A Big Celebration

First Presbyterian Church of Crystal Springs Mississippi will celebrate 150 years of organization this weekend. A post war church plant, post Civil War! I am sure no charter members will be there. We were there as pastoral leaders from 1976 through 1980, had two of our three children there, and had some happy times getting used to living next to the place I worked.

I had some hard time getting used to the way good old southern folks thought and acted in small town southern America, but for the most part we were surrounded by loving and kind people and had some happy memories to cherish from our time there.

The Gettysburg Address

This is Chai, a Chinese American Hawaiian, and the chief coffee roaster at the Greenwell Farms Coffee plantation in Kona Coast, Hawaii, I loved her the moment she opened her mouth and spoke in a Chinese accent about her love for her job, her adopted country, and her passion for the coffee bean and all the conversations and moments of peace a good cup of joe has brought into our human experience. God made coffe, and he made Chai, a chinese women, created equal in God's sight.

Wow, in Elementary School I memorized the preamble to the Constitution and the Gettysburg Address and I can still say them from memory...as long as you don't stand me in front of a class to do it.

This 50 year anniversary of the Kennedy Assisination is looping all kinds of things together in my brief journey through this life.

My father moved us from New York to Alabama in 1961 in the middle of my fifth grade year, just as the South was celebrating the Civil War Centennial. In some ways the south never admitted defeat in that bloody war, continuing to devalue the black man as less than human even when I arrived to a structured segregation that would remain through my high school years.

That war really tested the fabric of the constitution in more ways than we can imagine, and those human beings in America who lived through those years really paid a price for that war in lost sons, and devastated land and commerce.

Lincoln paid with his life, and the parallels between Lincoln and Kennedy have been drawn for all to see.

'dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal'

Jesus died to tear down a wall of hostility, a wall of enmity so He could create one new man, thus creating peace, and he spoke peace to those who were near and peace to those far off.

Last night we met two young students from China who must have been amused at the way we old folks think and talk. They are here to study and return to China to have teaching careers, they look different and speak our language through another tongue. They are the children or grandchildren of those who suffered under Mao Tse Tungs communism which has yet to really be rooted out of the psyche of the Chinese people, and somehow, our beleagured constitution, and Abraham Lincoln, and John Kennedy, and Jesus who went into the grave and is thus far the only one to come out of it...Jesus is still calling us to view humanity through His eyes, and to see the essential oneness of every human being...created equal...what an amazing proposition.

I love Pensacola, Florida!

It's not swanky like Orlando, or sexy like Miami, its middle america, its military service and retirees, its big enough to have all you need and small enough to feel like a town. My parents lived their last years in Gulf Breeze, and as I was passing through I saw a little church that advertized itself as an annex to the Brownsville Assembly of God and memories flooded my mind.

Over a decade ago I attended an evening service at Brownsville and had to wait an hour to get into the building. It was all quite impressive and the music and the stuff that went on were interesting. They never got to a sermon that night for all the other prayers for healing and music, which did not still well with this former Presbyterian, but it was at the time heralded as part of the great end time revival. A huge new sanctuary was being built, and its ministers were buying property and building large private dwellings out in the suburbs as a testimony to prosperity.

So, my sis tells me.....it's gone, nothing left. Brownsville was already a transitional dying area and the folks just fizzled and it all died. The flashy ministers moved on to other showy and power grabbing opportunities, I assume. (Letting my feeling show in that last comment) The property sat for sale for a long time until an energetic black pastor began to build a ministry around focusing on the real needs of the area for feeding the hungry and education of children, and ministries of mercy and compassion.

And I thought..... Hallelujah.

If we ever return to Dixie, and I admit my heart has softened toward the south in recent years, Pensacola would be a possibility of a community we would enjoy.

Thoughts on our trip to Dixie

We had a number of occasions to pass along the gulf coast hwy between Gulfport and Pascagoula and we continue to see damage done by Katrina not replaced, and many new buildings and businesses that were better than before, its life in a hurricane alley.

The Moss Point Church is being held together by the same great families that held our youth group together 25 years ago.

