What If That Was God?

A young African-American man came to my door yesterday, selling magazine subscriptions. I wouldn’t have answered the door, as I don’t answer my door if I am not expecting anyone, but the front door was open and one of my dogs, aroused by the sound of the doorbell, was already “greeting” the stranger enthusiastically.

The young man gave a good sales pitch. He was trying to get his life together; he had come from a poor neighborhood and had gotten into trouble but was trying to make a come-around. He held up the plastic-covered paperwork which described and validated the company for which he was working. We “virtually” shook hands.

Though it was unbearably hot, there was no sweat on this young man; his white shirt looked crisp and dry. He gave his pitch to me, but I wasn’t biting. I didn’t want any magazine subscriptions. Plus, if I had wanted a subscription, I wouldn’t have been able to purchase one. I have no job.

But the young man stood, tall, straight, and determined. I don’t know what I said, but he said, “But we can do all things through Christ.” Right before that, he said, “What if the roles were revered? What if I was standing inside, where you are, and you were standing here, where I am? Wouldn’t you want me to help you out?”

He had no idea how much his words gave me pause. Was I looking at what I am about to become? A person, going door to door, asking people to purchase something they don’t want, just so to be able to have some money, not even enough to survive?

He said something else, but I didn’t hear. I was absorbed in my troubling thoughts. In a moment, he was gone. I watched him walk away, quickly, proudly, straight and tall.

But he was gone. I looked out my bedroom window when I went back to my room. He was gone. He wasn’t next door; I didn’t see him sauntering down, or around, the cul-de-sac. He had disappeared just like he had appeared. When the doorbell had rung, I looked out my window. I saw no car. I thought it might be a neighbor…but it was him. And now, he was gone.

The situation reminded me of something that had happened years ago when my children were little. It was a dark, cold, rainy November night. We were in a gas station. A person walked up to the car, wanting money; she said (I think it was a she) she was hungry, but I said I didn’t have any money, and sent her on her way.

I had always told my children that we are supposed to love “the least of these.” We were Christians, for goodness’ sake. We were called to not only talk love, but live it.

My children had seen me blow the woman off. We got our gas and pulled off…but my son, Charlie, was disturbed. “Mommy,” he said, “what if that was God?”

Jesus Mother Mercy. From the mouths of babes. I was hit with a sense of…something…including shame. I immediately turned around. I bought a sandwich and began looking for the woman.

But she was gone. She had disappeared. I drove up one street, down another. Surely, she couldn’t have gone far? But she was gone. It was like she had appeared and disappeared in the same breath.

Like yesterday. I could hear Charlie’s voice. “Mommy, what if that was God?” I can’t stop shuddering. I would bet I missed an opportunity for something that God put in front of me…again …and I would bet that more of us than we care to think or talk about have had similar experiences.

We say we can’t see God, but it’s not because God doesn’t reveal Him/Herself to us. It’s because we have spiritual cataracts, caused by any number of experiences. My cataracts yesterday are there because I am consumed with my own situation.

I saw the face of God, and turned away one of “the least of these.”

A candid observation…

The President’s Moral Authority

I expected a slew of criticism about President Obama’s commencement address to the graduates of Morehouse College this weekend, but I was taken aback by Boyce Watkins‘ statement that President Obama had “no moral authority” to say some of the words he spoke.

Citing what he says is the president’s failure to enact effective policy to help black people, Boyce wrote, “Hence, this lopsided approach to racial inequality does not give Barack Obama the moral authority to come into a room full of black people and talk about what’s wrong with us. Chris Rock, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan and Harry Belafonte could make these very same statements and have credibility because they are not afraid to speak the same way to whites.” (http://www.blackbluedog.com/2013/05/news/dr-boyce-president-obama-lacks-the-moral-authority-to-give-his-lopsided-speech-at-morehouse/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=dr-boyce-president-obama-lacks-the-moral-authority-to-give-his-lopsided-speech-at-morehouse)

In his article, Dr. Boyce states that black people are “happy when the president berates us. We like being told that we don’t try hard enough and that the reason so many of us struggle is because we have come to embrace an inferior set of habits and cultural norms.” Boyce cites what he calls the president’s “significant, even embarrassing lack of action to help alleviate the clearly documented, undeniable, legislatively enforced poison of racial inequality that continues to impact our society.” He says that the president tends to be more conservative when he talks to black audiences than he is when he talks to white ones, and he is critical of that.

