Bringing the Stones Back to Life, 2.0

         The work of rebuilding the Jerusalem temple wall in ancient times was painstaking, dangerous, and probably not much fun.  I certainly would not have volunteered to pour mortar and lay brick for the Dung Gate (ancient text from the book of Nehemiah 3:14).  To make matters worse, some people did not carry their load, literally or figuratively.  One section of city was repaired by the men of Tekoa, but their nobles would not put their shoulders to the work...(Neh. 3:5). And if that were not bad enough, others stood around and mocked the efforts of rebuilding. What are those feeble Jews doing?  Will they restore their wall?  Will they finish in a day? Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble? (4:2)

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           My parents divorced when I was 25.  The walls fell down in a world my siblings and I had always seen as invincible.  Parent/child relationships took on a new texture for all of us.  Wisdom is ours now, though, as children eventually grow up and see their parents through different eyes regardless of  marital status.  Nonetheless, at the time, that word "issues" began to surface.

            Issues are nothing but laundry...just something you have to deal with.  You may have to wash and clean only to find that you have to repeat the process, but the good news is that, like a favorite old pair of jeans, issues can fade with frequent washing.

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             In 2005, my sisters and I boarded an Amtrak train in Ft. Worth with our dad who absolutely, positively loved his rails.   Dad spoke to strangers as he always did,  introduced us proudly, and even "arranged" for the three of us to serenade the dining car with a rendition of a favorite song. As we rode the rails with our father through Cleburne, McGregor, and Temple on to our destination in Austin, we listened to those embellished stories and probably rolled our eyes as he started conversations with complete strangers--strangers to us, never to him.

           Moments such as this were a part of our rebuilding.  My brothers found their own moments to do the same.  This brings us back to the story from long ago.  In the rebuilding of the walls in Jerusalem, Nehemiah wrote of a father who repaired a section with what was probably quite unusual for that time....Shallum repaired the next section with the help of his daughters. (3:12)

           We were given the gift of time with our dad. 
           With this gift, we all realized that there is love even in the midst of the rubble.
           With this gift, we all made the choice to rebuild together--with the tools of mercy and grace.

            At last, dear Father, rest in peace. 
            It was your enduring love that helped bring the stones back to life.




WRITER'S NOTE:  This particular blog post is referred to as the 2.0 version as it is updated from a previous publishing done in my newsletter written in 2005 called "A New Song."
                     
           
         

A Better Place

I am not a Democrat.
I am not a Republican.
I am God's creation,
Created to grow, to learn, to love, to share, to think, to believe.

I grew up not even knowing what a Democrat or Republican was.
I learned to see the best in people.
I loved both the underdogs and the champions.
I shared with people who did not look just like me.
I came to think as my parents did and then to think for myself.
I came to believe that goodness and mercy would follow me all the days of my life.

I am not a Democrat.
I am not a Republican.
I am God's creation,
Created to search, to question, to explore, to fear, to believe.

I searched for the truth among friends, among antagonists, in books, in stories, in experiences.
I questioned the truth that had been spoon-fed to me, a truth of black and white.
I explored to find answers, not from one source but from several.
I feared the truth when I found it because it did not look the same as it had.
Yet, I believed because fear pushed me to see beyond.

I am not a Democrat.
I am not a Republican.
I am God's creation,
Created to be who I need to be in order to make the world better.

I choose to make the world better by calling out those who would purposefully bring division upon us, who sit back and see us turn on each other, and delight in the aftermath.
I choose to make the world better by calling out those who say they are public servants but who are instead self-serving.
I choose to make the world better by listening and responding with knowledge born of truth, not of lies.
I choose to make the world a better place by caring, when what I really want to do is run away and hide.

I am not a Democrat.
I am not a Republican.
I am God's creation.
I am God's.

And right now, in this moment, in this climate of divisiveness,
the only thing keeping me sane is knowing that the same God who made me also created both the  man I do not like and the child crying herself to sleep.

I choose to make the world a better place by praying........for him, for her, for all of us.
 

In the Beginning

Today I will welcome 23 Sixth Graders for two classes followed by 15 Seventh Graders for one 45-minute whirlwind. As if that weren't daunting enough, today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in my school with an enrollment which includes only one Black American student. Each year, it is important to me to prepare a lesson with various perspectives in mind:  my own, my students', and those of the Black community who honor Dr. King as the dedicated leader of the Civil Rights Movement. 

My own perspective was probably first shaped  by geography.  My parents chose to live on the east side of town; that simply meant our odds of attending more racially diverse schools were higher.  Aaron Heartfield was the first Black American whom I can remember from grade school. I just adored him because he made me laugh (he looked and acted much like a young Kenan Thompson of SNL fame), and I honestly was somewhat intrigued by his one bad eye.  Aaron's comedic antics at the lunch table were legendary, like when he would put an entire sugar cookie or hot roll in his mouth in one bite. Few things worse than getting tickled in the lunch room with a stern elementary teacher staring you down.

What I did not know about Aaron is that the school year in which he and I were born was the same year that Rosa Parks held her seat on that Montgomery bus.  I also had no clue that when Aaron and I were four that he could not have sat at a soda counter with me and had ice cream.  And clearly, it had not occurred to me that Aaron would not have been in my First Grade class or my Second Grade class or even my Third Grade class. He was in the segregated Lincoln School because that was the law. Until 1965.

In junior high, my perspectives were broadened by choir and volleyball and track as the natural blending of voices and athletic skills made us teammates.  Debra Collins, Shirley Sneed, Rose Thompson, Sharriel Asbury, Margaret Jackson, Mary Brandon, Joann Tippens.....people.  They wore those yarn ribbons in their hair just as I did (you know the ones if you had girl hair in the late 1960s).  But even then, I was unaware that the 1968 riots in Detroit involved racial strife.  I was naive about social prejudices. I could not experience blackness because I was white.  The best I could ever hope to do was to see us as people and as friends.

As for student perspectives, well, those have always created a teaching tightrope for me. How do I approach current event issues involving race, religion, or politics with 11 and 12-year-olds? The balancing bar on this tightrope must include some objectivity but also the reality that at this age their minds are being molded by many sources:  their families, their peers, and social media. I am juggling all of that input in trying to point out that this lesson on Dr. King matters.  Lessons on social issues matter.  History and current events go hand in hand to guide these students as they discover truths from their own studies, which I hope will involve reading, listening, observing, thinking, and traveling.

This is why I teach on Dr. King's birthday.  His story is not mine or my students' experiences, but the Civil Rights Movement is a part of our country's story.

Throughout the years of classroom teaching, I have heard the usual murmurs with regard to acknowledging MLK Day or Black History Month. "Did we really have to rename streets after him?"  "Why don't we have White History Month?" 

That brings me to the final perspective that I want my students to consider--the journey of  those who are not like themselves when it comes to race or religion (or absence of).  Dr. King spent far more time in positive affirmation  of what could be rather than in negative rhetoric of what was (church bombings, brutality, discrimination). He would not want January 15 to be about him.  He would want this day's activities to draw attention to common sense values of kindness when dealing with all people.  Dr. King would want us to work together peacefully as he did, finding the common ground amid the natural differences that exist.  This Baptist minister from Atlanta would hope that one designated day in January would translate to 365 days of being individuals who dwell on "whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute..." (Phil.4:8)

In the beginning, there was no mention of the color of Adam's skin.
Remember that the next time you check your mirrors.



Editor's Note:  Don't all 13-year-old adolescent girls sign their own yearbooks "Sweetie"?