The Dinner Table

Over dinner once we were having a conversation about race relations—how far we've come in the U.S. and how far we still have to journey towards reconciliation and the Kingdom of God. My friend Shane said that the dinner table will be the place where we find common ground. If people had more meals together, he suggested, we would probably see a difference in race relations. I'd like to take that further and say that we'd see a difference in all boundaries that we've created to separate us—class, religion, politics. We don't feast together enough.

And this makes the Eucharist Table even more beautiful for me. Here, Christ invites us to the most unifying table of all. Everyone is welcomed. I could have been born into the Church or just walked into the door and been recently moved by the Gospel. I could have all the riches in the world or own nothing but the clothes on my back. I could be from the "wrong" side of the tracks. I could be brown or black or white. I could speak Chichewa or French or English or Māori. No matter who I am, I'm always invited.

And when I go to this table to feast on a simple meal of bread and wine, the feast is the same in Nashville, Tenn., as it is in Leeds, England. It's the same today for me as it was for Martin Luther King, Jr., for St. Catherine of Siena and for Peter the disciple. And more importantly, the calling is the same. We are invited into a Kingdom feast—a meal that both blots out my iniquities and calls me to another way of living. Our feast does not end there at the pew or altar in our church buildings. We are called to a bodacious way of life that refuses to be content in the boxes created by a love-ignorant society. We're called into a new covenant. And that new way of life leads me to break bread in many different places with people of various skin tones, beliefs, sexualities and economies.

What a bold feast the Lord created for us—a feast that can truly create a new reality.

How beautiful!

May we feast with Christ and Christ's people today and everyday. May we intentionally go beyond our places of comfort to find ourselves at Christ's holy dinner table.


Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood." -Luke 22:19-20

And I think the true beauty comes when we step outside the symbol. Instead of merely taking part in a two-century-old tradition, let's also share food and talk about our experiences of God with the people that society tells us we should be staying clear of. Business people and homeless veterans, retirees and teenagers, Pacers fans and Pistons fans, Iraqis and Americans: let's all share a table together . . . Let the wafer and the juice be a reminder. -Caleb Mechem in New Neighbor: An Invitation to Join Beloved Community

Truth ampersand Reconciliation

I'm reading poetry by Dennis Brutus, a South African poet and activist (thank you kindly, Will, for the introduction). His poetry, first of all, is beautiful. The few pieces I've read take me into his jail cell (he was imprisoned at Robben Island for 18 months) and strike my bones. It's honest, lyrical, haunting.

So as I've read more about him, I learned that he refused an induction in the South African Sports Hall of Fame at the end of last year. His activism played a major role in an international sports boycott of apartheid South Africa, which banned them from the Olympics starting in 1970 and ending with the fall of apartheid. I suppose they wanted to honor him for his commitment to bettering SA sports. But Brutus publicly declined the induction, stating that many of the people currently in the Hall of Fame are there at an "unfair advantage, as so many talented black athletes were excluded from sport opportunities." So he gracefully (much to the chagrin of the committee, I'm sure) declined, saying that "it is incompatible to have those who championed racist sport alongside its genuine victims. It's time--indeed long past time--for sports truth, apologies and reconciliation."

I find this story quite interesting to think of how brave it is to really call a people to real reconciliation. When South Africa became a new country, the waved a new flag, sang a new national anthem, adopted many new national languages. These are mostly symbolic, but they are the necessary symbols to begin saying, "we are truly going to live into something new." I love that Brutus is calling even the Sports Hall of Fame to the same kind of newness, even to simply recognize the fallacy of their work during the apartheid era. If a country is going to live into truth and reconciliation and even champion the cause, it must do it in all facets of its life.

My sister L and I have been discussing for years, "why hasn't the U.S. had our intentional process of truth and reconciliation?" We have certainly come a long way. I am a generation removed from any strange fruit dangling from southern trees. Our president is biracial. No doubt that we are in a far better place. And, yet, I still can't wrap my mind around Emmett Till's 1955 lynching and how his murderers actually confessed to the murder without any justice being served or any intentional moves toward reconciling their wrong.

And we have so many examples of where we never spoke the truths or really reconciled. In fact, my friend K and I were talking the other day about how taboo it still is to talk about race in the U.S. Having both spent time in South Africa, we were impressed with how freely the people we met speak of race (sometimes appropriately and sometimes offensively--but the taboo of addressing race doesn't seem as strong). Whereas here, I've heard people remark that President Obama's election has started to awaken bitter race relations in our country. This is not true. This divide has been alive and very much awake (just look at a photograph of a high school cafeteria in Greenville, SC); we just don't talk about it or acknowledge it or look it in the eye. The election placed a mirror in front of us and forced us to see the truth: we've never really intentionally reconciled. Our flag still looks the same. Our song still sounds the same. Some people boycott MLK's birthday celebration. I get followed at a three-letter clothing store because I'm a black woman of a certain age, while 14-year-old and white Johnny stuffs a baseball cap under his shirt. Hispanic people are consistent targets of racial profiling. I'm still an "other" in this nation that has been mine since birth, and I'm labeled "bitter" or an "angry black woman" whenever I mention this.