New Orleans seems safer each time we go, but very saddened that Riverwalk, once a thriving mall built upon the old worlds fair setting....is dead. Plans for an outlet mall not yet begun, although the new cruise port is beyond the mall, raising hopes that it may rise again.

The coffee at Cafe Du Monde is really good, and we limited our older selves to one pastry this time. Still cannot spell the french B-word they serve.

Pensacola Beach was great, but a new attraction, a giant Ferris Wheel, did not meet their ridership expectations so it dissapeared before our eyes and was headed for Atlanta for a new try at profitability. Amazing to watch it taken down so quickly. The gondolas were gone in two days of dissasemmly.

Only two beaches in the world bark when you walk on the white sand, I was told.

In Gautier as we were leaving, I saw a young man skateboarding with an infant in his arms?????I was not sure that was wise.

We love McDonalds for coffee and restroom breaks....they are everywhere. Service seems to be slowing badly.

Red and Yellow Black and White

My black and white cat, who is scared of everybody...not a watch kitty, when the doorbless rings she heads for the closet.

When we moved to central Alabama in Dec. of 61, it was for my father's job promotion. From upstate New York to Alabama. Little did I know it would change my views about people and hatred and bigotry. I know the word bigotry is strong and used by people who think they are not against people who are. But bigotry and racism are part of my southern experience.

We were white folks, living in a white neighborhood, shopping in a white town square with a confederate soldier statue in the center. A few streets over there were black businesses, serving black folks, whose kids went to black schools, and that's the way God ordained it and intended it and blessed it. Something was wrong with that picture.

Until Martin Luther King began to join the protests for change, and the history is still being made.

Reflections of seeing "The Help"

This is my family a couple of years before we moved south, my older sis stayed in New York.

From December of 1961 until December of 1989 I lived in Alabama and Mississippi. I was not born there, and the ways of the south were introduced to me suddenly at a very sensitive stage in my process of maturity. Last night at a viewing of The Help, based on Kathryn Stocketts novel, I felt as if I had been transported back into my past through the eyes of Skeeter, the college grad writing about life from the maids point of view.

The book could not have been written in that era, no one would have responded, but by creating that concept we are allowed to see firsthand the effects of segregation on a culture and how deeply hypocrisy and hatred can be hidden behind the beautiful faces of those young Junior League mothers in Jackson Mississippi.

Filmed in small town Greenwood and in parts of Jackson, it captured so accurately my four plus years in small town Troy Alabama, and our move to Jackson, Mississippi in 1965. The march in Selma, the closing of the city pools, the separate but equal lifestyle, the forced desegregation of the schools were all a part of my teen years.

The only difference between me and my friends was this, I had not been taught to hate. I was not culturally influenced by the deep traditions of Dixie, and was not of a personality type to jump on the bandwagon of hatred and racism. I joined a church at 13, a white only church, I had no black friends until college, I lived along with the established way of life, but deep in my heart I knew something was deeply wrong down there. The book and movie has powerfully captured a picture of that era.

I recognized street and home scenes in the Belhaven and Meadowbrook area, I recognized Brent’s Drugs where I used to buy Playboy Magazines in my hormonal years. The most powerful images in the movie were the confrontations surrounding the death of Medgar Evers, whose home and widow I would often pass when I worked an Insurance debit in the early 80s for two years. The church going ladies who cooked, cleaned, raised the children of those southern christian ladies, were, in reality living with their enemies and walking in love as best they could while being dehumanized in the major part of their lives at work.

Those years formed me. I loved them, and knew the old south had to change.

Hurricane Camille 42 years ago

Beautiful eroded cliffs on Lanai last summer.

I was a camp counselor in Mentone, AL. That morning cars were pulling up to take some of our campers home early. Hurricane Camille slammed into the Mississippi Gulf Coast with killer ferocity, far more deadly than Katrina. It really changed the look of things down there. We never thought something that bad could happen twice???

