Disclaimer: This is a messy, streams of consciousness post that meanders all over the place. It just came out like this and I have left it here for now. Consider yourselves warned.
Let’s get Harriet on the twenty! I can’t imagine why anyone in their right
mind in the year two thousand & seventeen would be opposed to this. That’s how far I’ve come. I know that people,
like Donald Trump, are against it. Did
you know that he suggested she might be more comfortable on the two dollar
bill? Actually he implied that he would be more comfortable with her on
the two. It might just be that he really
admires Andrew Jackson, but still. When’s
the last time you saw a two dollar bill? My granddaddy, Woodrow Wilson Carter,
used to hand them out & I tried to hang onto them for life, but I don’t think
I could locate one in my house if I tried. The golden dollar which was finally graced
by Sacagawea is beautiful to look at, but who ever gets a glance at her? I’ll tell you who, kids whose grandparents
like to delight small children with coins, which is a good start but you get my
drift. Did you know that they ceased
production of it in 2008 due to lack of popularity? The two dollar bill. I think we’ll pass on that.
I honestly can’t wrap my head around people being skittish
or reticent, in 2017, about putting a brave black woman, one of our nation’s
most unlikely heroes, on a piece of paper money than any of us barely even uses anymore. It literally makes no sense to
me. It’s the kind of thing that I would
think the minute you hear it you would think to yourself, Oh my gosh, what a
great idea. Why haven’t we done this
sooner? And I’m from possibly the most racist town in Alabama, bless
its heart. I hope I’m wrong about that. There is a lot of competition, or
there was when I lived there, up until 1990. But I’ve been gone from Alabama 20
years, and I know it has gotten better. I just don’t know how much better.
In Seattle, I still get asked where I am from about every five days. And I still have a very I’m not from here kind of feeling even though I love everything about Seattle except her weather. And please don’t go talking to me about how great the summers are. I like them, but I also like swimming in warm outdoor pools & wearing flip flops until November. Call me crazy, but I like spring & fall, too. Nine months of winter feels a tiny bit too long, and gray is not even in my top five favorite colors. I miss vitamin D & humidity, until I forget & go home in August. What I am saying is that I still feel like a foreigner here most days. Like I’m in town for a visit from some exotic place most people who live here have never been. And I have no plans to leave even though I will never be able to convince the people I love the most to visit often or move here & open up a Johnny’s BBQ. But I love it here. I really do. I own Seahawks gear & was once mistaken for a Huskies fan.
But back to Harriet & all the stuff that is still wrong with our country. Back to Making America Greater which I am all for, on account of how Jesus-y & humanistic that is. I’m also optimistic, in general, so hope springs eternal.
I’m from Alabama. Cullman, Alabama. A place I love with all my heart. I’m the kind of person who has proudly uttered, more than once, American by birth, Southern by the grace of God. I feel gratitude for my birthplace & where I grew up. I love the South. I love it so much that I love to see it capitalized, because it feels worthy of a big letter at the front. A Harper Lee sized indulgence that I participate in regularly. It’s my home. My sweet home. Like the song. The song people love. All over the world. Sweet Home Alabama. Like the movie with Reese Witherspoon that I got in an argument/near fight over when a male attorney from my Seattle Presbyterian church suggested it was unrealistic for a girl who had made it in New York City to leave all that for a Southern man. I smugly let him know he had no clue what he was talking about & obviously hadn’t met a lot of Southern men, because that movie made me seriously wonder if I should move back home. I didn't, but I did sign up for Match.com to date a guy in an Auburn hat. Desperate times as they say. Turns out he was Aubie back in the day, turned Mariner Moose, & that he just wasn't that into me. It was probably for the best. #rolltide
Cullman County is where Borat was filmed. Remember the
hilarious scene in the woods where Borat talks to guys on a hunting trip & compares them to characters from Sex and the City? That's my neck of the woods. Cullman County. It’s an
upside down triangle-shaped county in Tornado Alley about an hour north of
Birmingham on I-65. It's a city of 15,000
where a lot of people stop to get gas, eat at Cracker Barrel, or go visit their
grandparents. I went to Cullman High
School where my beloved-by-all history teacher, Mrs. Tiffin, told us personal
accounts of the KKK burning crosses in her front yard. And I went to East Elementary where I
couldn’t go out on the playground one day in first grade, because the KKK was
protesting the admittance of three Black children who had just been sent to an
orphanage in our all-white town because their daddy killed their momma, a fact
I just learned a few years ago from my second grade teacher who had been furious about it. I still wanna be like her when I grow up. Cullman
County. A place that was rumored to have an awful sign at its entrance years,
years before I was born, letting Black people know they were not welcome there
after dark. Where, in my lifetime, Black employees of a moving company from Birmingham wouldn’t take the furniture past
the exit on the highway. Where I was booed at, by Black athletes, during the state track meet in Selma, Alabama, because my black & gold jersey simply said Cullman on it. Where, at my
ten-year high school reunion, in the year 2000, I overheard a college-educated
classmate & premier athlete say that a Black guy wasn’t smart enough to
play quarterback at the University of Alabama. Where, though my blood started boiling upon hearing it, I said absolutely nothing.
