Pastor Rob Recommends ... (January 24, 2022)

Pastor Rob recommends …

 

A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr.

Edited by James M. Washington (1986)

 

The subtitle tells you exactly what this book is. It also begs the question. Do you even know what Martin Luther King said and did? Everyone in America admires him. Many, especially many white people, express that appreciation in an unveiled attempt to appropriate his fame to promote themselves. Do we know MLK’s actual thoughts? This book is long, 679 pages. And you should read every word.

When the Dream Comes True (Matt. 3:1-17)

Sunday, January 17, 2016

           Two sinners, flawed people who make mistakes and fall short of God’s glory. 

Two extraordinary men – there have never been any like these men and their contributions to humanity are greater than can be measured.

Great men?  Sinners fallen short of God?  These men are both.  Consider their lives, their words, and the profound importance of each as I hold each up alongside the other. 

            First, Martin Luther King Jr.   In 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, he said,

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

                       

“I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”

            Has his dream been realized? 

            However accurate or inaccurate or partially accurate, the perception of many, maybe most black people is that they can’t get a fair shake in business, in education, in health care, in housing, and in numerous other ways in every day.  Statistics bear this out.  Black Americans are less likely to be admitted to the highest universities, less likely to be identified and put in academically gifted programs, and more likely to be suspended from school for offenses that if done by whites often go unpunished.  In nearly every formal institution in our country, blacks get less opportunity for advancement; and, they suffer more harshly and more frequently than whites who commit the same offenses and rules infractions.

            Has Dr. King’s dream been realized? 

            Many African Americans have achieved incredible success.  Condoleezza Rice is a brilliant academic, a political scientist, and former secretary of state.  Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of America’s leading astrophysicists.  Colin Powell is one the great generals in U.S. army’s history.  Ben Carson is a brain surgeon and a presidential candidate.  Clarence Thomas is a Supreme Court justice.  And of course our president, Barak Obama is an African American who has achieved the highest office in the land.  No matter what your personal opinion is of these named, they all merit respect.  This high level achievement and leadership among persons of color had not happened when Dr. King gave that speech.

            On a more personal level, in our day biracial families are accepted as the boundaries for what is considered normal expand.  I did not imagine when we adopted H__ and M__ that we would meet other families just like ours in preschool and then again in our neighborhood, but we have.  Chapel Hill is progressive town and there are places in North Carolina and in other parts of America that are less-welcoming of such diversity.  However, I think across America, there is now a social consensus that racism is evil.  Since Dr. King gave the “I have a Dream Speech” things have changed.

            They have not changed nearly quickly enough.  His poignant phrase “the tranquilizing drug of gradualism” needs to be taken to heart.  Right now, most of the perspectives I get from black people in my circles are different than the perspectives of white people in my circles.  I hate saying “black people think …” or “all white people …” do such and such.  I think the generalizing is unfair.  However, I do feel safe in saying that most black people expertience the world differently than most white people. 

            Dr. King’s context was America, embroiled in racial conflict.  The man I have thought about alongside Martin Luther King Jr. is John the Baptist whom we meet in Matthew’s Gospel.  John burst upon the scene calling the people of Judah to “Repent!  For the Kingdom of heaven has come near.”  He allowed no margin for the luxury of cooling off.  Repentance is a turning – to turn from looking and living in one direction to looking and living in an altogether different direction.  God is over here, but you are oriented over there. You have to radically turn your lives because the way you are currently headed is away from God. 

            Essentially, this was John’s message.  As America today needs to turn away from greed, materialism, racism, elitism, and xenophobia, John said the people in the first century needed to turn away from sin and turn to God. 

Otherwise, we will miss the presence of Jesus even though, he is here.  This season, epiphany, the time after Christmas – this is Jesus’ ‘coming out party.’  We won’t see it, not now, not if we aren’t watching.  To miss it is to live apart from God.  If we live apart from God now, we will be apart from him at the Judgment.  When Jesus returns in the Second Coming to call his own into the Kingdom, we will not be among those counted as his own.  We need to turn. 

