From the Voices in My Head

The voices in my head

Speak loudly of the past
Whisper words of dread
Encourage hope to the last.

Cries of injustice

Ring so clear
Compelling me
To be sure to hear.

The voice of peace

Whispers deep within
Searching for joy
Every now and then.

People are hungry

They are lonely and sad
Some are weary
Others just extremely mad.

We place our hope

In the unseen One
We dream of tomorrow
When our race is run.

What difference is made

For the lonely soul
Who watches through the night
Her heart grown cold.

Promises spoken

In offices of power
Then comes the truth
Long before the final hour.

Land of the free

Opportunities will come
With liberty and justice
Only for some.

Yes, the voices in my head

Speak loudly of the past
Whisper words of dread
Encourage hope to the last.

Dream big dreams

Tell stories with might
Hoping some will hear
And enter the plight.

From the Garden to Righteousness: From Genesis, Amos, and Jesus"

Here are some reflections and thoughts about what I attempted to say from the pulpit at the Bering Drive Church of Christ on October 9, 2016. The entire sermon can be heard online at the Bering Drive Church website for the brave of heart. There are other useful and challenging things on this page from its members and ministers.

My heart was already welling up with emotion moments before Don Edwards, longtime minister for this church, stepped up to introduce me.  The worship service was wonderful.  The responsive reading by Amy Fuller was especially meaningful.  Now it was time for me to speak words of grace over a problem that has long troubled my soul. 

My attempt was to situate the stories of black farmers and their families within the larger context of the violation of shalom in the garden, and then to situate these violent acts of discrimination within the context of institutional racism.  It was not to be their problem, but our problem. We are a part of the violation of shalom, and our attempts to repair it are important though oftentimes limited.

Yes, and how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?

After telling the church about that pivotal call from the lead counsel for the black farmers in the Spring, 1994, I asked, "What have your calls been? Your taps on the shoulder? Experiences that quicken your spirit, that tear at your soul? What do those phone calls or moments have to do with anything? They have a lot to do with everything. They are a reminder of the brokenness of the world, including myself. They are an invitation to join the struggle."

The texts of John 1 and Genesis 1 declare creation and who was there and what was done and by whom and for what purposes. As Cornelius Plantinga has written, there was "the webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight in what the Hebrew prophets call shalom. In English we call it peace, but it means far more than just peace of mind or ceasefire between enemies. It is a universal flourishing and delight."

In the eons since the violation of shalom, God has relentlessly pursued us, calling us to return. The law nor the prophets nor the judges brought shalom. The violation of shalom is reflected in injustice, mistreatment, bribes, crooked weights, oppression, lining the pockets of the rich at the expense of the poor, and injustice in the courts. Against these accusations, many of which continue to this day, we hear the words of the prophet Amos, "Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-ending stream."

Yes, and how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?

For Christ-followers, we have several paths of the walk, according to Foster in Streams of Living Water. The one that makes the most sense to me is that of the social justice tradition, the compassionate life as it impacts three arenas of life:  personally, socially, and institutionally.

My own personal narrative of a 67 year old white male from a small town in East Texas, born into a low SES, but hard-working family, is juxtaposed against the narrative of people of color. What they understood as fairly normal, I was shocked to see.  The stories of discrimination and mistreatment by officials representing the federal government did not phase them.  They had seen it or felt it for years and even centuries in their family narratives.  It was new to me.  I was white then, I am white now, and I will always be white.

He walked in the door limping, using a cane to stay upright, the left side of his face drooping, drooling and using a handkerchief.  He had had a stroke.  She almost danced in, smiling, exuding warmth and delight, but one brief conversation revealed the truth. She had had a psychotic break from too many nights of staying awake, wondering if that would be the night that they would come and take their land. His question, "When will this be over," haunts me to this day.

Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?

There are many, many stories of the impact of systemic racism on the hearts, minds, bodies, and souls of black farmers and their families. Many stories are chronicled. Many are not. Despite what one friend of mine said, "These things don't happen in America," they do happen in America. Check out Eddie and Dorothy Wise story, or the Grant story, or others.   They are out there in the public for all to see. My comment then and now is to tell their stories in places and spaces that they cannot or choose not to go.  I am a story-teller and their stories are worth telling and knowing.

Yes, and how many deaths will it take 'till he knows
That too many people have died?

I recall the words of  Frederick Buechner as he was pondering what to do with his life after his tour of duty in the military. "I just wanted to do something for Christ," he wrote as he headed off to seminary. He became a minister and a novelist.  I read some of his writings most every day.

And so I write and do research and blog and make presentations. And so Charla and I are committed to social justice in our small corner of the world. These efforts may be small, who knows, after all, but just do something. Make friends, say hello, ask good questions,  volunteer. Wherever you are, whatever you do, work toward restoring shalom.