My hometown is a place I felt nervous to admit being from
once I finally started having conversations with actual Black people. When I finally eked it out to a fellow
staffer at a University of Alabama cheerleading camp to a Black Alabama
cheerleader, the first words out of his mouth were do I need to check your pillowcases
for eye holes? He was teasing me so I laughed & pretended to be offended, but I still couldn't blame him for asking. It was a relief to go to college & optometry school
in Birmingham, because then I could just tell Black people I was from there, a very white lie. So I’m from Cullman, in north central Alabama, where I’d venture to bet
there are still a few people who aren’t in favor of replacing Andrew Jackson
with Harriet Tubman on the twenty.
But why in the world not? What are they scared of? I know
it’s wrong to call people they, but I feel like I’m talking about my people,
Southern white people, so
maybe it’s ok. What's up with them? I forget. I think maybe I knew at one time. I’ve been a racist for more of my life than not, without even knowing it. And I just assume I still am, in countless
ways I can’t see yet. I’m sure I have
more room to grow than I could even imagine. I want to be better, to
be different, to grow & transform until the day I die. As a Christian, I think that’s
kind of the point. Isn’t it? To be transformed more & more into the likeness
of Christ. And, at the risk of stating the obvious, Jesus wasn’t a racist. I want to be so much more Jesus-y than I am - five, ten, twenty years down the road. But when people don’t look, smell, talk, dress, eat, or act like me, I
make a thousand snap judgments that I am mostly not even aware of. I try not to do that, judge people by looks & stereotypes & my miniscule personal experience with pretty much every
other race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic group than my own, but the fact that I
have to remember to try not to means that I do it all the time.
But I don’t want all of that personal baggage & where I
am on the road to not being a racist to keep me from doing everything I know
is right, right now. And I can’t imagine
that it wouldn’t be right & good & godly to put Harriet on the twenty. If we go with the America is a Christian
nation argument (I prefer to say a nation of religious
freedom), or if you are one of those people who think America should be a Christian nation because you
are evangelical & were taught like me that the goal in life is to bring
everyone in the world to a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, on account of
him being the Way, the Truth, the Life & all, then our journey as a nation
should be a Christian journey which by definition is one of repentance & redemption. I apologize to all of my teachers for that last run on sentence. It's not your fault. I'm just too lazy, busy, & tired to blog with correct grammar, sentence structure, & punctuation. Thank you for your service. Somehow I scored a world-class education in a tiny town in Alabama. Teachers are world changers, & they do not get paid enough.
This might be a good time to tell you I have a Masters of
Spiritual Nuture degree from an evangelical Christian seminary. If we are trying to be a Christian nation, it
should, by definition, be a journey of sanctification where we leave the old/the
sinful/the unredeemed & put on the new clothes of Christ, which means love,
joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, & self-control. Because against these there is no law - at least that’s what the Bible says. Or we can go with love your neighbor as yourself if you like your
morality more succinct or straight from the mouth of Jesus. Love God & love people was Jesus’ bottom
line. And I know, believe me I know, that
we can argue about what that looks like for years, but, if you’re a Christian,
we can at least agree about what we are going for. We are supposed to be
Christ-bearers. Or little Christs. That’s
what Christian means. When someone told me that, for the first time, at First Baptist Church, it blew me away, because it seemed impossible, especially at age sixteen.