16 year old Laura and her mom and best friend spent a good bit of time at the Sun and Sand Motel in Jackson, while her dad stayed home and ended up on top of a table as the water invaded their home on the bayou. The next big one, Katrina, finished off the home for good and it is only a memory.

This also means that I have been involved in ministry for 42 years. Time is flying by.

118 Degrees is hot

A year ago we headed back to the south for 10 days, which always included a visit to Aunt Jenny's Catfish House in Ocean Springs. This photo is from a few years ago but it still makes my mouth water.

We are really steaming here with the heat and rising humidity.

Happy America's Declaration Day to you, in hot and cool climates.

Rooting for the Tigers

My friend Pastor Joe on the balcony of the Cafeteria at Belhaven College in the days when I was whistling dixie.

How can I do anything else. I used to live in Alabama. When I left the gym today there was a banner flying overhead with an Auburn sign. I have never been an avid fan, but I do show up for the championships in my fandom.

This Cam Newton appears to be the real thing in size and talent and likability. I look forward to watching him develop in the pros.

SEC football was a way of life when I lived in dixie. My church attendance would flucuate with the home and away games. Serious social events they were. I as a lowly Bible College student just did not get to excited over those things...except my senior year, when someone gave me tickets to see the Ole Miss Rebels play two games, and I watched Archie Manning play. Which is why I am a fan of the Colts, and the Giants.

The Masters is magic for me

I love watching the Masters. The grooming and spring beauty of the course, her starry history, the Azaleas and Southern Pines. I know the mental discipline required to putt well, to handle the holes that invite you to risk and reward for the birdie and eagle. For me, a fan, it combines sport and beauty in the most memorable way.

Flickr's of real life confrontation

Since my return to photography as a hobby I have come to enjoy the large photo collection blogs. I keep my own on Google, but I really enjoy Flickr. They make it very easy to share photos with family, and to share skills with other interested hobbyists, as well as learning from professionals.

From time to time I am impacted in a negative way. I was looking at an evangelistic confrontation at Ole Miss University. The evangelists were black, wearing suits and holding bibles as they preached. The looks on the students faces at they mocked the preaching was so dismissive and hateful. Others were just onlookers that would gather in any on campus event of interest. Some had brought signs to protest the preachers.

One sign said, God is love. This to counter the signs held by the supporters of the street preachers, which were very harshly worded threats about Hell and the Lake of Fire.

I wondered if any souls were saved that day in Mississippi by that rather ugly confrontation? I wonder if our Lord's confrontations with the Pharisees were meant to be our model for evangelism? I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was not the model of the Apostle Paul. I know from personal history that someone in those dorms would more effective in reaching those kids than the group that came on campus to rescue them from a burning hell using threats and waving bibles.

The Summer of no TV...well, One TV Evening

I must pause to remember a very special evening, in July of 1969, "When man made a small step and mankind made a huge leap forward" Forty years ago I was the bugler, swimming and canoeing instructor, and camp counselor at Alpine Camp for Boy in Mentone Alabama in the high country of Northwest Alabama, filled with gorges and rivers. The training and orientation, plus two month long sessions, made for 11 weeks of no TV, of daily exercise and lots of walking and hiking. It was a magical summer for me, we would pick mountain blueberries in the afternoon and have a blueberry pie for dinner. We sang, and laughed and helped the boys learn to swim and canoe.

And one evening we all gathered before a black and white TV to see the Moon Landing, it was really a time of national unity and pride, thought the world was beginning to struggle with Vietnam and student unrest, our quiet days of ministry to the youth of our southern families was a great start for me. I had a young camper develop a crush on me during the inter camp dance the first week I was there and so they named me,Big Chief Cradle Robber, at the official Indian naming ceremony. Now that was embarrassing. One of the counselors came that summer with leukemia, he was from one of the prominent families in my church, he went back to Ole Miss and graduated with honors, and we had a camp counselor reunion at his funeral the next year. His brother is today the President of the Seminary I graduated from. Good memories.

Jesus is not my personal assistant

I meet Christians all the time who are convinced that the Lord holds parking spaces and green lights for his loved ones, that he spends all His time personally protecting us and arranging just the right appointments.

