Meme Meme Meme Meme

     Memes. Clever little rascals, at least sometimes. And some of them seem to get thousands of likes and shares even when they are irrational, misspelled or just plain dumb. I suppose I am too serious about the whole thing, but I do envy the "going viral" bit. I decided to make a meme. I thought it out carefully. I was pretty sure it could change the whole "whose life matters" conflict in America. Elevate the discourse. Calm the overwrought. Open avenues of communication. Trigger a regular spiritual revival on this continent. I posted it on Facebook. It got seven, no, wait, ten likes. Oh, and one cryptic comment: "That's very aristocratic." I'm still scratching my head over that one. But here's what I did. 

You see, I wanted something like the Black Lives Matter fist. I found a Rubens  painting of the crucifixion of Christ and picked out the hand. That's how Jesus showed His power, see? By sacrificing Himself for us. And He did it to take the punishment we deserved for our sins. Your life matters to Him. Very much. That's the ultimate important truth. And wouldn't it be a good thing if thousands of people were out there in tee shirts with this image on them? Every one of them ready to pass along the good news? Grumpy Cat thinks so. And so does that Japanese dog with the funny grin. And Jesus will know whether you share or have no                                                                                 heart. Can I get an amen?

Melanin Mysteries

Not content with keeping us coloring within the lines, one of my 1950s Orlando grade-school teachers started a class discussion on which colors we should use on various bits of the illustrations in our workbooks. Grass? Green. Sky? Blue. Skin? I looked down at my arms and raised my tan little hand. "Light brown," said I. This was not the answer the teacher wanted from the blue-eyed blonde. 
"No, no," she said. "Our skin is not brown. The closest color we have in our crayons is orange. We will use orange to color the skin in our pictures." So Dick, Jane and Sally became orange, a color I never saw on my own skin until an ill-fated experiment with self-tanning lotion. 
Some time later, my mother entertained a visitor from New York in our living room. "Oh, yes, " I heard her say. "They (my brothers and I) get that brown just from walking to school and playing outside." So we were brown after all. Just not at school. 
My brothers and I stood one day in front of the water fountains at the Qwik-Chek. One was labeled "white," and the other "colored." I tried to figure out what the difference was. Was the water different? We pushed the levers on both. Nope. Looks the same. Is there something contagious about color? I didn't think so, but even if there were, how could you spread it with a water fountain? Your mouth doesn't even touch the spout. The mystery remained as we dared each other to take a drink from the "wrong" fountain. After a bit of nudging, feeling not quite bold enough, we left the forbidden zone. 
We weren't quite intimidated enough to avoid causing a scene on a city bus, though. On a ride downtown, the two boys and I ran to the back seat. It stretched all the way across under the back window, and you could get on your knees and look out. We clambered about on it as other passengers gave us half-smiling looks. Our mother reached out a hand to shoo us off the seat. "That's for the colored people," she said. "Aw, why?" we whined. "That's not fair. We like this seat." 
My mother worked as a secretary for a very southern white man. He told her that there would be people of intensified melanin coming into the office. If these browner clients were "from the islands," he said, she should address them as Mr., Mrs. or Miss. If they were local people, she was to use their first names only. She decided not to quiz them and fell back on the professional manners she learned in secretarial school, addressing all with honorifics. 
Sometimes racism is downright silly. 
These days, my arms are dappled pinkish-brown and ivory, spattered with dark brown and occasional bright red spots. Sun damage, says the dermatologist. I suppose the racist atmosphere in which I grew up was as dangerous as the untrammeled sun on the melanin-impaired. Somehow I had enough hate-screen to minimize the soul damage. I've had heavy doses of the antidote, too, and it comes from the Bible. In a nutshell, it's that we all descend from the original parents, Adam and Eve, who must have been a lovely medium brown. You may be brown or ivory or orange, but you are my cousin. Shall we share the crayons? 

Choose This Day

     If you chop up the stuff you put in the compost pile, it disintegrates faster. I’m pretty sure this applies to human cultures too. How many ways can we divide people up? Black vs. white? Male vs. female? I guess the barriers are nothing new. Buffalo Springfield sang a long time ago about “battle lines being drawn.” And there’s sure enough been some rapid decay.

     A while back, I saw it pretty vividly in the beating heart of middle America, the package pick-up department at Sears. A man’s T-shirt dug a fetid trench with its picture of two voluptuous blondes in bikinis perched on the sides of a boat. A caption praised the boatmaker’s “twin screws” and opined that “Two screws are better than one.” Next to the man stood his little daughter, about three or four years old.

     Feeling rather sick, I turned my eyes to the lone clerk on duty, who was having a tough time with customers who didn’t quite grasp the system. He asked a woman about her vehicle, and she stared blankly. “Car? Truck?” he said. “Something to carry your purchase in?” Finally, she caught on and led him out the door.