We yearn for shalom. We will eventually experience shalom, in the words of Wayne Watson, when "at the ultimate healing we will be home free." While his song speaks of death and dying and why some die young and others do not, the sentiment fits a world gone amuck.

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Until we are home free, we determine to make our little corner of the universe a little better than we found it.  That way, we fulfill our calling until He comes.

Stories, Shalom, and a Church

We pulled up into the church parking lot.  The church marquee had these words.

Join us this Sunday

for guest speaker

Dr. Waymon Hinson

From the Garden to Righteousness

 www.beringfamily.org

 

It was indeed strange. Dr. Jeff Christian, pulpit minister for this church was on sabbatical. Competent speakers had filled his spot on Sunday morning. Now it was to be me. Speaking in public is not generally a problem.  After all, I had been doing this sort of thing all the way back to junior high in my small town church of Christ in Trinity, Texas. Somehow this felt different.

 

Not only did it feel different, it was different. Jeff had known me as an academic sort back in the ACU days when he was an M.Div. student and an earner of the Certificate in Ministerial  Counseling. I'd admired him for a long time and was honored that he and his leaders nodded in my direction. Not only honored that I'd be called up to speak, but called upon to speak and their knowing that the topic would include social justice and black farmers as an illustration of institutional racism in our country from the frame of the garden and shalom to breaking of shalom and how we are where we are now.

This church has been known to "march to its own drumbeat" in the world, so to speak, led by the Lord and His calling upon their life as a body.

 

In preparation for the day, Bering Drive's youth minister, Cynthia Ownby, and I had corresponded. We settled in on Psalm 100 as a call to worship and the Pentatonix version of "Blowin' in the Wind" as the song immediately before I spoke. I was somewhat surprised that this suggestion was taken, but I need not have been.

 

The people at the church were engaging. Charla and I knew some of them. It was nice to see Dr. Amy Fuller and Dr. Dave Fuller. They'd been students and heroes of mine. The church has embraced a gender equality theology and practice to church leadership and worship participation. It was refreshing, very refreshing.

 

Then "Blowin' in the Wind," the tune and the words most of us know, came over the sound system. The words and those beautiful voices brought me to tears.  Could I actually speak after hearing this song since so many of the lines resonate with what I was about to say. Charla knew I was in trouble.

Check out this moving cover here and the words that follow.

 

  

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, and how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Yes, and how many years can a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
Yes, and how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Yes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take 'til he knows
That too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Only the introduction by Don Edwards saved me.



Dear God, I am But a White Man

September 29, 2016
 
Dear God:

I am but a white man, and you made me so.

I am but a white man, and I read stories of black men, and women, and children.
I am but a white man, and I am drawn to stories of today and yesterday and the day before.
I am but a white man, and a white man I have always been.

I am but a white man, and I know the stories of Europe to America.

I am but a white man, and my people revel in stories of victory at Valley Forge and Appomattox.
I am but a white man, and conquering the uncivilized is in my DNA.
I am but a white man, and a white man I have always been.

I am but a white man, and I have black brothers, and sisters, and fathers, and mothers.

I am but a white man, and they have inundated me with stories I never knew.
I am but a white man, and their stories have become mine.
I am but a white man, and a white man I have always been.

I am but a white man, and my black and brown brothers and sisters are in agony.

I am but a white man, and my black nephews and nieces are afraid.
I am but a white man, and my soul is torn by the stories, images, and funerals.
I am but a white man, and a white man I have always been.

I am but a white man, and we live or we die together.

I am but a white man, and I wonder if today will be like yesterday.
I am but a white man, and I wonder if today will be like a tomorrow we have yet to know.
I am but a white man, and a white man I will always be.

Amen.

It Seemed to be a Huge Deal

Washington, DC was beautiful that afternoon, September 23, 1997, so beautiful, in fact, that after landing and settling in to the hotel down Pennsylvania Avenue, I went out for an afternoon run. It was quite surprising that things were much closer than I'd expected.  There was the White House, over there the Washington Monument, and over there office buildings of all sorts.

On the run back to the hotel, off to my right, suddenly there in my path was a face that I recognized. It was the former governor of the State of Texas.  I instinctively darted toward her, held out my hand and said, "Hello, Governor Richards, I'm Waymon Hinson from Abilene and I am glad to meet you."  She registered surprise, but still managed to say in her Texas drawl, "Well, I'm glad to meet you."

I felt a little foolish, but what was done was done. I had shaken hands with Anne Richards.

My reason for being in DC was much more important. The first of the mediation hearings was scheduled for the next day. I recall sleeping sluggishly that night, but all preparations had been made.

The next morning, after a snafu in terms of what building we were to go to, we all assembled in the correct building and the correct conference room.