We need to turn because currently our gaze is fixed by human wisdom in the direction of today’s definition of success.  Philosophies like individualism, naturalism, and patriotism do not appear inherently evil, but when one of these ways of thinking and seeing define our worldview instead of Jesus defining our worldview, it pull us away from the God who wants to saves us from self-destruction.

“Repent!”  Turn from where we are looking, from what we are thinking, from who we are admiring, from how we are living; turn from this to God. 

In the Gospels are stories of people who met Jesus in person and still could not turn to him because they could not turn away from the allure of wealth or the entrenched racism of their day.  In the New Testament world, the segregation was Jew-gentile.  Today it is white-black, or English speaking-non English speaking; or it is citizen-immigrant; or it is Christian-Muslim.  Whatever divides people by objectifying those not-like-me as “other” – whatever that division point is, it is evil and we must turn from it.  We must in humble confession turn to God.  John preached that.

            Dr. King claimed that God showed him a vision of life – the life to come if people could learn to live in peace and harmony and love for each other; people from all backgrounds.  He said,

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

           

            John also had a sense of what would it would be like when the words he preached became reality.  He said,

¹¹ “I baptize you with^[b] water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with^[c] the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹² His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

            So, two prophets; one condemned racial inequality, the other sin run rampant among the chosen people of God.  King’s denouncing of racism is a damning of sin – a specific arena of sin and for us in 2016, one that arena, racism, continues to trouble our communities because it exists and people of color continue to suffer injustices.  Likewise John the Baptist issued a call that we must heed; we must turn from the ways of the world to the ways of God as we know God in Jesus.

            These two prophets who preached with force and drama had vision.  They imagined the fulfillment of their dreams.  John the Baptist spoke and it was electric; he baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  He will gather the grain, and the chaff. The chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.  People from all walks of life abandoned the comforts of Jerusalem and flooded out to the wilderness to be baptized by him and hear him talk about the one who was to come. 

Who was this Savior John forecast?

What would life be like upon his arrival?  John offered the stark call – repent!  And, he offered the promise of baptism by spirit and fire.

Dr. King named the evil of racism and imagined a world without it. 

So what of it?  What do we make of the preaching and the vision of either man?  Were their dreams realized?  Today we have Travon Martin and Michael Brown and Tamir Rice.  Today secularism is on the rise; Christianity it so politicized, it is stripped of anything in it that resembles faith. 

John was anointed by God.  Dr. King awakened America to God’s compassion for the downcast and God’s hatred of racism and injustice.  Both spoke with power as they cast compelling visions.  So, what do we do with the world as it is?

Imagine John there in the Jordan.  Everyone is spellbound.  In those flowing waters, he appears to be the most powerful man in the world and all who come defer to his passion and his fiery teaching.  The royal official, the temple soldier, the priest, the Roman centurion; before John, they all shrink.  Submissively, they go to the waters.

Then, Jesus comes.  His eyes meet John’s.  John finds himself tongue-tied.  Matthew writes, “Jesus came … to be baptized by him [but] John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’”

He who had cast the pre-vision of the Kingdom fell to pieces when the Kingdom stood before him in the person of Jesus.  John would have stopped Jesus at the start of his ministry.  Why?  I believe seeing Jesus is so overwhelming, we forget everything.  At the same time, we see everything.

We inherit John’s call to repentance and the 1960’s iteration of it in Dr. King’s call to end segregation and build harmony and love across racial lines.  We repent and we work for equality recognizing that when one group of people is wounded by prejudice, we all are.

We anticipate the dreams of these prophets.  God gives glimpses and so we can say with John, Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit.  With MLK, we get glimpses of the Promised Land where black boys and girls and white children and Jewish and Syrian and Chinese and Mexican children all laugh and run and play together, without fear.  We can imagine it.  We spend our lives working for it, reaching for it.

Still we know that we won’t finally reach it until Jesus meets our gaze as he did John’s.  In that moment, face to face, completely exposed before him, completely vulnerable, we feel ourselves wrapped in his arms of love.  Then, we are finally home.

We know that day will come.  Until it does, we honor the prophets who have gone before us by working for love and brotherhood and sisterhood as we understand things in light of the way of Jesus.  We can’t fully say what it will be like when the dream comes true.  So, we imagine, we work for it, we pray for it, and with hopeful expectation and full readiness, we wait for it. 