     On his return, he walked around the room and asked the rest of us for our receipts. He got another blank stare from a man standing near the warehouse door. The man finally said he didn’t have a receipt, but he was here to pick something up and that his wife had talked to a lady. Was there a lady in there? The clerk explained that he was the only one around, and he could not bring any goods out without a receipt. The customer was sure he didn’t need one. He wanted to talk to “the lady.” The clerk repeated the necessity of a receipt. Finally, the customer exploded in profanity. “Ah, ____ it!” he shouted. “I tried to get the ____ing thing Thursday,” and on and on. He complained and cursed his way out the door. As the clerk backed through the warehouse door, he looked at me, shook his head, and said, “Some people.”

     Soon he reappeared with my picnic table on a dolly and rolled it out to my waiting van. He was working hard, and drenched with sweat. As he hefted the table, I tried to think of a way to encourage him. Brows crinkled in sympathy, I said, “I’m not mad at you.”

     He burst out laughing and nudged my arm. “That guy sounded like that rapper, that Tupac Shakur.” He was still laughing as he returned to the store. I was left to ponder some facts. The man with the filthy T-shirt was white, maybe late thirties. The man with the nasty mouth was white, probably in his fifties. The clerk was young and black. And even-tempered. And wise. A middle-aged white lady, I admired him for seeming to recognize that the dividing lines here were drawn not between black and white, male and female, young and old, but between decent and indecent, mannerly and crude, considerate and selfish— one might even say human and anti-human. I was happy to think that we both had rejected the foul and degrading and stood on the side of God’s law: Love your neighbor as yourself. Maybe more of us could give it a try.

What's for Lunch?

   More than twenty years ago, I found myself in a Pizza Hut at lunch time.  Ordinarily, I would not choose Pizza Hut for lunch, but, waiting for LensCrafters to finish my new glasses, I had first tried a Subway where several people stood at the counter while the sole worker complained loudly into a telephone that he was alone in the store, and there was no way he could do a special order. He was still complaining into the phone when I gave up and left. I was tired, hot and pregnant, and so hungry and dehydrated, I dragged myself to the first available alternative. Like a good Presbyterian, I figure there is a reason for everything, and I think I was driven to that Pizza Hut to observe a remarkable scene.

     Over my enormous pebbly plastic tumbler of ice water, I watched as two women entered the store and sat down together. They wore smart outfits which suggested they must work in an office, maybe an insurance broker’s, or a bank. The waitress who greeted them and took their orders was rather a raw-boned creature with bleached-blonde hair pulled back a little too tight from an angular face. She gave the ladies their drinks and brought their lunches. The two ate and headed back, I suppose, to the office.

     So what? Well, one of the office workers was white, and the other was black. The waitress looked the part of a redneck. And it was all perfectly ordinary. That was the remarkable part to me. Remarkable, because I was born in 1950, grew up in Florida and remember the lunch counter sit-ins of the Sixties. Black students, dedicated to non-violence and human dignity, sat at “white only” lunch counters in “five and dimes” in several cities and asked to be served. Occasionally, they were, but sometimes they sat all day.

     In 1963 came a low point of cruelty, a high point of courage, and a turning point in the movement. A mixed group of black and white sat at the lunch counter of the Jackson, Mississippi, Woolworth’s. Refused service, they stayed and waited. This group was soon pressed by a mob of young white yahoos with rolled sleeves and cigarettes. Not content with screaming insults, the young men began to anoint the sitters’ heads with sugar, ketchup, salt, mustard. This made the news. There’s a well-known photograph of the young heroes and their tormentors. I think this image made many people see the inhumanity of racism and the nobility of the movement inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr. It had that effect on me. Thirty years later, I compared that tension to the ordinariness of the lunch scene in front of me. I called down a blessing on the brave pioneers and on these three women. How ordinary. And how splendid.

All God's Children Got Dancing Shoes

     People of different races can’t possibly understand each other’s lives, I’ve been told of late in discussions surrounding the George Zimmerman trial. You’re a racist! You’re illogical! How can we possibly be friends? Perhaps by being brothers and sisters.

     It’s thirteen years ago now, but our church held a hoedown in the sanctuary, disguised for the evening as a barn with pumpkins and hay bales. A professional caller taught us square-dance moves, line-dance steps and traditional reels. (I myself am hopeless at line dancing and get dizzy when swung.) Beaded belts and boots, silver collar tips and gingham dresses whirled about the floor.

     My friend Mariela, who comes from Colombia, had decorated her straw hat with bright flowers. I told her it reminded me of Minnie Pearl. Crystal, from Taiwan, got thumbs up for her plaid shirt and jeans. Claudio, a transplant from Chile, got teased for hailing from western South America. Rose, a tall, dark, elegant African in a denim shirt, danced with her French husband. He knew minimal English and didn’t understand the caller, so they often wound up in the wrong place, but always with big smiles on their faces.

     A teenage boy picked up one of the bandanna- bedecked toddlers and danced with her. During a reel, each pair of dancers raised their hands in an arch for the rest of the dancers to pass under. When two tiny girls took their turn, one of the big men got down on hands and knees to crawl through.