I know this next part sounds all seminary, but please bear with me. I am getting
to the age where I love what I love & I don’t care quite as much about what other people think (even though I still care a lot). Anyway, a phrase that has been rolling around in my
head, for at least ten years now, is on earth as it is in heaven. Somewhere
along the way, I was introduced to the lofty idea of the kingdom of God, which sounded spiritual & vague. The idea was that Jesus
ushered in God's kingdom of love, joy, peace, etc. (see above), but that it is an already & not yet kind of thing. Jesus kicked it off when he came down here to
show us how to live & love, then He handed off the baton with a promise to be
with us in our souls. Before leaving, he
prayed a prayer that I learned in church & prayed in high school before track & gymnastics meets. It haunts me to this day. In a good way. Our Father, who
art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Now
here is the kicker, at least for me. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Blah. Blah. Blah. Just
kidding. The rest is good, but this sentence is the one that won’t let me
go. What does it mean for God’s will to
be done on earth as it is in heaven?
Heaven. My best
definition of heaven, based on my own flawed-I-know theology is where things
are as they should be. No more tears & all. God is Love. God’s in Heaven.
Heaven is where love is & where all that is not love is not. No one in heaven
will be a racist. No one. God’s Kingdom
will have come, which I can’t really wrap my head around, & that is as
mysterious & maddening as it is comforting to me. It’s believable & unbelievable at the same
time. When my kids ask about heaven, I
feel so inadequate to explain the sheer seeming impossibility of it. And they are only four & six years old. But I’m a believer. I really am. I can’t quite shake it, nor do I want to. Feel free to roll your eyes at this next part, but what comes to
mind is a Helen Keller quote I heard as a teenager. Helen said I believe in immortality because I have immortal longings. I read a biography of her in third grade, & I’ve been drawn to her ever since. And I
love good ol’ CS Lewis who said if we have longings this world cannot satisfy
then perhaps it’s because we are made for another world. So anyway. . .on earth as it is in heaven. Easy peasy, right? Maybe not, but it seems pretty straightforward to me when it comes to some things - like racism. And, for the record, I tend to overthink just about everything.
Another verse that comes to mind is one that was thrown at
me during my own personal nightmare that I won’t drag you into right now. Someone reminded me that, in the bible, God promises to redeem the years the locusts have eaten. Kind of weird, gross, a little hard to relate
to, but hopeful & poetic at the same time. It sounds like a very good thing. So it seems like common sense to me
that maybe we are each supposed to do our part to redeem the years the locusts
have eaten in our own country which brings me around to slavery & confederate
monuments.
People, Jesus is not proud of these monuments. Or the confederacy. Not at all. Just this week, Trump said he loves the dreamers & that he loves everybody. I hope that’s true. But I know
Jesus loves everybody. I think all of us
who believe Jesus was more than a human agree on that. If not, I can’t help
you. Not right now. And Jesus is waiting, very patiently it seems, for us to
take those monuments down. I don’t know
what all the fuss is about. I realize
that each man bronzed on a horse is someone’s great great great grandfather (not sure how many greats are required) & that
he was made in the image of God just like you & me. And he probably had some
stellar qualities & maybe even did some heroic things in his life, because we
are all a mixed bag & very few people are pure evil. But fighting for the
South in the Civil War was not one of them. He may have thought he was fighting for something good. He may have thought he was fighting for his & his family’s survival. And maybe he was. But he was also fighting for something bad, something evil actually,
for slavery to continue. Maybe he was fully convinced in his own mind that his
cause was just, but it was not. Period. There is no other way to
see the Civil War. He may have loved his
wife & his children & his soldiers, but fighting for slavery to continue
was wrong. Maybe he even asked for & deserves forgiveness, but he does not
deserve a monument in a public place to honor his service or sacrifice during
the Civil War.
One of my favorite things about country songs & certain Southerners
is the ability to distill a truth down to a few simple words, because sometimes
things really are that simple. As some
astute tweeters/total strangers have pointed out to me, Germany doesn’t have any Hitler statues. We don’t need any statues honoring the
confederacy or anyone who fought for it in the Civil War. Is slavery as bad as genocide? I’m gonna have
to say yes. It’s a free country, so you
are free to disagree, but I’m calling same same. Or at the very least evil evil. Surely we can all agree on that.
