on Psalm 10
New Revised Standard Version
most hopeful
choosing to be most hopeful
Tag Archives: justice
an open letter to my students
An Open Letter to My Students on the Eve of the Orlando Shooting.
June 12, 2016
Dear Students,
You likely woke up today as I did: late. You may or may not have turned on the news as is my morning wake-up custom, coffee in hand and multiple snoozes later. Within moments it became clear that there was yet another mass shooting while we were sleeping. This morning’s shooting at a gay night club in Orlando. Over 100 dead and injured.
I remember thinking ‘My soon-to-be godson is to be baptized today. My responsibilities seem yet-again larger now.’
I’m late to the service by a few minutes this morning; I know you’re not surprised. I stood too long at the television in my bedroom, clenching the wooden ledge on top of the dresser left in the room by my great, great-aunts who were the unusual of their era; they were highly educated, remarkably fashionable, and unusually independent women from a time where that was not allowed. No doubt they were recipients of both celebration and judgment. The dresser left in the bedroom of this house they used which I now sleep in has new fingernail marks as of this morning, left accidentally as I should have been dressing for a baptismal service but was instead being washed again in the blood of others.
“I also remember this, and wish I did not,” as Didion once said. I remember that I was not surprised.
Yet another killing, this time the largest mass shooting in our states’ history and the largest terrorist attack on US soil since my freshmen year of college when I sat in a lecture hall of Blanchard at Wheaton and watched the towers fall before my eyes.
I remember this morning thinking that I was surprised that morning as an 18-year-old hopeful, but that I am not surprised now as a 32-year-old hopeful. And it is the hopefulness of my better wiring which has been wanting to talk to all of you all day long today, even though you’ve managed to sneak away from me for the summer. I’ve managed to talk to you in one of our random, side conversations all day long in my head regardless. Then I decided that I hope you might hear it.
Many of you value your faith deeply; I do as well. Because of this, those who believe differently from you are owed your love and honor. The faith you claim has told you so; the faith leaders you are bothered by have challenged this. Follow your faith.
Many of you think
public policy,
issues of social policy and social welfare,
wealth and poverty,
emails to your governors and senators and representatives
(unanswered as most of them go…which you will remember),
childhood development and influence,
family structure and complexity,
group norms and roles,
mob mentalities and social capacities,
and research formulas and findings
aren’t connected in any real way
to your deep desire to help those who are in need.
The crimes of today should remind you that these things are all connected.
The language and now law signed in by Governor Bill Haslam in Tennessee that allow therapists to legally hate and discriminate by refusing counseling to those of the LGBTQ community affected by today’s mass shooting is an issue of policy, welfare, wealth and poverty, legislators who listen and those who ignore (and are paid to do so, which you will remember), legislation and its [silent] funders, biological development and its influences, structure, complexity, norms, roles, mob mentalities and social capacities, research and its findings…
This language and this legislation and these legislators and these voices are the authors of the men and women who will come into your offices and onto your caseloads wounded, orphans of those killed by this morning’s violence, orphans of those who had parents who lived lives of silence or submission to a norm, or stood silently in the back of your sanctuaries on mornings like these as you went to church and thought it was a regular Sunday morning.
I felt the need all day long today, now pushing the clock to make it honest, to let you know that I expect the world of you.
I am pretty sure I have told you this. You will be the best.
I expect a whole other kind of world from you. I expect you to wake up on days like today with the news of the moment and the heart of a saint that is both willing to break the rules and willing to break the norms to dig your fingernails into the wooden ledge on top of the dresser and be late for something planned and appropriate because you decided you had to stand up and speak out for something possibly inappropriate because it puts all of our humanity at risk.
So in class, when I hound you and harass you and rap at you and sing at you and yell at you and take points from you and even when I feed you in an effort to buy you, please know this: I do all these things so that some day, some Sunday morning when someone is waking up and committing to go to church and pledge gratefully to be a godfather for a young man or young woman who has not yet learned to distrust the world…
I do all these things so that you will remember that it will never be okay for us to not be surprised at this kind of hateful news that greeted us this morning.
I’m counting on you.
djordan
Pine Tree Dr.
kingdom comes over hot chicken
Several weeks ago it was at a greenhouse under the South African sun. It was with two friends, one from South Africa and one from England, both in Cape Town now chasing the kingdom hard and fast. One works to transform the way housing is addressed for those living in informal settlements by way of valuing inherent wisdom, skill and reality. The other is working to address issues of gang violence, trauma, and youth development not only in Cape Town but in the hearts and plans of those around the world.
