THOUGHTS

May 29, 2020

Most of us are carrying anger and grief in our hearts over a horrific injustice, 

the injustice of the killing of an innocent black man.  

My take on this is that racism is fear. 

It is fear of what is perceived as different.

Power given into the wrong hands 
becomes cowards bullying, 

in this case, unto death.

When my husband was in seminary, I was a teacher's aide in the inner city of Kansas City.  Besides myself, there was one white student and the one white teacher I assisted.  She was a racist.  It was a dangerous neighborhood.  The doors locked as soon as we walked out of the building.  Later I worked with one wonderful black teacher who described the injustice of racism she was confronted with, even back to her grandmother who was not allowed to learn to read.  I was made deeply aware of racism in that city which did not record black crime until the early seventies, meaning no one cared what happened to those black people who were jailed.  The officer who told me this was amused.  He also told me that he thought black people had no soul, yet he fixed broken bicycles for the black neighbor children in his neighborhood to ride.  We lived one block inside the "white district." That was how property values were determined.  I watched helplessly as an innocent young black child rode by on his bike to play with the next door neighbor children when a car drove past with those inside yelling at him to go home, "N...!"  My heart broke.

  

Racism is real.  Intolerance is real.  It is rooted in the very history of our nation.  More men and women died in the fight against slavery than any other conflict.  In the Indian wars, butchery and torture were on both sides beginning in Jamestown (where an early slave was one of my kin while another was Pocohontas), to the Trail of Tears, to the poorest in our nation still living on reservations.  Up until the early seventies, Native American children were taken by force to schools, some clear across the country, to be re-educated in order to take their culture away.  The Maidu elders in our neck of the woods, (my adopted son is Maidu), have secret hiding places for their children in case the whites come for them again to insure they won't be able to find them.  Racism.  Intolerance.

There are many forms of hate.   Most of my relatives came to America to escape religious intolerance.  Some had even been put in the Tower of London prison for their faith, some dying there.  Some were Huguenots, Protestants who lost everything but their lives while fleeing religious persecution by Catholics in France who were cleansing their country of them by killing them.  Some were Puritans.  One of my kin is John Rogers who because of his Puritan preaching, especially after King Edward-a Protestant-lost the throne, and it was given over to Bloody Queen Mary-a Catholic.  She had Rogers burned at the stake while forcing his children to watch.  Hate.  Intolerance.  

"You who love the Lord, hate evil!"

Psalm 97:10

"Abor what is evil.  Cling to what is good."

Romans 12:9

"If the world hates you,

you know it hated Me before it hated you."

John 15:18

Our Lord knew hatred that nailed Him to a cross.

He knew His followers would be tortured and killed.

But He is preparing a place for us where there will be no more tears.

Instead of hate, hope.