So, there shouldn’t be a single monument standing in a public
place that honors a confederate soldier. Why doesn’t that sit well with people? The easy answer is that people are racist. But I don't buy that. Sure, there are overt racists that are all
for monuments, but it has to be more nuanced than that. Charles Barkley doesn’t really care if they
come down, but I think his point is that there are much bigger fish to fry if
we are serious about helping Black people. It seems way down on his list when it comes to the equality & safety
of Black people. Condoleeza thinks they should stand. I’m not sure why. Is she resigned to it? Is she focused on
bigger problems? I’m guessing she is,
too, but that makes my ears perk up, because, obviously, she is Black & I am
not. I wrongly assumed that every Black person in
Alabama, if given the opportunity to vote, would vote to have them removed from
public places. And I have assumed that they would vote
to rename every Robert E. Lee school while they were at it. I would vote for that. I think I would also vote for it if I were Black & still living in Alabama, but I’m not, so I don’t know for sure. Put the statues in a museum if you want to, but only
if it provides context. Tell the stories
of when the monuments were erected. Tell
the plain truth about the Civil War. We
have Holocaust museums & memorials for a reason. We all know that history tends to repeat
itself. We need stark reminders of what
not to do. We know the capacity for evil
in the human heart. We know the capacity
for evil by good church-going Christian people trying to do the right thing. We need reminders, of course. But we don’t need monuments in public places
that seem to call evil good. Hate what
is evil. Cling to what is good. That’s the bible again. Abolishing slavery is
good. Put up a monument to that in its
place. Or don’t. Just get rid of what we now know is not good. Why isn’t that crystal clear to people? What’s the cost? What is there to lose? If I'm wrong, let's hear it. Enlighten me. What is the godliest move?
Before Charlottesville, it never occurred to me that the
monuments I’ve seen in places like Charleston & Savannah might offend
someone. It never occurred to me that a Black person might look at a monument & see it as a celebration of or the
defense of slavery or a slave owner. It
literally never crossed my mind. It
never occurred to me as I toured former plantations that the very existence of a
restored plantation turned tourist destination would be offensive to a black
person. When I went with my family to
the Dixie Stampede as a teenager, it didn’t cross my mind that a black person
might not enjoy it or feel comfortable there. I thought it was clever that they served us a whole meal without
utensils, & it seemed like good clean fun. I remember passing a flag quickly
down the isle. I don’t remember if we sat on the South side or if we won. I didn’t notice the bathroom signs. There wasn’t a flicker in my soul of anything
being amiss. Nothing felt wrong. I liked seeing the pretty antebellum dresses & the handsome uniformed men on horses. It was kinda like watching a Disney
movie. Nothing about it seemed real. Nothing
felt wrong. The Civil War seemed like
one in a string of many wars in our country, that we had to study in school,
that happened way before my time, with absolutely no impact on my life.
I don’t like studying history. I’ve never been able to keep the dates
straight. I have a fear of games like
trivial pursuit or trivia nights in bars, because I remember so few details & dates from my few history classes. I
took one in college, because I had to, & I picked the easiest professor. I’ve watched historical movies, but that
doesn’t help either. I feel fully
engaged while I am reading or watching then I promptly forget the facts when
the test is over or the movie ends. I
know embarrassingly little about the Civil War & the confederacy, especially
given all I’m saying about it. But maybe that makes it easier for me. What
I know is that slavery is & was unconscionable. There’s no yeah but in my mind. And I think most of America feels this way.
But maybe that’s the West Coast coming out in me. I like to think it’s the Christian coming out
in me, but I’ve been a Christian for way longer than I’ve felt this way.
I think about 99% of us can agree that we don’t need
anything in our society that implicitly or explicitly endorses, glorifies,
honors or celebrates slavery or slave owners. And I’m so sick of people, like our president, saying this is some kind
of slippery slope. No, it’s not. We are a country of smart & compassionate
people who mostly want to do the right thing, the loving thing, the good thing
for all of our citizens. I think most of
us believe if it hurts one of us, it hurts all of us. Or if you need a Christian analogy to get on
board then we are all part of the body of Christ. Hurting one part of the body hurts the whole
body. And, as Christians, we are to lay down our lives for each other which
means we are to take down our monuments for each other. Because, call me crazy, but that’s what Jesus
would do.
My children are Chinese. I think that has tendered my heart
in a way that maybe nothing else could to consider what life is like for a
person of color in America. I often
think of what it would be like for my children if we moved back to Alabama. And you know what I think? I think they would be treated with far less
racism than if my children were black. I’ve thought about adopting a black child, & I have a cousin, that I like to
call my nephew, who is black. I am also related to someone, on the other side of my family, who has
made it clear that she wouldn’t want a black child in her extended family. I don’t want my little cousin/nephew to have to walk
past a single statue erected to celebrate a racist war. He already has to live in a town where racism
is not yet gone, where the kingdom of God is coming but is not yet fully
realized in this way. Where someone might be mean to
him on the playground, not because he is a kid & kids are mean, but specifically
because he is black. That brings out the
mama bear in me. It makes me wanna growl at the unjesusy people.