But as I read through the president’s address, I failed to see where he was talking in a way that was offensive to African-Americans. Yes, he spoke about the need for these African-American men not to make excuses: “I’m sure every one of you has a grandma, an uncle or a parent who’s told you at some point in life that, as an African-American, you have to work twice as hard as anyone else if you want to get by. I think President (Benjamin) Mays put it even better: “Whatever you do, strive to do it so well that no man living and no man dead, and no man yet to be born can do it any better.” I promise you, what was needed in Dr. Mays’ time, that spirit of excellence and hard work and dedication, is needed now more than ever. If you think you can get over in this economy just because you have a Morehouse degree, you are in for a rude awakening. But if you stay hungry, keep hustling, keep on your grind and get other folks to do the same – nobody can stop you.” (http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/prepared-text-for-president-obamas-speech-at-moreh/nXwk2/)

The president cited “a common fraternity creed here at Morehouse: ‘excuses are tools of the incompetent, used to build bridges to nowhere and monuments to nothingness.'” What President Obama said is certainly what I heard in my house growing up; it had something to do with race, yes, but it had more to do with being an individual. Excuses, my mother would say, won’t work “out there. Nobody cares in the real world what your issues are. They just want to get things done.” She was right. She said to us all, yes, that as African-Americans, and, to me and my sisters, that as women, we would have to do better than our white sisters and brothers. It was a valuable lesson. Nobody caters to those who make excuses, she said. In fact, those who make excuses get passed by. S0, what the president said on that subject was not problematic to me.

What IS problematic, however, is that many, too many young African-Americans, both male and female, hear nothing about how important it is to forge ahead, to confront walls in front of them. Too many of them hear that the world owes them something because they are African-American, or poor, or female. Too many women still think men are supposed to do something FOR them. Too many African-Americans still want to blame the society for their ills.

Society for sure has been unfair and unkind to minorities; that is undeniable; it always has, and it still is. I think that the Congress has been largely responsible for President Obama not having been able to pass more policies that will make the playing field more even for the oppressed; it seems the Congress has been hell-bent on opposing almost everything the president has proposed.

But this message about not using this racist (and sexist and homophobic) society as an excuse is a viable and important lesson for these new graduates to hear. Just because they have a Morehouse degree does not mean they will have an easy time; Langston Hughes wrote that “life ain’t been no crystal stair.” It isn’t and it will not be. “Out there,” the ones who succeed are the ones who take the unfairness and the meanness on the chin, maybe get knocked down, but refuse to be knocked out. The president’s message to the graduates that they have a responsibility to teach that lesson to the young kids who are coming along …is vital. The president said, “Be a good role model and set a good example for that young brother coming up. If you know someone who isn’t on point, go back and bring that brother along. The brothers who have been left behind – and who haven’t had the same opportunities we have – they need to hear from us. We’ve got to be in the barber shops with them, at church with them, spending time and energy with them, spending time and energy and presence, helping pull them up, exposing them to new opportunities and supporting their dreams. We have to teach them what it means to be a man …” Quoting W.E.B. DuBois, he said they are called to be a “class of highly educated, socially conscious leaders in the black community.”

Yes, yes, and yes.

President Obama may not have come up with enough policies to help “the least of these,” but he probably has done as much as he can, given the political climate in Washington. The unemployment rate for black people is still too high; the rate of incarceration for black people is so disproportionately high that it is unconscionable, but he has begun to chip away at the thick walls of oppression that have for too long been characteristic of American democracy. His charge to the Morehouse grads to take up the baton and build on what he has begun was not ill-spoken; he knows the struggles of being African-American even though, as Dr. Boyce points out, he is “half white.” I don’t see where that matters all that much. In the eyes of the world, he is the “first African-American president.” Nobody cares about his white blood much; the color of his skin is the telling feature of who he is to the world, not the color of his mother.

That being said, he knows enough about being black in America to have the moral authority to say what he said. Even more, he has the responsibility to say what he said…and hopefully what he said will be taken to kids who never hear words of encouragement, and lessons on how not to use excuses as they live their lives. The more kids who hear it – black , white, Hispanic and any other color or ethnicity, the better equipped they will be to handle this disease called oppression which unfortunately in America is still too often connected to the color of one’s skin.

A candid observation …

Even Tamerlan Deserves a Proper Burial

Is anyone other than me disturbed that directors of three cemeteries in Massachusetts have refused to bury Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev? In light of the fact that the United States calls itself a Christian nation, is there something askew here?

True, the now-deceased suspect is accused of doing something heinous, something he had no right to do. But, as doctors are obligated to treat people whose actions they abhor, aren’t cemetery and funeral home directors obliged to do the same? In the end, isn’t it supposed to be God that judges, and not humans?

Peter Stefan, owner of the Graham, Putnam and Mahoney Funeral Home in Massachusetts, says the refusal of cemeteries to bury the young man is wrong.

