska, and blankets for the police to take on their calls for kids who are cold. There is no way of knowing exactly how many pieces their fingers have touched.  A rough estimate is around 3,000 in some way or other since 2015.

My beloved is working on a blanket for the police to have available as we speak. A friend and I were joking at our home group last night as to how often he hears the whirring of the sewing machine at his house. "All the time" was his response.

They would deny that it's a big deal. I think they are wrong. I think this is a big deal, a very, very big deal.

As I commented in class yesterday morning as we wrapped up a class on James chapter one where he made the point that true religion is taking care of the widows and the orphans, "We cannot do everything, but we can do something. We cannot do everything, but we can do something."

Shalom and justice break through the efforts of these sewing warriors with every cap made for a cold kid in Alaska, when every blanket is given to a child or adult by the police on a house call, when a girl can go to school without shame during her monthly menstrual cycle, an elderly person can eat dinner with a bib on, a kid who struggles to pay attention can fiddle with the maze she has, a chemo patient or any other patient who needs a port pillow to protect the port from the weight of the seat belt, and when a kid going into surgery has a cool, playful cap to wear.

So, here on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I salute these justice warriors and their noble efforts.