A few weeks later, it was in Nashville, Tennessee. We were talking about whether hot chicken was hot enough or too hot as we prepared for a wedding a few hours later. Friends without the pretense of worry of doing it right or doing it fancy, it was a celebration of choosing to do it and do it together. Friends willing to push through the new uncertainty of what it means to be a community surrounding those who are choosing to do life together. Friends who will argue over the heat of Nashville’s hot chicken in the morning, pretend not to cry at a lifelong commitment in the afternoon, and dance like no one knows what dancing is supposed to look like in the evening.
And this week, like last week, and like the other weeks in between was at the altar rail at a little church on the north side of town. Hands out, breath held, eyes up, it all swelled together. I’ve heard my priest and favorite friend say before that when we kneel at the rail, we share in communion with those with us in that moment, those who are gather at Christ’s table around the globe, and those who have both joined the table in centuries past as well as those who will come after us with the same assurances and the same uncertainties as we knelt at the rail today.
This morning, hands out, I joined them. I joined my brothers and sisters in Cape Town. I joined my sisters and brothers over hot chicken in Nashville. I joined my own local church community, and all those who were at their own churches both in my own city and in cities around the globe and through the ages.
I’ll work toward justice tomorrow and push against institutional power and greed.
I’ll seek beauty and laughter and silliness tomorrow with adults who hate it and children who love it.
I’ll do paperwork and billing tomorrow and wonder what I’m doing and why I care.
I’ll push a few steps forward into and few steps back from the kingdom of God.
And I’ll only be able to do anything at all tomorrow by the mystery of
the power that somehow shakes the rail every time I kneel,
whether at a nursery in Cape Town
or over hot chicken in Nashville
or the altar at my little church.
His kingdom comes.
djordan
Pine Tree Dr.
on ash wednesday
We come to be united with the blackened earth as we receive the mark of ash on our skin. Just as new growth surely follows the fire so new things await us as we make this journey of repentance.
Because we have covered ourselves with pride and arrogance:
Clean us and set us free.
Since we have been content with the empty and the superficial:
Fill us from the depths of love.
When we become trapped in old patterns and struggles:
Life our eyes in hope.
Even though we are broken and far short of perfection:
Form us for loving service.
After our best efforts have met with rejection and discouragement:
Encourage us still to trust.
So we bring before God all that is in our life, knowing that we can hold nothing back from the fire of love which consumes even those faults which we dearly cherish.
Let us then share these ashes from each other’s hands and know that God will surely fulfill the promise of newness within our life.
Phillip Freier,
Australia
from Let Justice Roll Down
letter TO a Birmingham prison: on MLK Day
Of course the classy, enlightened thing to do on Martin Luther King Jr. Day every January remains to brighten the cold and often gray mornings by posting quotes, images and videos about having dreams, taking the first steps, and valuing love over hate. We pontificate on justice and look toward the one day when the dream he had becomes a reality, and we feel a little less xenophobic and a little more pious about ourselves.
And then we go to work, or take a day off by relaxing. And that day is often filled with complicit participation in the systems that oppress others and therefore ourselves. We participate in the dreams of power and anxiety and scarcity and fear and clamoring for the top. We participate in tempered and reasoned arguments why Yes, of course these are important issues, but this is the wrong way to go about it. We join in faceless, human-interaction-less debates about getting back to some unreal era when things were better or moving toward some unwon future when the best of humanity is realized.
But on this Monday, every year, we read a letter from a Birmingham prison, a letter in response to 8 clergy’s written request to MLK to calm down and play by the known rules, and we celebrate. We imagine ourselves in the cell with King, supporting his words and thinking his thoughts. After several years of scribbling An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere on pieces of paper and taping them to mirrors and computer monitors, I wondered what the letter written TO a Birmingham prison actually said, and if I might actually, ashamedly find myself supporting their words and thinking their thoughts.
For the causes and the groups of people in the margins those causes are iconic of, we owe our own futures as well as the legacy of King the task of identifying with how much we still speak with the words of these clergy in all their good intentions, whether we want to or not, because in all our tweets and posts about freedom and justice and oppression, we are terrified that if we don’t support the status quo we might end up on the bottom, being treated and imprisoned the way we have been treating and imprisoning others.
April 12, 1963
We clergymen are among those who, in January, issued “an Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense,” in dealing with racial problems in Alabama. We expressed understanding that honest convictions in racial matters could properly be pursued in the courts, but urged that decisions of those courts should in the meantime be peacefully obeyed.
