MentorBoom

The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium. ~Norbet Platt

In the 9th grade, two synchronistic events occurred in my life.  First, my beautiful, blonde French teacher came up to me one day and said, “Robert, I’d like you to write the class poem.”  I stammered quite a bit, I’m sure, but I remember saying, “But Ms. Cline, I’ve never written a poem before!”  She looked at me calmly and said, “You can do it.”  I’d been called out by a teacher I liked and respected.  I was asked to be more than I’d previously imagined myself to be.

The second event, near the end of that school year, happened at our church fellowship hall where we held Sunday classes.  Mike, a guy I knew a little but who was a whole year younger, came up to me and said, “Robert, I’m going to start a band and I want you to be the singer.”  This time I didn’t stammer.  I looked at him in disbelief and said, “I’ve never sung in public before.”  He quickly said, “You can do it!”  Three weeks ago we celebrated our 50th year on stage together. 

This pattern became a habit later in life.  People I knew and respected would look at me and imply something like, “Robert, the next step on your road to becoming who you truly are is _________.”  Once I was told, “You’ve got something in you that you don’t know about yet, and your daddy has it too.”  Another time a sage advised, “Stay who you are and come alongside your father as an equal.”  Over and over again, wise people have helped nudge me in the right direction at crucial times.  

And throughout these times, spanning decades now, I’ve had a journal to record my memories, dreams and reflections.  This journal is like an old friend I can confide in when big decisions loom.  It’s a private place, a place apart from the rumble of the world, a place where my thoughts and feelings can come out into the light to gain clarity and form.  Today is one of those days, a cloudy Sunday, with the luxury of time on my side.

Grace: a disposition to mercy, clemency and goodwill.

Each Sunday from the late 1950′s until 1967, my old friend Arno and other faithful would gather at the foot of the high, walnut pulpit where Carlyle Marney would preach the gospel.  It was a time when the blandness and comformity of 1950′s America was on the wane.  Elvis was shaking his hips and Marilyn was showing her “slips.”  Vietnam was heating up and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was inspiring a new generation to protest in the manner of Gandhi, peacefully but forcefully.  A revolution was brewing and Marney was one of its prophets.

The Baptist congregation Marney ministered to in those years was wealthy and powerful, composed of the community’s movers and shakers, the decision makers who determined the future of Charlotte.  In some ways, Marney couldn’t stand that.  Part of him could not tolerate the divide between the simplicity and generosity of spirit the church was founded on and the paucity of spirit and exclusivity shown by many white churches of the day.  He wouldn’t tolerate it, if he could help it.

He said, more than once, “My job here is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.”  He prodded his wealthy parishoners to become more generous and more open hearted in their relationship to each other and to the community.  Some of them did not take it well.  After 9 years Marney left to form a retreat center for ministers, a place to escape the tyranny and “sins of the ministry” and try to find their own humanness in the midst of constant demand from others.

I can only imagine the frustration Marney must have felt on this day.  After all his booming sermons about striving for compassion and justice, a church member let loose with a racial slur.  Marney locked in on the man with his hawklike gaze and said, “Good God man, can you not give grace?!”

For me, this perfectly summed up the whole of Marney’s worldview and the one I’ve tried to emulate over all these years since.  Give grace.  All of us suffer at one time or another, and far too many suffer almost continually.  Most of us are doing the best we can under the circumstances.  The last thing any of us needs is the judgment and condemnation of another.  The way to allow grace into our own lives is to give it, openly and without reserve.

Racism is man’s gravest threat to man–the maximum hatred for a minimum of reason.                                                                                                                                   Abraham Heschel

Friday evening was a big night.  Hundreds of people gathered for a party celebrating the musical history of my hometown, Gastonia, NC.  It was held in the old Eagle’s 5&10 uptown.  When I went there to rehearse the night before, I realized I had not been in that place since my childhood.

Gone are the racks and displays where 5 and 10 cent items sat in their glittery glory.  Gone also are the soda dispensers and hotdog broilers behind the long chrome and formica counter.  Come to think of it, even the counter is gone.  It was huge!