I am not convinced that it works that way, but here is what I want to share that I learned in those first four years of ministry. In some mysterious way, your strengths and weaknesses get tested by the circumstances of your life. Certain personalites will challenge you and some tests you will flee or fail, only to find a similar challenge somewhere else dealing with the same issues.

Byron Katie has a self help book with a name and message I appreciate. "Loving what is". My first ministry would have succeeded longer and my life would have changed in many ways if I had learned to accept what I was working with instead of falling into a dreadful trap of despondence which was triggered by the following lament. "Is this all there is to the ministry????" I wish I could go back and talk to that semi disillusioned young man and tell him to calm down and relax, to not take personal criticism as the end all of effective ministry. The anvil was fashioning me, and the pain caused me to jump off the altar.

The Content of Character, not the Color of Skin

I had to see this. Little Rock Central High School The place where in 1957integration efforts exploded and revealed that the deep division between races that marked our history had not ended with the Civil War. We knew that and still know it.

Just four years after this my family left upstate New York for South Alamaba and I was immersed in the struggle, hearing words and attitudes being taught that I was unfamiliar with in my upbringing, feeling hatred well up in my own heart as I learned to use the "N" word to be accepted with my new friends. Deep inside I knew it was so wrong to do this.

The National Park Service preserved the corner gas station to record the history of those three weeks and on the 50th Anniversary expanded the museum to a nice sized exhibit. The pictures and words and violence still move me deeply. I needed a hair cut yesterday, and their I was in Little Rock, getting trimmed by a black woman. We talked about her family and her dreams and we blessed each other, which is part of my dream for every single day, to show someone I accept them and love them because God loved and accepted me.

Skateboard Arenas are awesome

I had skates with rubber wheels in the early 60s, technology way ahead of its time. I was proud of my parents for finding them. We lived in a newly asphalted neighborhood so for a glorious summer I skated everywhere. Remember these things hooked onto the shoes, with skate keys and straps.

Before we moved up to bikes and greater travel ranges, we got the idea of making skateboards. I do not know when they were made available but we just found a piece of pine and nailed my old rubber wheeled skates to the bottom. It worked great. We had several glorious Saturdays shossing down and up a street with a long gentle slope in the area, until those poor rubber wheels wore down to nothing. It is a wonderful memory.

The City of Chandler must have spent a good bit on contructing this huge skateboarding and skating area. The wheels on these new skates and skateboards are super high tech. I watched and photographed them last week, and knew in my heart that we had a blast with our makeshift toys over four decades ago.

Then the Bubble Burst

So, I graduated Seminary with 8 years of multicultural and inter-racial relationships, albiet in the contest of Christian Education. I began my life as a pastor in small town Mississippi in Crystal Springs. About 5000 good folks and two or three onery cusses, as the southern hometown signs often said.

And, instantly, the only relationship I had with blacks was with the cleaning maid at the Church, Johnnie Mae Johnson. From the early sixties to the mid seventies, and my life was once again segregated for all practical purposes.

I would later analyse that for the first time since going to College, I was back in the world that was the old south. I had four years in an evangelical bubble called Christian College, and three years in a evangelical and reformed bubble called seminary, and now I was back in Mississippi, where the social revolution that was the civil rights movement had very little effect on the way of life in small towns in the south.

I sort of understood it though, for the education and poverty levels in that area were severe. I visited Johnie Mae in her home and they had no heat but a fireplace and the coals from the fire literally rolled out to the floor. She had me preach in her church once, and I had another cultural shock. I was about to preach and I said, "Let us pray" in my typically Presbyterian manner, and suddenly the whole church took me up on the offer and began to pray in a beautiful spiritual cacophany of sound.

Wetbacks and Dutchmen, Oh NO!

During those precious college years I traveled to South Texas to pick up a friend and return to school. During the weekend I heard a number of disparging remarks about Mexicans, and I realized that racism was a regional issue, not just an issue in the south. So, you have a majority race who is bothered by another race for economic or border and migration issues, or language or physical differences, and you despise and belittle them for sport and to build your own sense of dominance. It's a game we should not be playing.