Since that time there has been some evidence of increased forbearance and a willingness to face facts. Responsible citizens have undertaken to work on various problems which cause racial friction and unrest. In Birmingham, recent public events have given indication that we all have opportunity for a new constructive and realistic approach to racial problems.
However, we are now confronted by a series of demonstrations by some of our Negro citizens, directed and led in part by outsiders. We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely.
We agree rather with certain local Negro leadership which has called for honest and open negotiation of racial issues in our area. And we believe this kind of facing of issues can best be accomplished by citizens of our own metropolitan area, white and Negro, meeting with their knowledge and experiences of the local situation. All of us need to face that responsibility and find proper channels for its accomplishment.
Just as we formerly pointed out that “hatred and violence have no sanction in our religious and political traditions,” we also point out that such actions as incite to hatred and violence, however technically peaceful those actions may be, have not contributed to the resolution of our local problems. We do not believe that these days of new hope are days when extreme measures are justified in Birmingham.
We commend the community as a whole, and the local news media and law enforcement officials in particular, on the calm manner in which these demonstrations have been handled. We urge the public to continue to show restraint should the demonstrations continue, and the law enforcement officials to remain calm and continue to protect our city from violence.
We further strongly urge our own Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham. When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense.
Signed by:
C.C.J. CARPENTER, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of Alabama
JOSEPH A. DURICK, D.D., Auxiliary Bishop, Diocese of Mobile-Birmingham
Rabbi MILTON L. GRAFMAN, Temple Emanu-El, Birmingham, Alabama
Bishop PAUL HARDIN, Bishop of the Alabama-West Florida Conference of the Methodist Church
Bishop NOLAN B. HARMON, Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the Methodist Church
GEORGE M. MURRAY, D.D., LL.D., Bishop Coadjutor, Episcopal Diocese of Alabama
EDWARD V. RAMAGE, Moderator, Synod of the Alabama Presbyterian Church in the United States
And THEN, the letter from that prison:
Letter from a Birmingham Jail Cell from Bradley Williams on Vimeo.
djordan
Pine Tree Dr.
RELATED POSTS
beyond Trayvon
it’s dark in here
let us turn our thoughts today
failure of imagination
rosa parks| on imagining and hoping
deep heartbreak and deep hope
when we feel trapped between
the way things are and
the way we know things should be
between
the work we have and
the work we can actually accomplish
between
the hours in a single day and
the heartaches in a single day
between
the insolvable injustices and
the imperative to seek and to do justice
between
the eyes of those we publicly hold responsible and
the eyes of ourselves that we privately shield from responsibility
we ask for a deeper and more burdening reminder
that you are the one who has built us
to be unsettled and undone
until justice comes
until peace flows
until humanity looks like itself again
until humanity is an icon of you again
and in that deeper and more burdening reminder
we ask that you would give us
deep breaths
deep honesty
deep heartbreak and
deep hope
that kingdom comes and
that kingdom will come on earth as in heaven
finally.
and until the finally,
we work toward the impossible things we have no power to change
knowing the desire to work toward them
is a gift from the God who has a habit of doing impossible things
amen
djordan
Pine Tree
beyond trayvon
beyond even the tragedy of a teenage life lost
which is tragedy enough all by itself
is the tragedy that we cannot have
a conversation about the place in which we find ourselves
that goes beyond Trayvon
we have a story on our hands that rocks the airwaves
and makes for good television, whether legal or talk or music or news
and the story gets stuck in the soundbites
ignorant and hollow and poorly polarized
that sell ads for laundry detergent and weight loss aids
and all the while
there’s an issue on our hands
much greater than Trayvon Martin
which is by itself the loss of a teenager walking down the street
and is a great loss all its own
we have an issue on our hands that makes it impossible
to have real and needed conversations with people of the “other”
we know by name, not our token “other friends”
about what it means to live
black
white
hispanic
asian
gay
rich
poor
single
mentally ill
and in the meeting of our differences
we might find the answers that could lead us
from violence and hip-shooting ignorant vigilantism
to the deep and horrifying and necessary conversation
about what it means to work toward
a day when everyone,
perfectly different,
becomes perfectly alike and different together
celebrating kingdom come.
toward justice.
toward compassion.
toward the ordered throwing of stones.