“We buried (Lee Harvey)Oswald, we buried (Timothy) McVeigh, and (Jeffrey)Dahmer. Somebody buried them,” he said. “We saw the hearse. Who was driving? It wasn’t Mickey Mouse!” (http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_c2#/video/crime/2013/05/05/nr-boston-funeral-director-responds-to-criticism.cnn)

The CNN report said that funeral directors were afraid of backlash from the public should they bury the dead suspect. Was there backlash when McVeigh and others Stefan mentioned were buried? If so, it doesn’t seem to have made the news.

How is it that a Christian nation can so easily bypass and ignore the lessons taught by Jesus. In the 25th chapter of Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says to his disciples that “inasmuch as you have done …for ‘the least of these.’ you have done it to me.” God sending Jesus here was supposed to teach us humans that there is such a thing called grace, and as we receive it, we should also give it.

Brennan Manning, in his book, The Ragamuffin Gospel, writes that “we accept grace in theory but deny it in practice. Living by grace rather than law leads us out of the house of fear into the house of love.” This must sound like romantic dribble to those who support the cemetery directors’ refusal to bury Tsarnaev, but to one who loves the Gospel and the power contained within it, it is the crux of the faith so many of say we love and belong to.

Tamerlan was a mother’s son gone bad. Many mothers have been through that, but in the majority of cases, the mother doesn’t or hasn’t ceased loving her son. At the end of the day, even the mother of a convicted murderer wants her son to receive a proper burial. Parents cannot be with their children at all times; parents lose control over their children when they grow up (and some lose control before then.) All a parent can do is pray that his or her child will make good decisions, but when they don’t, the love of the parent does not disappear. The love is replaced by agony and the pain of seeing not only their child suffer but the families who suffered because of their child.

The parent grieves because he or she could not stop the child from doing wrong. And the parent grieves because he and she remembers when that now-troubled young person was an infant, and then a toddler, a child who was loved and who loved back; a child who was the delight of their eyes and souls.

Tamerlan’s parents still love him. And so does God …if, again, the Gospels we read are to be believed.

If there is not a code mandating that cemeteries bury even people like Tamerlan, shouldn’t there be? One would think so, because the code given to us by God doesn’t seem to hold much water.

A candid observation …

The Courage to Be

The late Rev. Dr. Peter J. Gomes wrote in his introduction to the Second Edition of Paul Tillich‘s The Courage to Be, quotes Tillich as saying that “the courage to be, in the face of existentialism with its temptations to cynical despair and noncreative self-indulgence is the ‘courage to accept oneself as accepted in spite of being unacceptable.”‘

In that same introduction, Gomes quotes from the famous theologian’s sermon, “You Are Accepted:” “You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you and the name of which you do not know…Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted! If that happens, we experience grace.”

One can almost not help but think about that thought from Tillich in the aftermath of NBA player Jason Collins “coming out” as a gay, African-American male yesterday.

The center, who has been playing with the Washington Wizards this year, showed the courage to “be” and to admit who he is. For him, the pain of having to live a lie has been removed. No male in major U.S. sports has made such a courageous move, despite the probability that there are more gay men playing major league sports.

Joe Sterling and Steve Almasy, who wrote a CNN story about Collins’ announcement, said that what he did was probably the biggest move of his career. (http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/29/sport/collins-gay/index.html?hpt=hp_t3) While that might be true, it is a sad fact that anyone in the land where freedom is cherished, many feel free to be anything but who they are.

The obsession with hating people who are gay has always been astounding. The fact that the hating of gay people has been done under the umbrella of religion, and specifically under the umbrella of Christianity, which is supposed to be the religion of love, mercy and forgiveness, is more than astounding. It is downright troubling.

This writer has heard Christians say smugly, “we will love the sinner but hate the sin.” For some reason, they don’t realize that it’s not real easy to separate “sin” from its vessel, the so-called sinner. And the statement belies a general misunderstanding of what “sin” is – a separation, or estrangement, from God. It seems that when any of us religious types gets into judging people, doing what God is supposed to do, that we are in fact “in sin,” because we have separated ourselves from God…in order to DO God, or try to BE God, making judgements on who is worthy of being religious, and who is not. Say that to an average religious sort, though, and you’re sure to get a ringing argument.

Jason Collins said that his decision to come out was precipitated by the Boston Marathon bombings. That incident reminded him of how fragile and tenuous is life. He realized that he wanted, no, needed, to BE what he was. He wanted to be able to have a partner and not sneak around. He wanted a family, just like his twin brother. He tried to “fit into” the American religious and cultural heterosexual club; he actually got engaged to a woman. But it didn’t work. He was not and is not, heterosexual. He is homosexual.

