status quo | most hopeful

Jan 20 2014

letter TO a Birmingham prison: on MLK Day

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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.

Tagged 8 clergymen, church, justice, letter from a birmingham prison, letter to MLK, martin luther king, mlk, status quo

May 20 2012

to the graduates with great expectations

My thoughts today are with yesterday’s graduates for some reason. And not just yesterday’s from college, but those who graduated last weekend from high school as well. These are students I’ve become friends with whether through church, through teaching, through internships or through other friends. You have spent your time working or laughing at my house, working and laughing around the world, and working and laughing in the classroom. We have met for late-night meetings, early morning meetings, lunch meetings, last-minute meetings.

And you fill me with great expectations!

More so than I remember other groups in the past, you are a group who is asking good questions to bad answers, and who are reading beyond the first page of other people’s thoughts and lives and situations. You are eagerly looking into what else it means for you to be a Christian in the world besides living a certain-kind-of-looking life in the middle of an otherwise chase for the American Dream. You are hesitant to gate yourselves in, block yourselves off, and cover your eyes and ears from the world in which you have been placed. You will argue and laugh with one another in the same breath. You will take off on a whim to aid one another. You will stand up to yourselves when one of you is standing on top of another.

And you fill me with great expectations!

Now that you’ve graduated, you will be challenged to move quickly into certain kinds of worlds.

You will be challenged to quickly move into worlds where money and perception and privilege and status quo are fought for, killed for, lied for, settled for.

You will be challenged to quickly move into world where it’s better off not trying and not being disappointed than seeking justice while, of course, being burned in the process as he told us we would be.

You will be challenged to quickly move into worlds where it is, of course, the best thing to do to challenge the status quo, the powers-that-be, the way it’s always been, but reminded that now is not the time, this is not the place, and not if you know what’s good for you and the future of your career.

You will be challenged to quickly move into worlds where you do not associate with that kind of person in those kinds of places with those kinds of thoughts because it’s something of which to be very afraid.

You will be challenged to quickly move into worlds where you read the first page, find a word or name that scares you because you are not familiar with it, and therefore are urged to close your eyes and ears and repeat what you have been told before.

But you fill me with great expectations!

Whether in the classroom, at dinner, in church or at work, I have already seen you move.

I’ve already seen you care nothing about money and perception and privilege and status quo; I’ve even seen you be willing to do lay down your life so that someone else can have something more.

I’ve already seen you choose to join the long defeat because you have decided that it is better to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly in obedience rather than fight for great ambitions or personal success.

I’ve already seen you suggest that now must be the time to pursue justice while challenging the powers-that-be and the status quo, because you know that it is never the right time for those on top to work for the best interests with and for those on the bottom.

I’ve already seen you enter into deep and honest relationships with the wrong kinds of people in the wrong kinds of places, and I’ve already seen God honor your choices by making you and them more like himself in the process.

I’ve already seen you read widely and thoughtfully, ask broad and dangerous questions, and engage in thoughtful and humble dialogue for the sake of seeking the truth. I’ve already seen a God––who needs not be protected––honor your search as you together discover him newly.

Because of what you have already shown yourselves to be, how you have already shown yourselves to move and breath in the world, I am filled with a new kind of courage as to where you will take us, where we will go together, what we will ask together, what we will learn together and what we will see God do together as we seek first his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

You make me incredibly proud, and fill me with great expectations.
Well done.

djordan
Pine Tree

Tagged after graduation, american dream, challenge, choices, college graduation, courageous, expectation, graduate, graduation, high school graduation, Micah 6:8, status quo

Apr 30 2012

5 Comments

learning to live, what they are teaching me

the risk of narrowing the voices

asking questions, freedom, safety, church, power

Choosing a paint color is one thing; seeking the truth is another.

One of my favorite lines of Madeleine L’Engle’s is, not in quotations because I can’t remember where it was, that God does not need our protection, and welcomes as many questions as we can dream up.

And I’ve noticed in the meantime that we are at risk not only of taking other people’s answers for truth, but also of taking other people’s advice on what the questions are to be asking in the first place. When our questions are guided, we are of course lead to certain answers from certain narrowed voices.

When we narrow the voices, we weaken our ability to discern at all. In thinking throughout history of all the situations and all those power and all those in the church, even, who have been led in obedience because they trust that someone else is doing the discerning, it is horrifying. We mistake proclaimed expertise for due diligence, and we are left unthinkingly joining in protection of the status quo.

Stifled questions means stifled dialogue, and it is in dialogue that progress is born and we get a little closer to the truth we are all of us after. Dialogue requires broad voices rather than a single voice, and there is perhaps no doubt in the promise that where two or more are gathered, there is something more true and holy present and happening.

I’ve been reading, this time by choice, the book that we long ago read in high school by mandate: Fahrenheit 451. I remembered thinking at the time that how ridiculous the notion was that people would be told what to read and what not to read, and that reading and thinking off of an approved list could result in death.

Book burning followed driven by those in charge, under the guise of protecting humanity from dangerous thought. Children then came up into families never knowing the art of book reading, thinking, questioning, debating, creating and imagining.

I thought it foolish then, but it doesn’t seem so foolish now. In fear of discerning many voices, we seek to narrow them down to the ones we know, or the ones we have been told to agree with: the approved book list. To read past the first page of another voice becomes treacherous and intimidating, because we wont know what to do with another line of thought. And so, as encouraged, we don’t think anymore. We ask the questions we’ve been told to ask and take the answers we’ve been given.

If we idolize those speaking or writing, or simply take their words, we aren’t able to listen to multiple voices because we have challenged the ability for the spirit to work in community, and given authority to some single voice.

With broad voices, however, we learn the art of listening and asking, hearing and being heard. With broad voices we learn how experience shapes understanding, and how injustice and power breed certain lines of thought. We learn where we are blind, and where we are gifted. With broad voices, we think enough to welcome for dinner a Boo Radley or a Hester Prynne. With broad voices, the combination of these truly human acts yields compassion and humility.

I’ve been in meetings where a million voices made it impossible to choose a paint color, and it has indeed been a nightmare.

I’ve also been in meetings where power is used to beg discussion, criticism, thoughtfulness, ideas, questions, dreams and disagreement…none of which should be mistaken for disunity…and it has been a beautiful and community-affirming endeavor.

There’s a difference between choosing a paint color and seeking the truth.

And what have we to fear if it’s the truth we’re after together.

djordan
Pine Tree

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