But, because we can’t think outside the lines
given us by the news that sells laundry detergents and weight-loss aids
we run the risk of being stuck in a conversation that ends
with more hatefulness, ignorance and racism.
But, because we know we are ultimately able to think outside the lines
we run the risk of asking questions that citizens of the kingdom ask
with more compassion, empathy, and christlikeness.
and the story changes depending on which risks we decide to take.
God give us courage to take good risks.
djordan
Pine Tree Dr.
OTHER POSTS ON RACE AND RISK AND COURAGE
it’s dark in here
failure to imagine
rosa parks
let us turn our thought today
he loves the justice
I got an email yesterday afternoon from a friend and coworker in Nicaragua. She is fighting for justice in a case of child abuse, and has seen this thing from the very beginning to where it currently stands. We’ve been praying together via email and Skype conversation. We’ve been spreading the word and asking others to pray who hold the child and the situation close to their hearts and minds.
We pray, of course, when we don’t know what the hell to do.
She arranged for many bodies to be seated in the courtroom when the case was heard to make it clear that we are watching, the eyes of many from around the world are watching, and we seek justice. And we demand it.
I received an email from her yesterday afternoon that brought me to tears.
We correspond often, and I speak horrible Spanish and she speaks incredible English, but one can only imagine the wrestle of trying to make sure we understand what is being said and what is not being said.
Her email, however, made it perfectly clear. In a kind of correct English from the words of a highly-educated Nicaraguan spoken in a way a native English speaker never would have spoken, I have been repeating her phrase both in my mind and out loud since.
We’ve been waiting, you see, for news from the trial. Will those who’ve committed abuse against children be held accountable? Will reasonable measures be taken to ensure that they are no longer able to perpetrate violence against other women and children?
Her email had this phrase buried in with many other words, but it is this phrase in particular that has been on my mind ever since.
“Thank you for praying. Our God he hears our prayer. And he loves the justice.”
Words from an attorney, among many other things, who is working tirelessly toward kingdom come on the ground in Nicaragua where justice doesn’t have the luxury of being a theological issue; where the luxury of whether or not or even how to talk about the kingdom of heaven is not a conversation, but rather a life and death issue. Words from her speak so clearly about the heart of God in the middle of seeking the kingdom where all points to hopelessness and loss.
“Thank you for praying. Our God he hears our prayer. And he loves the justice.”
The perpetrator of violence was found guilty in the courtroom that morning.
The story is not over and the work is not done, but the anthem of his people remains:
Our God, he loves the justice.
djordan
Salt Lake City, Utah
city legs and soundtracks
She told me that it’s obvious to her who is from the city or lives in the city, and who is a tourist trying to pass as a local. I tried hard––quite hard I might say––to be a local. My fanny pack was left at home, I wasn’t looking up for the top of each building I walked past, and I pronounced the number nine like a good midwesterner rather than a good Tennesseean.
The giveaway, though, was that I didn’t have train legs.
She was in her seventies, groceries in tow, because that’s apparently what you do if you’re a local, and she was watching my knees buckle each time the L hit a bump, wiggle or stop in downtown Chicago. It was the ride back out from a weekend trip that was supposed to be with a friend who couldn’t come at the last minute, so I was a single dude spending a weekend in the city I thought of as home for two years in college.
My ride from Midway into town found me wearing my white earbuds plugged into my second generation iPod (you’re welcome) looking out the window of the Orange Line as we (me and all these strangers) made our way into the city. I don’t remember the song, and the fact that I remember the moment without the song makes it all the more important to me. Jostling into downtown, my legs apparently giving me away more than I realized, I found myself gazing out the window noticing that times like these are things of movies and soundtracks, people and lives and entire worlds passing by as the music plays to make sure that you know that every moment of what you are seeing is important for something that’s coming in the story, or for something that has just happened that you’re still chewing on.
It wasn’t until my trip out that I was informed that my legs gave me away as an outsider.
Now, in the small, rural West Tennessee town that holds my work and family and friends, I often forget that were I to add a soundtrack there is great importance to the transit, the one mile commute to work, the people standing on the side of the road, in front of me in line, in the waiting room at the office, on the other end of the phone. And my realizing that the soundtrack is––or at least should be playing––makes me more aware that I am using my non-city legs, perhaps my small, rural West Tennessee town legs, to navigate these waters in ways that hopefully do justice and love mercy and walk humbly in the town that is and has been home for quite some time.
It’s worth a soundtrack, I think. The people must be.
And we will spot your city legs. ha.
djordan
Pine Tree
most hopeful 