There is a fantastic civil rights museum in Birmingham, Alabama. Maybe it needs a graveyard out back where
confederate statues go to die. I think
that image might've stuck in my mind if I had visited it as a child when words from
a textbook didn’t quite take up residence in me. It seems like a place every fourth grader in Alabama should take a field
trip to when they study Alabama history. Then they should take a second trip
back in tenth grade during American history. Kids from Georgia, Mississippi, & South Carolina should be strongly
encouraged to come as well.
Because it’s only as a 45 year old adult that I feel like I
am becoming aware of & care for more than a minute about racist overtones in
politics & personal conversations. It
is only now that I am more able to even see & have begun to care, in a real way, about
systemic problems that need to be addressed. I feel very late to the game when it comes to speaking up or asking
questions or reading up. And it’s hard
to stay focused on or committed to, because the reality is that the problems
around race in our society affect my day-to-day life so little. My quality of
life will probably be pretty great whether things get better in my lifetime or
not for people of color. I’m just now realizing that I need to
seek out voices of minorities to teach me what their experience is like in
America, because it's vastly different than mine. I’m finally paying attention to my own feelings about & reactions to
racism & wondering what I can specifically do to help. I only now want to be
part of the solution in more than a be nice to people in a “do no harm” kind of
way.
There was a time in my life when I hesitated to touch a
black person’s skin. I was seventeen
years old & a UCA cheerleading camp instructor. I was helping a high school girl climb up on a pyramid & there was
hair under her arm. She didn’t smell like me & she was dripping with
sweat. I probably was, too. As I helped her climb up, I felt an inkling
of shame. Healthy shame that I hesitated
to touch her. That same summer I went
through a drive through with a black guy in my car. He was a buff cheerleader at NC State. I was worried that the Hardee’s employee, a
total stranger in a podunk Georgia town, might think we were dating. Later, his
hand was the first black hand I ever held, all white on the inside like mine, which
came as a total surprise. I remember
doing my first chair stunt with a tall black cheerleader from George Washington
University. I sat in his hand & shook
my pom poms. I do not remember the first white guy’s hand I sat in to do a cheerleading stunt. When I moved to Seattle, a very handsome
black guy asked me out while I was sitting on the grassy shore of Lake
Washington. He owned his own wine
business & gave me his card. I
politely declined a date & never called, partly because he was a stranger,
but mostly because he was black.
Driving across the country with my husband, I heard a sad
story about black cabbage patch kids getting adopted last & with tears in my
eyes realized I never would have picked a black doll either. In my thirties, I sat with one of my best
friends at a Thai restaurant in Magnolia & told her that I didn’t think I
could adopt a black child. It seemed
like too much of a risk, that I didn’t know if I had it in me to try to insert
myself in the black community. I was fearful that I’d be rejected or looked
down upon. I didn’t want to feel anyone’s contempt for making a choice, as a privileged white woman, to adopt a black child. It seemed so much easier to adopt an Asian child, a Filipino child, or a South American
one.
But now, if we adopt again, I’d love to adopt from
Haiti. The fear is gone. Not that that makes me not a racist. But it does mean there’s been some kind of
progress over the long haul. And I think
it is almost always a long haul. I have
lots of education, & I am thankful for it, but it hasn’t done that much to
help with my own racism save one multi-cultural issues class that was
eye-opening & life-altering. But that
was in graduate school, in my thirties, at a good Christian seminary, with a brilliant
biracial woman professor. How many people
get that? How many other people need it
as much as I did? I don’t know. I’ve also been in church since birth, but it
took me years to even realize that the song Jesus Loves the Little Children was
talking about colors of actual people. What
has helped me the most is just getting to know people. Eating,
drinking, traveling, diving, studying, volunteering, & dancing with people who do not look or sound
a bit like me. And listening instead of talking, which is so not my forte.
