Skip to main content

McKinney, Texas

Scene: McKinney, Texas

A white police officer yelling at black and brown teens, telling them to sit down, to leave, to get down, to disperse. Officer chases young black men. Officer forces black teenage girl to the ground, by her hair and neck, and then holds her there with his knee in her back. Teen girl has empty hands and is wearing a bikini. White adult males mill around and do not intervene with the officers or attempt to console and assist any of the teenagers present.

Year: 1954 1968 2015

Today, I was thinking of the friends of the paralytic man in Mark 2. They couldn't get the healing, the help, the relief needed for their friend by getting him through the door. They couldn't wait for it to come to them. The option that seemed clearest was to tear the roof off the house. Rip up the clay, the leaves, the hardened mud, and straw. Rain down dirt clods and stick scraps on the (self) righteous leaders gathered below. Raise the roof and get this done. Now.

The time has come to do the same in this country.

Silence is complicity. Waiting is criminal (aiding and abetting). Victim blaming is shameful.

We who have the privilege of white skin, light skin, money, placement, opportunity, platform, or otherwise must raise the roof on racism in the country. We have to tear out the mud of a system that paralyzes and ignores the plight of millions. We who can, not only should, but must.

Respect is not a zero-sum game. No one loses by acknowledging that black and brown lives matter.

Racism is a house that corrupts all who enter and live within its contaminating walls, even if some residents believe they can resist the pull.

When will we be ready to get our hands dirty by tearing off the roof?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Religious Holidays in Anchorage

You may have read in the Anchorage Daily News about a new policy regarding certain religious holidays and the scheduling of school activities. If not, a link to the article is here . The new rules do not mean that school will be out on these new holiday inclusions, but that the Anchorage School District will avoid scheduling activities, like sporting events, on these days. The new list includes Passover, Rosh Hashanah , Yom Kippur , Eid al - Fitr and Eid al - Adha . They are added to a list which includes New Year's, Orthodox Christmas and Easter, Good Friday, Easter, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas. The new holidays may be unfamiliar to some: Passover is a Jewish celebration, in the springtime, that commemorates the events in Egypt that led up to the Exodus. The name of the holiday comes specifically from the fact that the angel of death "passed over" the houses of the Israelites during the plague which killed the eldest sons of the Egyptians. Passover is a holiday ...

Latibule

I like words and I recently discovered Save the Words , a website which allows you to adopt words that have faded from the English lexicon and are endanger of being dropped from the Oxford English Dictionary. When you adopt a word, you agree to use it in conversation and writing in an attempt to re-introduce said word back into regular usage. It is exactly as geeky as it sounds. And I love it. A latibule is a hiding place. Use it in a sentence, please. After my son goes to bed, I pull out the good chocolate from my latibule and have a "mommy moment". The perfect latibule was just behind the northwest corner of the barn, where one had a clear view during "Kick the Can". She tucked the movie stub into an old chocolate box, her latibule for sentimental souvenirs. I like the sound of latibule, though I think I would spend more time defining it and defending myself than actually using it. Come to think of it, I'm not really sure how often I use the ...

Would I Do?

Palm Sunday Mark 11:1-11 One of my core memories is of a parishioner who said, "I don't think I would have been as brave as the three in the fiery furnace. I think I would have just bowed to the king. I would have bowed and known in my heart that I still loved God. I admire them, but I can tell the truth that I wouldn't have done it." (Daniel 3) To me, this man's honesty was just as brave. In front of his fellow Christians, in front of his pastor, he owned up to his own facts: he did not believe he would have had the courage to resist the pressures of the king. He would have rather continued to live, being faithful in secret, than risk dying painfully and prematurely for open obedience to God.  I can respect that kind of truth-telling. None of us want to be weighed in the balance and found wanting. For some of us, that's our greatest fear. The truth is, however, that I suspect most of us are not as brave as we think we are. The right side of history seems cle...