Gomes, commenting on Tillich’s conversation on what it is to have the courage to BE, write that “fate, guilt and the fear of death” are the entities, the anxieties, that “bedeviled” the human spirit. Surely, many people in the LGBT community know exactly what that feels like.

Collins’ courage is all the more admirable because he is a free agent. After this season is over, he technically does not have a job, not unless another team picks him up. If a teams does in fact pick him up, he is bound to face the sound and the fury of homophobic players and fans. The seething hatred so many have for and toward gay people is still a palpable emotion in the world. To “be” in spite of knowing that some of that surely awaits one speaks to the character of one who has decided to BE, come what may.

Collins’ announcement has all of the news operations talking; on many news programs today, his admission was the lead story, pushing the ongoing coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing and its aftermath to the periphery, if just for a moment. Grace, given to us by God, will have to cover and embrace Collins for a while; God affirms Collins, and he is beginning to affirm himself, but as for the world, it is not so generous or willing. We will have to wait and see how Collins’ colleagues and teammates in the NBA act and react to him, and it remains to be seen if any of the rough and tough players of the NFL will now gain the courage to admit who they are as well.

Jason Collins will go down in history probably more for his admission than for his career as an NBA player. He has broken through a barrier that nobody even wanted to acknowledge, much less tear down. He has blessed someone with his courage, but with every blessing, there are burdens, and he will have his share.

One more observation: this “accepting” of homosexuality seems to be a greater issue for males than it is or has been for females. One person reportedly said that with “all the women around” men actually prefer messing around with males. There’s something very twisted in that kind of thinking. While there are surely dysfunctional relationships among gay people, as there are among straight people, in the end, a healthy relationship is about love, not gender. Relationships…are about love. It’s the same type of love that Virginia Loving, a black woman, had for her husband, Richard, a white man. The relationship was about love, not color. The couple had a hard life, determined to stay together in spite of the hatred and opposition spewed toward them. It was about love …

In the end, it seems that’s what too many of us don’t get. It’s not about sexual preference or color or religion. It’s about love. A man loving a man doesn’t take away from one’s virility or strength or talent, any more than a white person loving a black person does, or a Christian loving a Jew. The best relationships are those in which love is front and center. Perhaps that’s what Jason Collins came to realize. Perhaps that’s what his admission will encourage others to think about as well.

A candid observation…

Traditions Matter

If there is one thing that has importance beyond words in families, it is the establishment of traditions.

When I was divorced from my children’s father, the one thing that kept nagging at me was to establish traditions. I was eager to lessen the trauma of divorce for them; after all, they had not asked to be here, and yet they were, caught in the fray of battling, or at least unhappy, adults.

Traditions, I felt, would do…something. I didn’t know what it would do, but I was convinced it would do something helpful. It would be the glue that they needed in order to feel like a family, in spite of our loss.

I wanted to get special Christmas tree ornaments every year, but that fell through. I made sure we had the tradition Thanksgiving dinner, with their favorite foods, even though we were always in church on Thanksgiving Day. We always went to Christmas Eve service and Watchnight service; they had to come, of course, because they were my children and I was running the services, but I believed being at those services would plant something in them that the world could not give nor take away.

One of the silliest traditions we set was to sing “happy birthday” to each other at the time the children had been born. For my daughter, it was at 1:28 a.m., and for my son, it was at 10 in the morning. It was our “special” time, and I loved it. There were a couple of times I slept through my daughter’s “birth-date-time” and I felt horrible. The tradition was sewn into my soul and hers, too.

This year, the tradition we set came back to visit me, and not a moment too soon. I was asleep, but at midnight (I don’t know what time I actually came into the world) there was my daughter, tapping me lightly, waking me up. She stood there with a brownie that had a candle in it, a card, and, of course, herself! She sang to me at midnight, the very beginning of the new day. My son called and sang to me (that was our other tradition), and sent me yellow roses. When did I tell him yellow roses were my favorite? He laughed at me; you told us, Ma, he said. We practiced giving each other gifts that meant something special. For my son, it was panda bears, and for me, yellow roses. I was speechless. Though this year has been particularly painful for me for a number of reasons, the traditions we set, brought to me by my children, made the pain go away. I smiled. I cried. And I thanked God.

Even as I write this, I tear up. I had no idea how absolutely powerful traditions are until this year. Family is about so much more than just being related by blood. Family is about setting in place those things which will be the glue for you when hard times come. Family is a powerful tool for keeping people sane when insanity is knocking at the door. For anyone reading, treasure the traditions you have; if you don’t have any specific ones, please set them in place. They have a power of their own. They matter.

A candid observation …