AMEN

Maundy Thursday Message - 2014

Jesus the Giver (John 6:35-51; 13:1-11)

Thursday, April 17, 2014 – Maundy Thursday

            Nelson Mandela spent years and years in prison in South Africa, yet he survived that ordeal, made it out, became president, and forgave those who unjustly imprisoned him.  He gained a reputation for courage, grace, focus, and great inner strength.  Martin Luther King Jr. is known for non-violence.  He dreamed of an integrated America before it happened.  He spoke with charisma and people wanted to follow him; or kill him.  They did both.

            Here in our own town, there are stories of men and women of great character and integrity.  One example of many is former basketball coach Dean Smith.  He is known as much for his faith and social conscience as his brilliance as a coach.  He is respected for his character.

            I could go on with examples.  The one thing others cannot take away is integrity, yet people compromise their own values far too often.  Though it cannot be taken, we give our integrity, we forfeit our reputation, and as a result we struggle to trust one another.  Jesus’ character was never in question.

            This may sound like an example of stating what is ridiculously obvious – Jesus was a good man.  Well, no kidding!  Was that even in question?  And yet, to look closely at why we accept this without question helps us know how to stand before Jesus.  We take up a vulnerable posture in which all we can do is present ourselves fully exposed, our souls completely bare, and then receive whatever he dishes out.

            Why?  It begins with what Jesus did in gathering his disciples for a meal the night he would be arrested.  The gospels indicate strongly he knew what was coming.  Whether he knew it would be that evening or sometime very soon, he knew.  His actions were intentional, done so that after the crucifixion/resurrection dust had settled; his disciples could look back, remember, and learn from what he did.  

            They would have reclined around a table kind of at the height of a coffee table.  And Jesus washed their feet.  I thought why is it such a big deal that he washed their feet?  Along with that question, I wonder, why do I feel compelled to wash feet just because Jesus did it?

            In his culture it was an act of service done by a servant or in many cases by a slave.  It was a lowly chore.  That was a world where people traveled by foot; they walked dirt roads; and they wore sandals.  I would guess those feet were a kind of dirty we rarely see, we of shoes, sock, carpets, pavement, and bathtubs.  It was lowly and here the master lowered himself in a shocking way.

            In our culture the issue is intimacy and self-reliance.  I’ll wash my own feet, thank you.  I’ll do it at my house and then I’ll hide them.  If you must look down there, notice my shoes.  I love you, but I don’t know if I want us to move to that level of intimacy in our friendship.  I’m not sure I want my foot in your hands.

            In Jesus’ day, they did not want to wash the feet of others.  In our day, we don’t want others to wash our feet.  In both cases, the act is a significant step out of normal.  And there’s the genius of it.  Jesus said to his contemporaries in this act, you are no better than the servant who washed feet.  In our day he says to us, you need to open your hearts and let me in and let your brothers and sisters in Christ in. 

            Sure, we are capable of washing our own feet.  But are we vulnerable enough to let people into our hearts to the point that we truly are a family in Christ.  Will we allow him to smash down the barriers we erect to keep everyone, sometimes even our spouses, at a safe distance?  Can we invite Jesus so deeply that we have the intimate love here in our family of believers that Jesus insisted be what defines us?

            In the account of the foot washing in John 13 and in our acting it out, we see Jesus character.  He, the Lord, is a servant.  He models servant-love and demands that we give servant love to one another, to those society would call the ‘least of these,’ and to our enemies.  The foot washing is one way Jesus breaks us down so he break into our lives, our hearts.

            Because of his willingness to show servant-love as he calls us to servant love is one reason we admire Jesus’ character.  Another is his sacrifice.  When we gather around the communion table, we take the bread.  We hold it up and say, ‘this represents the body of Christ.’  We eat it because he said, ‘do this in remembrance of me.’  The broken bread is his body, broken by our sins.  The wine or grape juice represents his blood – the blood of the New Covenant.  Because he died for us and because we confess our sins and receive forgiveness, we have life in the New Covenant. 