Walking in, I knew something was up.  This felt huge, much more significant than I'd imagined. So, I pulled out pen and paper and drew the schematic of the room, who sat where, what the energy was like, and other details. I knew this was a significant event and wanted to memorialized it. There were the two mediators at the opposite end of the table. There were the two attorneys for the farmers on the left, along with one farmer couple. I sat on that side, just to the right of the one attorney who was a graduate of both USC and Harvard. Across the table were two people whose names I did not get along with Michael Sitcoff, Secretary Reno's appointee to the process, and Pearlie Reed and Lloyd Wright, Secretary Glickman's appointees to the process. Reno was the DOJ secretary and Glickman was the USDA secretary. Along the back wall sat a woman and a man, both general counsel.

One of the first orders of business was whether or not I should be there and whether or not I could speak and if so, for how long.  The conversation felt like it took forever, but eventually the mediators decided I should speak, but for a very brief period of time.  My prepared white paper was boiled down to seven minutes. I talked fast. One of the most striking memories was how Sitcoff fought for me to leave and how he drummed his sharp pencil on the glass table top the entire time.

It was a hostile environment.  The USDA and DOJ wanted to low ball the farmers. The farmers' attorneys were obligated to fight for justice economically and in other ways for them.  The mediation was on and it was intense and it lasted all day long. The negotiations took place in the conference room as well as in another conference room. The mediators went back and forth, back and forth.

All manner of numbers were put on the table as well as all sorts of administrative recommendations. For the first time I came to understand how policies at the federal level were implemented at the state and county levels.  I also came to understand how prejudices could easily be a part of the equation. The farmer at one point said, "It's easy to talk in Washington, but hard to live out" where I'm from. Or something to that effect. Ultimately his farming details were taken care of by an FSA office in another county, not the one where he lived. That was wrong. Should never have been put on the table. The attorney at one point said, "This is not a good offer." The hearing went on and on. I was pleased that no one had a heart attack or a stroke. It was that intense. The most hostility was evident between the lead attorney and Sitcoff.

At some point in the hearing, the magical numbers, $50K and $70K were put on the table.  Later on that year when the Pigford Class was certified as a class, those numbers came back to me.  This article discusses the significance of those numbers.

Yes, the federal government was lowballing the farmers, in my opinion, because they knew that an extremely larger number of black farmers were filing complaints and it was going to be costly.

What is an eye worth? What is the cost for a kidney? How much should the US reimburse a farmer for a heart attack or a stroke?

Living while black is costly in the US.   Farming while black is very, very costly in our country.  Those are the words I used when being interviewed just this morning.

Yes, I remember the mediation hearing.  I have the notes. I recall the debate. I remember that we left the meeting that day with no decision in place. I had seen things that left me disturbed.

I am still disturbed.

Need for a Resurrection Rant

This morning before the sun came up, I was reading and pondering a variety of things. The biblical text spoke to resurrection, the book of African American prayers pleaded with God to save them from White Christians (the prayer was written in 1829), and Thomas Merton spoke of love. So here are my meandering thoughts with no punctuations, so with apologies for those who are inclined to edit.  Yes, myself included.

And, if resurrection is a theme, my black people are in need of a resurrection from the deaths and traumas and brutality of lost years and anxious nights lived out of fear and anxiety and worry that my white people would come bearing guns and machine guns with big cars and big lights to take their house and their land and all that they had fought for away from them and give it to someone else or perhaps sell it on the auction block like the powerful men with whips and guns and chains had done with their ancestors years ago because the years had passed but the realities of it had not passed, and now we wonder why Kolin K protested. He is calling out this country and its powerful citizens to unite to eradicate injustices and police brutality. I know people who have experienced brutality. It is ugly and it is more animalistic than it is human because those who do so do so out of imagined good intentions or malevolent intentions and out of intentions of putting the land in the hands of those who can do the best with it, and those people that they deem could do the best with it look curiously enough like them. Smell like them. Dress like them. They may even go to the same church. They are friends. They know what’s going to happen because of the off-the-record conversations and decisions. That is brutality. Saw it too often in Kansas, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and the list of states goes on and on.

We all need a resurrection. First, though, we need to die to our old, racist ways of considering ourselves and our places in the world. Can’t rise without being dead and can’t be dead and resurrected without being buried. Can’t be dead and buried without no life in this human psyche carcass. Only the Holy One of Israel can resurrect us as individuals and a society from the deadness that creeps into our pores when we treat other children of God in ways that are sure to make Him unhappy. 

So, this morning I am also thinking about Romans 6, and death burial and resurrection of Jesus and how the believer metaphorically and physically does the same thing and how even those of us whose theology is different can arise from the swamps of our own self-imposed and societally-imposed disregard for people and from the stench of that emotional and relational exile from people also loved by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and you and me.   

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.