The next stage of this personal walk through my experience with race was in Seminary, where we had Asians, Phillipinos, Africans, and strangest of all, a large group of Dutch Americans from Souix City, Iowa, who followed a beloved professor to the deep south. Once again our commitment to Christ brought harmony in our learning process, but our cultural differences were interesting. The Koreans were awesome ping pong players, but they thought the presence of pool tables was a scandal. No christian should play that game. Some were concerned with the American practice of coffee drinking, and of course the dutch, paled skinned, and of the opinion that if you ain't dutch, you ain't much. They were very clannish at first but blended fairly well with the rest of us Calvinists after a bit.

Islands in the Ocean

This is my 100th post, yeah, consistency.

My conversion to Christ caused a beachhead to form in my heart and mind, the place where a Christ centered direction could form that would begin to break those drifting patterns of the world's ocean of conformity that pushed me to and fro aimlessly.

I entered those Islands regularly, places where the air is different because people are following a leader who cares and loves. I began attending church, hanging around with Christians, and finally choosing to live in a place because of me, not because of my father's work. It was the time for that kind of decision.

I entered the Island of Belhaven College, a little oasis of God's Kingdom, began attending classes while I lived at home that first year. There I met a young black women there to study piano and learn to be a Christian educator. There was a friendly relationship with a person of color for the first time in my life, and not the banter of a subservient maid, but two humans relating about life. Shortly an involvement with Intervarsity would bring me into contact with more Christians discussing faith interracialy. I would find myself more and more in agreement with the defining speech of Martin Luther Kings life, hoping for a time when a person would be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.

Change is what Jesus brought to this broken world, a change that would value human life by living unconditional and sacrificial love. Wherever two or three gather their is an island of Kingdom grace established where change can take place. I still believe that after forty years of faith.

Mandatory Integration

I was one of many who started a new school in town in 67,and it was the year they started mandatory desegregation. We had five or six brave lonely kids who came to be part of Callaway High School. I am ashamed to say that by that time I was so indoctrinated by the south that I made no effort to meet those kids. I was not mean,just drifted with the crowds desire to register our protest by not being friendly. Sometimes change takes a long time. Ironically, the school and neighborhood is almost all black forty years later.

The one thing mandatory desegregation could never prevent was white flight, and the town farther out around Jackson began to grow. Today, downtown Jackson is a shell of its former self and all the movie theatres, car dealerships, and new shopping centers are in places like Madison/Ridgland, and Pearl, and Clinton. We would find out later that the tranformation really took place in the younger grades, where kids had not been taught to hate. My daughter would grow up in a different world. So the change did in fact take politics and exposure to change attitude long held in the south.

All this would change for me, and it was not legislation, or the civil rights movement, it was conversion to faith in Christ that opened the door to inter-racial friendships. More on that tommorrow.

P.S. Cinderella died Thursday Morning, We attended the new season of the Chandler Symphony Orchestra tonight. They are all volunteer and wonderfully talented.

MI double S I double S I double P I

One of the most painful moves with my fathers work life was being uprooted from small town Alabama to State Capital Jackson, Mississippi, shortly before the 10th grade. The connections, the sports reputation I had been building, the freindships were gone in an instant as I jumped in the 62 Pontiac to move due west to the tune of the then #1 hit song by the Rolling Stones, "I can't get no, Satisfaction".

Lost in the halls of a big school, too late to try out for football, suddenly rather outclassed in basketball in this school, I had a lonely year, riding a bus to school, feeling a bit lost. The Civil Rights movement had seen some ugly incidents in Selma and Philadelphia MS, but it passed me by, except when I realized that they shut down all the city run swimming pools the summer I moved to avoid segregated swimming. All around the city neighborhood swim clubs with local membership began to spring up, and I began the avocation that would mark my life for the next eight years, being a lifeguard and water safety instructor. In a large town the racial barriers still existed, but there were large distances between the white and black side of town, so I felt more isolated from racial interaction in Mississippi in those first years.