            The Gospel of John is abundantly clear that Jesus the man knew exactly what he was doing.  Yes, he was fully God.  At the same time, he was fully human.  When nails drove through his hands, it hurt as much as it would hurt you or me.  Yet, he knew it was coming and went to it for the world, for you and me.  In chapter 10, he says, “I lay down my life.  … No one takes it from me but I lay it down of my own accord” (10:18). 

            In John 19, having been arrested, the beaten, poor Galilean rabbi stands before the splendor and might of Rome, an inquiry from Governor Pontius Pilate.  Yet, Jesus seems to control the entire dialogue.  Frustrated, Pilate asks, “Do you refuse to speak to me?  Do you not know that I have the power to release you and the power to crucify you?”  Already bloodied from the thorns and the whip, Jesus says back, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above” (19:10-11). 

            Jesus chose the cross.  It was God’s plan from the start.  I don’t think God forced Judas to betray him or forced the chief priests to hand him over to Pilate.  I think each player in the drama made his own choices.  But God knows the human heart and the human weakness when it comes to sin and temptation.  Jesus took the sin on himself. 

            When we talk about his great character, we can say many things.  I have chosen to focus on how he expressed servant love, and how Jesus gave of himself as an act of sacrificial love.  Service and sacrifice:  these attributes are what Jesus is all about and they indicate how we are to stand before him. 

            When Jesus knelt, Peter protested.  “You will never wash my feet,” he told his master (13:8).  “Unless I wash you,” Jesus responded, “you have no share with me.”  There is nothing we do.  We present ourselves as we are in all our dirtiness, shame, and failure before God.  There’s no initiative from us; no skill or exceptional achievement.  There is no gain or hard work that gets us there.  Broken, we come and Jesus is the actor, the doer.  He washes.  If we do not come in this way, receiving what the giver gives, we never can be one with him.

            Similarly he says, “Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”  Nothing in any of the four gospels means literal cannibalism.  Joined with the bread and cup accounts in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we know that here in John 6, Jesus meant we eat the bread and cup as a symbol of us taking him into ourselves.  But when I say, “taking in,” I mean receive.  We accept that we are sinners, but that his body scarred and blood spilled make a way for us.  If we do not, then we do have the eternal Jesus gives. 

            At the foot washers’ basin and at the communion table, we are receivers and Jesus the giver.  Our hands are open as are our hearts.  Nothing is held back or hidden.  We come acknowledging that we belong to him.  We are his and the best that is in us is what he gives. 

            This is not necessarily easy.  People who work hard and achieve a lot want take pride in standing on their own accomplishments.  Taking on the posture of receiving may be one of the biggest obstacles blocking the path to life-changing faith.  We are forced to trust.  Many will not.  Pride is a root cause of sin, yet many of the proudest people in the country sit in churches every week.  We are proud of our children, proud of our families, proud of churches, and proud of ourselves.  Nothing any pastor says will dent that pride in the least.  That entrenched pride produces unmovable wills which is sad because it means people bearing the identity of a Christian are in fact keeping themselves from God.

            I pray tonight, Maundy Thursday, you and I would not be among the proud.  I know we have been.  I wrestle with pride and tonight, I am asking God to help me let it go.  Would you do that?  Would you ask God to free you from having to stand on your own?  Would you look to Heaven and in your spirit confess your sins and your helplessness?  Having confessed would you then open yourself to Jesus and receive what he gives?  In washing feet and being washed, we honor our servant God and we are cleansed by him.  In eating bread and drinking juice, we take him into us as we admit that we are nothing without him.

            He is the great giver, giving life to all who will die to self and receive from him.  Can we do that tonight?

            We will have silent prayer and then be invited forward for the Lord’s Supper.

Feeling Dr. King

Yesterday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I felt the need to do something.  What?  I am not sure.  It is the same every year.  I go through the hullabaloo of Thanksgiving-School break for my kids-Christmas-New Year-my anniversary.  And by the time my wife and I have had our one night getaway; it is time to get back in the normal rhythms of life.  At that point, I am not ready for another special event.

            Then MLK day rolls around.  Our school system makes the Tuesday afterward a teacher work day so the kids have a 4-day weekend.  I don’t take either day off, the Monday or the Tuesday.  I’ve been so out of the ordinary with the holidays, I just want to rediscover my work flow.  My saint of a wife is left with the three kids as they climbing up the walls wanting to go outside.

