on Psalm 10
New Revised Standard Version
most hopeful
choosing to be most hopeful
Tag Archives: injustice
“it’s dark in here” | reflections on MLK Day
It’s no secret that racism is not okay.
Most people know it. A lot of people pretend like they agree with it. Some people fake it. Everyone deals with it.
But we all know that racism is not okay.
And so we think of ourselves as matured. As evolved. As just and honest and good and lovely.
But we are, all of us, racist, of course.
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I was walking through the mall a few weekends ago with a guy who used to be a college student in a small group of mine. We were there for me to run an errand, and this guy, a man who is soon to be a youth pastor in a church, made a comment that has been haunting me since that day.
“It’s dark in here.”
I looked around, looked up at the skylights, around at the stores and back at him.
“What?”
“It’s dark in here.”
The same again.
I looked around, the sky is blue, the light is shining in through the skylights, the mall is brightly lit, and at the same time as my head is turning back toward him in confusion, I understand what he is saying. I feel my heart break the moment we make eye contact, and I wish I could control anything but in that moment I realize that I can control nothing.
“There are lots of black people,” he whispers.
I have no idea what I said. I’m sure I was a jerk. My memories of that day go back to me as much as they do to him.
And today, both Inauguration Day and the day we celebrate the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr., I find myself speechless, still.
I grew up in a world where racism was acceptable, and in a home where it was not. I grew up in a faith where if you are poor and on drugs, it’s because you don’t know Jesus, not because of personal, systemic and global injustice.
More than this, I grew up knowing that it’s not okay to be a racist, but seeing those around me make it okay to be a little racist. At the right time, with the right people, in the right way.
As an upper, middle-class white male, that means that many around me, outside my home and often in a family of faith, think that those who are not any of those things are likely not Christians, so we should pray for them, and that they are both irresponsible and dangerous, so we should be afraid of them.
And whether I admit it or not, that same thought is buried deeply in me somewhere. Thank you, Southern, wealthy, Christian United States.
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And today, I show up for work each day with brothers and sisters of faith, both black and white. I show up for work with men and women seen as equally bringing the truth of the faith and the work of the kingdom. I show up to work each day and hash out the difficulty of what it means to work and live and laugh with those who are both the same as well as different from me, and I am a better man for it.
I am still racist. I still make assumptions about others who look like me that I would hope to never be associated with. And I know, in turn, that I am still seen as someone who makes those assumptions.
It is not completely unfair.
So on this day, when I think about the black pastor in the southern US who wrote letters to white pastors in the Southern US saying this must be the time––when I think about a pastor who wrote those letters from a Birmingham Jail–I hear them now in a deeper place than I have heard them before. I see and feel those white pastors listening who are convinced that the calls are untimely. And the challenge is more personal than it has been before. And in the global world, in the polarized world, in the rich and poor world, I hear the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. say “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” and I hear my King say, “The kingdom of heaven belongs to them.”
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To my buddy in the mall that day, as I felt my jaw drop and my eyes broaden and heart sink, I wish I had told you, “There is so much of the kingdom you are missing.”
djordan
Pine Tree Dr.
Other recommended links for MLK DAY
KATHY ESCOBAR | THIS DREAM IS SO POSSIBLE – Kathy Escobar
10 THINGS YOU MAY NOT HAVE KNOWN ABOUT MLK – Huffington Post
A DREAM THAT CAME TRUE – The Washington Post
compared with the task | on luke 4
the sharp contrast of common ambition
compared with the task of announcing the kingdom:
I’ll give you a feast;
I’m here to tell the poor their day has come.
I’ll give you authority and prestige and power;
I’m here to talk about letting the jailbirds loose.
I’ll prove you can do whatever you want and still be safe;
I’m here to announce the time has come
for those on the bottom,
for those who are poor,
for those who are blind,
for those who have been victimized,
for those who have victimized,
it is the time for God to make them his favorites.
The sharp contrast of common intention
compared with the task of announcing the kingdom:
he rolled the scroll back up and sat down.
“Today, you are watching it happen…”
djordan
Pine Tree
once upon every time
It’s as much of once upon every time as it is has ever been once upon a time.
Power and ambition kill. Others first, ourselves finally.
Humility and selflessness kill. Ourselves first, evil and injustice finally.
Having just returned from Snow White and the Huntsman, I found myself reeling throughout the whole thing, and even still.
The first words were, of course, voiced over in thick accent…
“Once upon a time…”
But it is once upon this time. And once upon a time a year ago today. And once upon every time.
The storytellers have tried to make it clear for ages upon ages and times upon times,
But we have to learn it again for ourselves once upon our times, and sometimes more than once.
All that is in us tells us to fight with might to protect our own.
But fighting with might to protect our own,
fighting with educations, investments, gates, codes, doctrines, prejudices, words, wars,
fighting with might to protect our own leads to a slow unraveling.
But fighting that actually protects is a byproduct of other pursuits.
a byproduct of seeking the good of others,
of giving up on great ambitions,
of investing for the sake of the lives of others rather that for the protection of ourselves against others, of opening gates, sharing codes, listening to the doctrines of others,
knowing before judging,
listening,
serving,
fighting with humility and selflessness, not with great ambitions of winning,
but simply because we can’t imagine not fighting for whatever things are
true
good
just
lovely
honest
And then, in the end, of course, just as the story begins with once upon a time, it finishes with…
But alas, we have never been known, in life outside the tales spun by fairies, as patient enough to wait for the ever after.
As if we’ve ever had a choice.
djordan
Pine Tree
most hopeful 