Every day but Sunday customers and workers from nearby stores and mills would crowd the lunch area and sit on the oil cloth covered stools that were bolted to the floor.  Bustling women in crisp white took orders, bantered with the regulars and served the steaming plates and bowls of today’s special.  But, only the white customers had the privilege of actually sitting at the bar while they ate.

When my father started making enough money to pay the few dollars a week it took, he and my mother hired a “maid.”  Pauline was her name and for years this gentle soul helped my mother raise her 5 children, while having children of her own she had to care for in addition.  It was a common story of the genteel South of my childhood: classic inequality and discrimination. No matter how well treated the “help” there was always the dividing line of white/”colored”.

On some special Saturdays, Pauline would take me uptown.  We would ride the bus for that seemingly endless 1.5 miles.  When we got on the bus we would walk all the way to the back.  I thought that’s where the best seats were.  When we got to the lunch counter one day I was very excited.  I loved sitting on that tall stool, eating a hot dog that invariably dripped ketchup and mustard all over the nice clothes Pauline would soon wash and iron again.

That day, however, something happened that awakened me to the nature of prejudice.  Once I climbed up onto the stool, I beckoned Pauline to join me and sit on the empty stool to my left.  In a mood I’d never seen from her she quickly shook her head, almost imperceptibly, no.  Even in my small brain I connected the dots–Pauline could not sit on that stool, or any other in that Eagle’s store.  She also had to drink from the water fountain that read “Colored” above it.

As we played and sang the songs of The Tams, The Impressions, Ben E. King and other great African-American artists last Friday night, I was consumed by the irony that this place, this very store, was the site of my original awaking to racism.  And while much progress has been made and conditions are better for most, still racism in many forms abounds in our land and in our hearts.

See: http://mentorboom.com/2011/10/19/a-musical-life

Spring pollen coats the streets and sidewalks.  Passing cars are thick with the sticky, yellow dust.  Traffic is quieting and the air is thick with anticipation.  Rain is coming.  It delays and teases, but it’s on the way.  I have to believe.

Days of dryness stretch into weeks of drought.  Anxiety builds.  Nerves are frayed.  Will it come?  Why the delay?

Waiting for rain is my teacher.  Anticipation of sweet water hitting parched grass, clearing the air is poignant.  When it comes it will be all the more welcomed because of the delay.  Only in my mind is there a rush for things to be different than they are, right here and right now.

The tall oaks out my window have been here for 80-90 years and everything they’ve needed has come to them, in good time.  Is it not the same with me?  Is it not the same for each of us?

I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.       

Thomas Jefferson  

3-inch stainless steel spikes, hammered by a heavy mallet through the hands of a pentitent, nail him to a rough wooden cross in Mumbai.  Bloodied and torn figures slowly trudge up a cobbled street in Madrid lugging yet another cross.  True believers reenact scenes imagined in the dark recesses of troubled minds.

Perhaps we can imagine their devotion and admire it, but we know that on the other side of that devotion is, too often, a tenacious intolerance of those who do not harbor their same deep, pained feelings.  I grew up in the church and actually enjoyed a lot of it.  I liked hearing the wise words of ancient figures that have traveled down to us over the millenia.  There are many insights I carry with me today.

It never occurred to me, however, to wish to impose my private religious beliefs on anyone else.  Everyone has to come to their own understanding and belief.  If someone is trying to impose their beliefs on me, is that religious freedom?  I am free to reject them, until I can’t.

Theocracies across time have imposed what others should believe and increasingly harsh punishment awaited (awaits) those who rebel.  I know a woman today with 2 children at the age of sexual activity who will not even discuss the belief of her church that contraception of any sort is against the teaching.  She would rather her children risk so much in their learning stages and remain abstinent and celibate instead; yeah, right, how’s that working out for you?

Politicians today talk openly about their agenda for when they get in positions of greater power.  Their agenda will be imposed on others, like it or not.  In the name of their religious freedom, arcane and discredited policies can be imposed on me, impinging my freedom of religion.

Churches in our country operate, to a large degree, in a tax-free bubble.  They are catered to and accommodated to an extraordinary degree.  When, however, they and their minions invade the territory of others’ beliefs, they have stepped over a line.  I don’t want one dime of my money going to any group that attempts to force their will on anyone else, while being subsidized.

Co-equal with freedom of religion is freedom from religion.