And I don't know about you, but I’m so tired of white people telling me what black people
should & shouldn’t be offended by. I
call it whitesplaining, which i know someone thought of way before me. In
my opinion, when it comes to the confederacy, slavery, the Civil War, we should
let black people decide which flags to fly, which monuments stand, which
tourist attractions need to go, what reparations can be made, what would actually help,
what would be healing, who should be honored, what would be empowering, how I need
to change, how we need to change, & how to move forward. Because I don’t even know what on
earth as it is in heaven looks like in those realms. Dixie stampede seemed pretty great to
me. I have ideas & guesses but no
solutions that I’m sure are the right way forward. A few things just seem like
common sense. The confederate flag seemed like a no brainer as soon as I
realized it was offensive to fly it. But
I really didn’t know it was until someone pointed it out to me. It hadn’t occurred to me until I saw some controversy about it in the news. And
even then it kinda went in one ear & out the other. Taking it down seemed like a good idea, but
saying anything about it or doing anything about it didn’t even occur to
me.
I’m just in this moment thinking about how racist Old
South, a fraternity tradition of Kappa Alpha, is. Is that still going on? If so, it might be a good time to stop it. They're fraternity boys. It would take less than five minutes to come up with a better costume party tradition. It seemed like a neat idea to me back in 1990 except that my freshman-at-Auburn prom date had grown a scraggly beard for it that I wasn't crazy about. It didn’t occur to me that Old South
parties at Auburn were in any way tied to the fact that there was gossip going
around about a girl who might bring a black guy to prom. I thought that was fine, but I didn't come to their defense. Looking back, I wish I would have. Can you see a pattern here?
I have always loved the song Dixie, but it never occurred to me that a black person might be offended by
it. Never. That seems weird now, but that
was my reality. It was just a hauntingly
pretty song to me. Growing up, I never
associated the word Dixie with the confederacy. Alabama’s license plates boldly claimed that we were the Heart of Dixie, & I thought that had a nice ring to it with a cute heart on the tags to boot. I have always loved nicknames, so I liked that Alabama had a
nickname. But if my black neighbors tell
me Dixie is offensive (& they shouldn’t have to, but they do because there is
so much white obliviousness to racism), then I should never sing it or put it
on my car again. What is so hard about that? I’ll admit there was a dang in
my soul upon realizing a song I liked was racist, it felt like someone was raining on my parade, but surely the joy of a
better world far outweighs that or at least it should. Shouldn’t it?
So let’s get Harriet on the twenty & take all those
monuments down. Let’s be the greatest
generation. Let’s be more on earth as it
is in heaven than our parents & their parents & every generation before
them. Let’s listen closely for what we
don’t yet know about the racism that still exists in our own hearts, in our neighborhoods, in our society, and in our systems. Let’s say not on our watch will racism
flourish or will anti-racism efforts ever be thwarted or get a bad rap. Let’s
never let something as basic as black lives mattering meet resistance or become
controversial.
I think the hardest part is that most of us, & I’m talking
about white people here, don’t know we are racist or we don’t feel any
responsibility for other people who are. Because we don’t harbor any ill will toward people of another race that
we encounter in our walks of life, we think we are fine, our friends are fine,
people we respect are fine, things are fine, & there really isn’t anything
else that we can or need to do. But it’s
just not true. We need to get Harriett
on the twenty & we need to get those monuments to a better place. Maybe we could knock em’ all down at the same time like they knocked down the Berlin
Wall. Or Trump could declare a week for
it. I say let black people decide the when & where & how & who. Let’s listen to those who are offended & let’s make it right. Repentance means
saying I was wrong, I’m sorry I hurt you, & asking how can I make it right.
Let’s ask how can we make this one thing right? Let’s listen & do it, if at
all possible. Then let’s go back & ask again what is the next good thing we can do? Because we are all made for on
earth as it is in heaven. I think it will feel
good to do. I think it will feel better than
what we’ve got going on right now, for all of us, whether we know it or not. In college, I was mildy pressured to pick a
life verse in order to make Jesus happy. I landed on I have come that they might have life and have it to the
full. Less racism means more fullness. More life. That verse can also be interpreted as meaning
life and more life, life on top of life, heaped up life. And that is exactly what we should be
shooting for, for every person on the planet & every person who might not be
as welcomed as we are in any of our cities, states, churches, schools, or neighborhoods.
It is a colossal task. A God-sized one. And it won’t all get healed up before heaven, but in my not so humble
opinion, trying is definitely the way to go. Because I think it's what Jesus would do. Do you?