            However, a part of me experiences something else.  There’s an itch in me to do something.  Dr. King’s courageous, visionary leadership focused and drove the civil rights movement that saved our country.  His posture was conciliator.  He dreamed a world in which people are for one another and everyone is seen – seen as a human being of worth regardless of race or another factor. 

            What divides people?  Black v. White; American v. Immigrant; Rich v. Middle Class v. Poor; Healthy v. Disabled; political parties; Old V. Young.  All these divisions and more have polarizing potential.  When the differences are overcome and people help people and join each other in true friendship, Dr. King’ vision becomes reality.  It happens over and over. 

            I witnessed one example.  I know of a woman who receives food stamps.  As an act of her Christian discipleship, she tithes on what she receives.  She buys groceries and donates some of them.  Yesterday, on MLK Day, I got to deliver the groceries she bought.  She doesn’t do it to bring attention to herself.  She is serving Jesus.  If she can find a pastor to actually deliver the food, it is good for both her and the recipient.  No one wants to be on the receiving end of charity.  A pastor is a good intermediary, someone to protect the anonymity of the giver and the dignity of the recipient.

            That was my role on MLK Day.  As a pastor, I got be the go-between as a woman, a black woman, helped a white woman, someone she had never met.  She was giving food, and the gratitude was painted all over the face of the recipient.  After my 11-year-old son and I dropped off the food, we went on with our day. 

I believe Dr. King, walking with Jesus in Paradise, smiled.  In this story, race was never an issue.  It was a case of giving a cup of cold water in Jesus’ name (Mark 9:41).  It is a story of people helping each other because that’s what followers of Jesus do.

Next month is African American history month.  I usually observe that time by reading.  One year I read A Testament of Hope (an anthology of Dr. King’s speeches).  I started reading that book in February and spent the rest of the year finishing (it is over 600 pages).  Last year, in February I began African American Religious Thought.  It is almost 1100 pages and in 2013, I read about 975.  I will finish it in February 2014. 

All this reading and the MLK day service projects and observances only work as symbols of the need and ongoing work of combating our racist heritage.  Society must move beyond ‘African American history’ to recognize all the stories and meaning in American history.  More than MLK Day service projects, America needs to be a culture of service – people helping each other instead of advancing themselves at their neighbor’s expense.  When that becomes the ethos of America, the ethos of service done in love, then we will find ourselves nearer to something more than Dr. King’s vision.  We will taste the Kingdom Dr. King dreamed of, the one envisioned by Jesus, the Kingdom of God.

I think, when MLK Day comes, and I find myself not ready but feeling something, that is it.  Dr. King was a prophet of the Kingdom of God.  Even unaware, I yearn for it.  I long for it.  I pray for it.  In that Kingdom, hungry people won’t need to help each other.  None will go hungry.  All will be blessed.  Thank you, Dr. King, for your voice reminding me to seek that blessing.

A White Father with Black Kids

A friend from many years ago, Diedre, writes a wonderful blog - "Jumping Tandem" http://www.deidrariggs.com/ .  On it, she asked for stories related to race.  Here is what I shared. 

My wife and I have three adopted children, but most people looking at our family would never guess.  Our oldest, I___, adopted from Russia, is as white as we are.  It's not a stretch for people to look at him and guess which features are from me and which are from Candy.  But the joke is on those who innocently pose such guesses.

I___ shares as much with us genetically as his younger siblings, his brother H___, 6, and sister M___, 4.  H___ and M___ are adopted from Ethiopia. 

The three of them act like siblings.  That means I___, 11, despises, bullies, and in his best moments protects the younger ones.  M___, like any youngest sister of older brothers thinks she is a princess, thinks the world revolves, and is pretty convinced she is really the one in charge.  I___ also thinks all people exist to serve his purposes.  He might have a future as a drill sergeant. 

            And there is golden-hearted H___.  This child is one of the happiest, most well-intentioned people I have met.  I came down to the breakfast table the other day and H___ had been the first one awake.  He is most days, up by 5AM, singing, clapping, happy.  On this particular morning, H___ was the only one downstairs.  There were five bowls of cereal, with milk already poured, around the table.  Ah, my H___.  He woke up and thought it would be nice to have everyone's breakfast ready and waiting for them.  What 6-year-old   does that?