We have miles to go before we sleep, and I hope that we'll be so moved to practice truth and reconciliation in our future days. Only when we hear each others' stories and begin to hear/see each other can we move toward healing.

It's a Beautiful Day!

I hugged a stranger today.
I felt warm in 28-degree weather.
The frozen corners of my lips could not help but lean toward the sky.
I cried.

Barack Obama's election night win was terribly anticlimactic for me in the wee hour of 3 am on Nov. 5 in Mali. I was excited, for sure, but we had been traveling from the U.S. to Africa for nearly 24 hours. I expended all of my emotional excitement stepping off of the plane into the dusty Malian night. We slept for a few hours and then got up to hear the results. Since we didn’t find a television, we listened to a BBC broadcast of McCain's full concession speech on a tiny radio only to have the BBC station abruptly interrupted to return to a French broadcast of who knows what because my French abilities barely go beyond bonjour and viva la vie boheme. I heard Obama’s speech for the first time six weeks later. C'est la vie!

So today was my moment.

Lanecia and I walked to Nashville's historic Belcourt Theater to meet our friend Ingrid and watch an amazing day in history with my neighbors in Nashville. We have a new President and First Lady--a moment I've desired for 8 long years! We have our first bi-racial leader of the United States! We have the first First Family of African descent living in the White House--a building constructed, in part, by African slaves in America. And it's all happening on the heels of celebrating Martin Luther King's prophetic dream. Oh my God! It is a new day in the United States, and I am happy to live it.

***

I was six years old and starting my first day at a new elementary school. I met Jungle Gym Guard at recess. She was a six-year-old white girl who told me that I could not play on the jungle gym because of something the last black kid who played on it had done. Like a good first-grader, I ran to the teacher and told on Jungle Gym Guard. The teacher happened to be a member of the church where my father was appointed the new associate pastor. As it turns out, Jungle Gym Guard was a member there, too. The teacher told my classmate, "We don’t keep don’t make rules like that. Be nice to Ciona. She's going to be in your Sunday school class. Remember the new pastor who is coming to our church? This is his daughter."

See, my father was the first black pastor in South Carolina United Methodism to serve in a predominantly white congregation since Reconstruction (and by predominantly white I mean that we were one of two black families in the entire 2500-member church. The other black family had the last name White). Eventually the girl formerly known as Jungle Gym Guard became one of my best friends. I learned more of her story. Her grandparents had stopped coming to the church after my father was appointed there. So many members stayed and loved us and supported us for nearly 6 wonderful years. Others left like her grandparents, though. And some who stayed even requested my father not enter the room when he did regular pastoral hospital visits. This was less than 25 years ago.

Even in my lifetime of integrated schools, inclusive water fountains and school cafeterias where the “sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners” sit at the same table, I’ve still experienced jungle gym guards in various parts of my life in the U.S. I thank God that in this same lifetime I’ve been able to experience today. I especially thank God that my parents, and my 97-year-old great-grandmother got to see today, too.

So I walked to Belcourt in the cold. Smiling. Feeling warm from my excitement. Hugged a stranger after the inauguration. And cried.

It’s a beautiful day!




Images by Lanecia in the Belcourt

Images of God . . .

So the General Commission on Religion and Race for The United Methodist Church sponsored an exhibit about race and gender in the denomination. It is a fascinating exhibit, and I'm glad the commission had it as an offering at General Conference. The exhibit ends with the Human Race Machine, a computer imaging machine that morphs your face to show what you might look like if you were a different ethnicity. I morphed myself, so check out "me" in 5 different hues (sorry for the cell phone quality photographs; I don't have a digital camera).

I've discovered that it's far more lovely to think about their similarities than their differences . . .



White "Ciona"



Hispanic/Latino "Ciona"



Indian "Ciona"



Middle Eastern "Ciona"



Asian "Ciona"

Could it be how God looks at us? All of us images of one Creator who sees us and is far more obsessed with what makes us one than what makes us different . . .

1913-2005

"The time had just come when I had been pushed as far as I could stand to be pushed, I suppose. They placed me under arrest. And I wasn't afraid. I don't know why I wasn't, but I didn't feel afraid. I had decided that I would have to know once and for all what rights I had as a human being and a citizen, even in Montgomery, Alabama."

- Rosa Parks, 1913-2005: Parks, civil rights hero and catalyst for the Mongomery Bus Boycott, died Monday at age 92. (as quoted in SoJo mail)

My great-grandmother was born two years before Ms. Parks in 1911. 1911! She's lived so much of the history I read in books. And I know she lived them fiercely! I received a letter from my Granny today . . . she is lovely!

Ms. Parks . . . in her 92 years of living is hope for all. She reminds us that one strategic action by one "tiny" person can start a movement for change. I hope we all keep a bit of Ms. Parks in our hearts when we face "the back of the bus."