Vote for More Than One Day!

Hello! I volunteer with the youth group at my church and have the opportunity to serve with some of the neatest young people. They are more than your average teenages--their hearts for justice is inspiring! This summer the group is traveling to South Africa and Swaziland to serve alongside Come Back Mission--a local South African organization based in Jo'burg. This is going to be an incredible pilgrimage, and I'm excited that they will get to meet some of my good friends in South Africa.

Please take a minute to vote for Belmont United Methodist Church at Trevecca's More Than video competition. The winning group receives money towards their mission, and it will certainly go a long way with Belmont UMC. You can vote only once each day, but you can vote more than one day! Please do! Thanks!

Greensboro Four Pilgrimage

I am a pilgrim person. I love the journey of life and the opportunity to seek God and God's graces along the way. Fortunately, as one of the authors for The Upper Room's series The Way of Pilgrimage, I get to be a pilgrim guide for them sometimes.

Earlier this month, I guided some youth who attended the United Methodist youth conference Youth 2007 in Greensboro, NC, through a pilgrimage retracing the steps of the Greensboro Four.

It's a beautiful story of four men who were tired, so they decided to take a walk. It was February 1, 1960. The American Civil Rights Movement experienced a peak in the 1950's with the very successful boycott of the buses in Montgomery, Ala., in 1955 and the efforts to integrate high schools in 1957 with the Little Rock (Ark.) Nine. Then there was a lull for a few years until the Greensboro Four.

Four teenagers in their freshman year at North Carolina A & T University (NC A&T) walked to the other part of town and sparked a national sit-in movement when they sat down at the lunch counter of the F.W. Woolworth store and asked for coffee, an unprecedented act for African Americans who were not allowed to be served. Their names are Ezell Blair, Jr. (now called Jibreel Khazan), Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond.

The men walked into Woolworth through the "colored entrance," took the escalator up to the floor where the lunch counter was located, walked to the back of the store and sat down at the counter--two on each side of an elderly white woman. The woman leaned over to them and said she was disappointed in them . . . for not doing it sooner. Much to their surprise, she let them know she was proud and they received great encouragement.

They needed her words because many unkind words followed. For months they returned with other students, peacefully protesting as they sat at the counter. People harassed them--pouring food and hot coffee on their heads, calling them names, threatening them, putting out cigarettes on their heads. But the students--black and white--refused to fight back, incorporating the spirit of nonviolence learned by Martin Luther King, Jr.'s studies of Mahatma Gandhi's sit-in movement and the teachings of Jesus.

So at Youth '07, I guided several pilgrimages each day to walk the mile from NC A&T to the Woolworth store where the sit-in movement began. Along the way, we made many stops:

Stop 1: At the A&T campus, they have a statue of the Four walking. We began here and thought about what it would have been like to boldly step out and make a difference.



Stop 2: Greensboro's railroad tracks brought industry and money to the city. It's also the tracks that separated whites and blacks. If you visit you'll notice that the historically black colleges are located on one side of the tracks still and the historically white colleges are located on the other side of the tracks still. So the Four literally had to cross the tracks to get where they were going. We talked here about the boundaries and "tracks" we create in our neighborhoods, our nation and (since they were high school students) even our school cafeterias. And we reflected on how to cross those tracks. We went through the "tunnel" underneath the track.



Stop 3: The Greensboro News & Record covered the stories of the sit-in movement (called Greensboro Daily Record at the time). At the newspaper's offices, we talked about the importance of news in learning about injustices and the many different (and sometimes annoying) things the news chooses to cover--from Paris Hilton and TomKat to genocide in Darfur and displaced Hurricane Katrina victims.



Stop 4: We stopped at the beginning of February One Place, a street right before Woolworth that honors the Greensboro Four. We walked silently up this street.

Stop 5: F.W. Woolworth--the infamous department store with the segregated lunch counter. In July, when the counter finally was integrated, the manager of this particular store invited the black employees to be the first to serve at this integrated counter. Here, we looked at photographs and drank cold water as we reflected on what it means to be worthy of a cup of cold water. During one special pilgrimage, we happened to get there at the same time as the museum director and the mayor! So the director let our group of 51 people go inside and sit at what was left of the counter and see what they plan to do with the museum when it is complete. What a treat! For more info visit the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.



Stop 6: Center City Park, in the heart of Greensboro, celebrates Greensboro's history and diversity. On the wall of the park, there is a quote spoken nearly 100 years prior to the movement of the Greensboro Four. It is powerful:

"Let hate and prejudice have no place here. Elevate yourselves, but pull nobody down. Go for the education and progress mankind without regard to race or color and invite all to come forward and assist in the development of our common country."
~Thomas Settle, North Caroline Supreme Court Justice

At Center City Park, we debriefed our journey and shared in a body prayer.