     The caller, the real thing in his tall hat and assertive belt buckle, took a break from explaining steps and teasing the square that somehow wound up with three sides to tell us a story. “Once upon a time, a bunch of wonderful people came to Pine Ridge Church. That’s it,” he said. We cheered.

     Later, I said to Rose, “You’ve experienced some real American culture tonight.”

     She replied, “I love it. I’ve never done anything like this before.”

     Soon I realized how much we both had said. Until the multiculturalists hacked America into hostile, competing groups, each asserting that our oppression is worse than your oppression, the United States was a place where everyone could share an ideal of constitutional government and equality before the law. We’ve had plenty of missteps and failures, sure, but most of us could be nudged toward fairness by an appeal to the ideal. That’s why the civil rights movement succeeded in spite of the dogs and fire hoses.

     The church also offers unity around an ideal. Our pastor points out that people were divided into separate tribes with different languages at Babel. Then they were reunited at Pentecost when the Spirit of God came to live within His people, and those who had come from afar heard the praise of God in their own languages. We’re all cousins, the Bible reminds us, and there is no room for racism in the family. By faith, we gather at the cross of Christ with absolute equality.

     As our society fragments, this message ought to be shouted from the rooftops. Here and there, people are living it. What do you say? Want to dance?

A King, a King, and a King

    So, on the one hand, we have the charming King Samir Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party proclaiming his abiding hatred for white people: “I hate the oppression of white people, I hate the murder and the rape and the torture and the taking away of our names, our culture, our God, our music and damn, I hate this cracker for everything he has done to us.” He tells us we should be glad he and his pals aren’t hanging white folks—“yet.” Thanks, your majesty. I’m sure your activities will make life better for everyone.

     On the other hand, after a demonstration of sign-waving by a cadre of five guys in sheets, people in Reidsville, NC, received invitations to a rally. “Free Admition (sic)-White People Only. No alcohol, drugs, fighting, glass bottles or weapons. Free on site camping-all major motels in area. Souvenirs. Vendors. Food and beverages for Sale. Cross lighting at dusk-a white unity event. Live country band. Security provided by LWK.” Souvenirs? Like, a hood with your name embroidered on it?

     Over the last couple of decades, the KKK became more and more a joke. While they used to hold tremendous power in the South and the Midwest (Really; look it up.), they became an anachronism that most people scorned. At the moment, the NBPP and the KKK may be equals in number and lunacy. I do wonder, though, whether the refusal of the current Justice Department to prosecute the Panthers for little things like voter intimidation might inspire more “white rage.” We had a dozen or so armed-compound, ready-for-the-race-war loons arrested recently near Orlando. Law enforcement has done pretty well at taking out the white crackpots. Not so well on the black crackpots. Oh, Mr. Holder, doesn’t equality mean, you know, holding everyone to the same standard? Just a thought.

     But, meanwhile, out here in everyday life, where people are earning a living, keeping their brains in gear, and not searing their souls to ashes, life is a whole lot better in the race department than it was when I was a kid. A couple weeks ago, I was on my way into an Olive Garden for lunch with the church ladies. On his way out was a tall black man dressed sharply in dark trousers, a vest, white dress shirt and dark tie. He held by the hand a little boy dressed exactly the same. The sight stopped me in my tracks. I put my hand on my chest like the old-fashioned old lady I somehow became without noticing, and I uttered something like “This is so cute, I can hardly stand it.” The proud dad smiled.

     So what’s the big deal? In my younger days, that charming man and his charming son would not have been allowed into Olive Garden. If they could buy food there, it would be through the “colored window.” As a girl, I watched TV news reports of the lunch counter sit-ins. Brave, principled, self-controlled young black people walked into drugstores and sat down at the soda fountain/lunch counter. (Is there such a thing any more?) White clerks quickly set up “lunch counter closed” signs. Sometimes, white yahoos screamed at the sitters from behind, squeezed ketchup onto their heads and dropped cigarette ashes into their hair. Nevertheless, they kept the faith, kept calm and kept coming back. And guess what: they won. Jim Crow laws are gone.

     Another restaurant scene left me happy, relieved and hopeful. In walked two women, one black, one white, together. They were dressed like office workers. After they sat down, the waitress came to take their orders. Pardon my stereotyping, but she looked the part of a redneck—bleached blonde pony tail pulled tight, the face rather pinched looking. A generation ago, women like her screamed at school buses. On this day, she took a black woman’s order without a ripple and brought her the food she asked for. To this one-time observer of “white” and “colored” water fountains, the scene was momentous, precisely because it had become ordinary. The Klan couldn’t prevent it, and the Panthers can’t take any credit for it. Thank Martin Luther King, Jr., and all sorts of people of good will who listened when called to uphold the principles of our founding. And thank the God who endows all with inalienable rights. That is the way.