            The Trayvon Martin story, and others told in our local area (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill) worry me a bit.  Right now H___ is cute, but he is going to grow into a strong young man.  He's already compact and muscular.  He's probably too nice to every play football, but he has a condition I have never had to deal with.  Because he is male, if, when he's an adult, he goes out at night, with a hoody on, I have to fear for him.  I have to worry that my own neighbors will call the police because he outside, at night, with a hoody, and he is black.  When the police come, I have to worry that they will assume he's up to no good.  My golden-hearted H___.

            Last year, one of our neighbors posted in the neighborhood email list serve this message.  "I just saw two black young men going door to door.  Should I call the police?"  My wife went outside and discovered these were in fact players on our local high school football team selling calendars to raise money.  Many times, white players did the exact same thing.  There was no panicked email about calling the police.  My wife, appalled, called the woman and requested that she not call the police if she ever saw H___ out playing.  The woman, to her credit, immediately recognized the racism in her own actions and came to our house to apologize to Candy in person. 

            Being the white father of black kids has awakened many things in me.  I have mentioned some of the majors, especially regarding H___.  Simpler things include lotion, shea butter for the skin.  Never in my life have I used any kind of lotion on my skin, save for sunscreen.  I hate.  I hate having my hands sticky or greasy.  H___ and M___ need their skin lotioned every day.  Candy has to make the lunches for school.  I who hates having stuff on my hands have the pleasure of applying shea butter to my children. 

            I asked my friend Emerson about this.  He is black and he said it can be a peaceful, intimate time with your child.  My friend lied.  He raised daughters.  My son H___ gets half greased up with shea butter and then, naked, runs around the house.  Try grabbing someone who is strong, fast, and greased.  I supposed it could be described as intimate, but there is nothing quiet or peaceful about it.  The more frustrated I get, the harder H___ giggles.

            But's that's nothing.  I am a bald man.  What little bit of hair I have is cropped tight.  "Doing my hair," involves zero effort.  Candy has mastered M___'s hair, which is about as curly as you can imagine.  Awesome.  Husbands and wives divide up labor and Candy has M___'s hair duties.  And Emerson, the father of daughters, is right.  That time Candy and M___ have together is special and beautiful and intimate.  And Candy is going to Ethiopia for a 9-day mission trip in October. 

            Who is going to do M___'s hair?  The white bald man who hates getting stuff on his fingers?  One day in August, Candy intentionally left the house early, M___'s hair undone, and stayed away all morning.  She knew I would have to get M___ ready for the day.  She kind of shouted some instructions as she ran out the door.  It was test.  She claims it wasn't, but I know it was.  I got the stuff in the purple dispenser (don't ask me what it's called), and started working through M___'s curls.  I know I was using the correct product.  But I probably did not spend enough time working through the kinks and knots.  And I definitely did not tie the band for the puff tight enough.  M___'s confidence is in tatters.  The four-year-old often anxiously asked about what will happen with her hair while Mommy is in eee-pee-oh-oee.  She asks the question as if I am not home, even though I am sitting next to her while she asks.  Clearly, in her mind, it is not even a remote possibility that I will be of any help.  October 21, Candy's return date, cannot get here soon enough.

            I love my three children.  I love that I live in a time and a town (Chapel Hill, NC) that accepts our colorful family.  I love that they have friends from colorful families.  I love that our church celebrates our family and that there are other interracial families in our church.  I thank God for Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis and so many others who have worked for a better world.  I thank for my Dad, who as a young college student, against his father's wishes, hopped on a bus in Detroit, road to Washington DC, and heard the "I-have-a-Dream" speech.  I bet he didn't think he'd one day have black grandchildren.  But he sure loves them.  I thank God for my mom who taught in Mumford high school in Detroit.  One day her principal asked how many of her students in a class were black.  I don't know, was her response.  Upon reviewing her role, she realized all of them were black.  She had not thought about it.  Because she doesn't form opinions about people based on their pigmentation.  That's the right kind of colorblindness. 

I have told our story many times.  I appreciate this context in which I can share it again.