*All photographs by Mike Dubose (United Methodist News Service)

Pilgrim People

Tonight, I went on a pilgrimage with our youth at church (whom I adore, by the way!). We did not go far. 1st Ave. in downtown Nashville was our farthest point, and we started at 4th (well, technically the journey began at 21st where our church building resides, but we started walking at 4th). In just those few blocks, however, we silently trekked the streets of Music City (well, most of the youth remained silent, that is). We traveled expecting to see God.

Even though we live in NashVegas, these particular streets are not streets we frequent. The occasional Titans game, music festival or out-of-town visitor might drag us to these streets, but we rarely walk them with pilgrim feet, hearts and eyes during those times.

Tonight my pilgrim eyes were most moved by the very end of our pilgrimage. We reflected on our calling to hospitality--to be in our community and open ourselves up to share our gifts with the community of strangers and friends we will encounter throughout life. So then we sat in front of the brand new symphony hall to hold our "Christ Candle" time. This weekly ritual invites us to pass around our candle (or our battery-powered lantern, as the case was tonight) and reflect on moments we've encountered God through the week. When the sharing/examen ends, we stand and give the UMYF (United Methodist Youth Fellowship) benediction.

Toward the end of our sharing, a man walked to our circle. He looked familiar with this part of town, possibly more familiar with the streets than we hoped for him. I don't know. He paused. He listened as the last person shared. When we stood up to speak the benediction, he placed his camo backpack and red hat on the ground. Without a word and with hands outstretched to join ours, he marched to the circle ready to pray. Grant and Kyle (two of our senior high youth) reached to him, as well, stepping away from one another to make space for our neighbor to join the circle. We prayed, smiled at one another through our benediction and twisted out of the circle.

He never said a word. Maybe he spoke to someone else; I did not hear him. I do not know his name. His presence, after engaging in conversation about hospitailty, was like being tucked into warm satin sheets and receiving a kiss on the forehead by Jesus who whispers to me:

rest well, sweet child and open
not just your eyes with the
Sunrise
but wake up and open your
circles, your church building, your
life, your hands and grab mine

Shane!!!

In exciting youth group news: Shane Claiborne, author of The Irresistible Revolution is coming to our all-church retreat in October to speak to our youth!

We are in for a much-desired blessing!

Arts in the Village, April 22!

Our youth at church have been creating fantabulous art--writing, photography, music, knitting, etc.--to display/sell at our first Arts in the Village festival! The money we raise from this first festival will go towards mission efforts for Hurricane Katrina relief.

This morning I walked the streets of Nashville with our Jr. High youth, asking vendors to place our flyers in their store windows, on their community boards, etc. It's a beautiful day, and the youth are LOVELY! I'm looking forward to our April 22 celebration! If you're in Nashville, join us!

Remembering Sweet Lisa (Part 1)

I stared at some children beyond the wire fence. They journeyed back-and-forth several yards between a home and a tiny store, settling every once in a while on a patch of grass between the two places. This was their career.

I began taking photographs of them eating their apples on the patch of grass. I watched them walk back-and-forth. I wondered who they were. And I wanted to play.

When my lens would not zoom any further, I drew closer to them, stood on their grass and said hello.

“Auggghhhh! Auggghhh! Auggghhhh!”

They hiccupped their screams as tiny feet ran quickly across gravel and dirt road into the house. The back-and-forth ceased. They moved inside-and-out from inside the house to just enough out of the door to see if the weird talker was still usurping their office space.

I laughed and played our little game of peek-a-boo, wishing I hadn’t scared them. I wanted to think they were intrigued by me and wanted to play, as well. They were genuinely frightened, though, and disturbed that I had taken their grass.

A little disappointed by their not wanting to play with me, I considered walking back to the church inside the fence and taking more photographs of the Belmont UMC youth laying foundation for the soup kitchen we were building in this South African community in Knysna. My head turned towards the church, and I saw a cow . . . in the middle of the road.

And even more beautiful, my eyes caught a tiny little girl in front of the cow checking out what was going on in the church yard. Then she turned and looked at me with every bit of my intrigue reciprocated. I patted the grass next to me, and she accepted my invitation.

I spoke. No screams, no running away. She simply looked at me and inched closer. I asked her name.

“Lisa,” she said.

Externally I smiled, and I’m sure more words fell from my mouth even though Lisa primarily spoke Xhosa. My internal smiles were far louder. Sweet Lisa, traveling with a cow, captured me immediately. My soul beamed. And it still does as I recall this first memory of Sweet Lisa.