Walking Toward Ferguson

It was still dark when I dropped him off outside the Delta entrance of the Portland airport early Wednesday morning.  In the past several years of our married life airport runs have become routine – a quick stop, a light kiss and a promise of a later call from the next destination.  And usually on the ride home I’m moving ahead, thinking about my upcoming errands or the ever running to-do list in my head.  But this day was different.

As much as we tried to treat it the same, everything was different on this morning.  This morning my glasses fogged as I tried in vain to fight back the tears that were threatening.  This morning my heart ached with the weight of it all.  This morning I could hear my breath in the dark, silence of the car, short and rapid with the fear I was trying to push down. 

I hated the reason for this trip, the need of it.  In my mind were the images of the previous night’s news, the words of the obviously frightened reporter, looking over her shoulder anxiously throughout. The angry faces of the crowd, the threatening police decked out in their military garb, the frantic press shuffling from place to place, on the hunt for the story. I wanted to say no, don’t go.  It’s not safe.  But instead I kissed him good-bye and drove away because in spite of the possible danger, there was the need.  There were the cries from the street.  There was the threat of the overwhelming darkness. And there was the call.

“¹⁴ For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility…. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, ¹⁶ and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. ¹⁷ He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. ¹⁸ For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.” Eph. 2:14-18

Just over a year ago I sat on the edge of my bed in Atlanta, hot tears streaming down my face.  The Zimmerman verdict had just been announced and my children and I, including my black boys, my young adult sons, had watched it together, the shock and horror of it rendering us all speechless.  A short while after I retreated to my bedroom, wrestling with the awful truth that was becoming all too clear.  In my country, my children – all born and raised on American soil, educated in American schools where they saluted American flags, working at honest jobs where they paid American taxes, registered and voted in their county assigned American polling places – had been declared to be of less value than the children of the dominant culture or perhaps of no value at all.  Our laws would not protect them.  Our government would not protect them.  We were, it appeared, on our own.

Still, the Martin family was gracious.  There was no violence in the street, just a collective sigh and ache in the soul of our communities.  We wiped our tears, swallowed our sorrow and kept moving.  But though many of our non-black, Christian brothers and sisters sat in heart-breaking silence, our loving God took note.

Unfortunately, forgiveness and grace did not bring repentance for the bodies of our children have continued to fall at the border, on the reservation and in the streets of urban neighborhoods.  The powers that be were ordained by God for good for us but instead many have chosen rather to destroy.  This cannot continue for the black and brown child has also been brought near and reconciled by the cross.  We too have drunk from the well of living water and been invited to abundant life.  Any people and any government in any town anywhere that denies that is an unjust people, government and town at odds with the King and His kingdom and we, who have been called out and sent as ambassadors of that kingdom must respond.  It is for this reason that we have been reborn.

So, despite the pit in my stomach and my shallow breath, I left my love at that airport in the predawn hours, headed to join the gathering saints in Ferguson and the powerful stance of a peaceful resistance, and drove back down the interstate towards home.  Because the kingdom of heaven is suffering violence.  Because I have sons and daughters in this America.  Because of the call.

Stepping Off the Treadmill

Sixteen months ago shots rang out at our neighborhood middle school.  Police were called.  Helicopters flew overhead. Reporters swarmed the streets.  That was Atlanta, the southeastern United States.  And we watched as poor children, predominantly black and brown, stood shaking and crying in the arms of terrified parents.  Anger and terror and shock rolled through the streets of our community like a wave.

Today, two thousand, six hundred and forty miles away in the "great northwest", shots are fired again.  This time at a local high school just 9 miles from our home in Portland, Oregon.  Police were called. Reporters swarm. Predominantly middle-class, white parents stand shaking, crying, waiting in the streets for their children to be released to them.  The local newspaper reports that this is the 74th school shooting on an American school campus since Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, December 2012.  Seventy-four.

I watched the story unfolding this morning across half the flat screens hanging from the ceiling of my local gym - bold headlines across the top of the screens, real time information scrolling along the bottom, images of crying parents, grim-faced officers and dozens of police cars with lights still flashing looping again and again in the middle.  From the gym sound system, in ironic and almost mocking contrast, blared Pharrell's popular pop hit, "Happy."

I stepped off the treadmill, fighting back the tears that were threatening and the ache in my heart.  "I guess we're not so happy after all," I thought as I headed for the locker room.  And all the dancing, "room without a roof" music in the world wasn't changing that.  I sighed as I closed the locker and headed back through the gym to the parking lot.  I started my car and the story continued to follow me, spilling from the car radio.  I groaned as they continually referred to "the shooter" and "the students" as though the student with the gun had not been child as well.

They are all crying out to us, whether from poverty or privilege, hoping that we will hear them over the drone of our own voices and respond.  While hiding underneath cheap department store make-up and expensive Beats headphones, they want to be seen.  And though working overtime to appear aloof, cool, brooding or indifferent, like us, they want to be considered and understood.  Because at the end of it all, "the shooter" and the "student victims" are often one and the same.

They were all kids - tired, frightened, angry, lonely...armed children.  And all our liberal freedom and conservative rights, our i-technology and PC windows, no-whip lattes and cleansing juices, electric cars, legal weed, organic food, 401K's, IRAs, NRAs, cul-de-sacs and condos, Prozac and Zoloft, gun loving, Obama hating, smart phones, smart houses, smart cars or dummy books haven't been able to help them. We have to help our children.  We have to save our marriages. We have to fight for our families and our neighbors.  We have to rescue our faith from our politics and our friendships from social media.  We have to reconcile our communities and we have to do it today.

74 schools... and counting.