INVASIVE INCIVILITY

Graffiti and Kudzu, Jamestown, NC

INDEPENDENCE DAY 2020

I was returning home from my traditional Saturday morning drive to nowhere in particular with my coffee container on empty.  I use these weekly morning drives to clear my head, seek inspiration and sort out recent events.  And this year the drive is even more appreciated in this unprecedented time of an extended pandemic lockdown amid protests and too many destructive riots.  Rioting that has included the destruction of historical statues and many small businesses across our major cities.  I’ve watched this unrest unfold with disdain, sadness and a growing concern for the lawlessness and incivility that it birthed in my country, America.  I watched in disbelief as mayors and governors obviously had our law enforcement stand down and let criminals destroy fellow citizens’ lives.

Yes, there has always been a certain irony and concern about our founding fathers who declared independence from a taxing foreign power 244 years ago, while many were slave owners themselves.  Slavery has been with humanity for all time and still exists in many facets as a serious social issue.  Some later freed those slaves and hundreds of thousands died in a civil war to grant all people freedom.  However, simply reversing a social wrong may be a good start but it generally doesn’t alleviate the problem.  Martin Luther King, Jr. studied history and Gandhi’s struggles in India from foreign rulers and understood that violence only tends to stir up the hornets’ nest.  America is humanity’s great hope for peaceful civil protests and freedom from oppression.

As I approached home this morning, I passed a scene that is all too common in America’s southeast.  An invasive stand of smothering Kudzu vines had already covered a wide section of newly accessed trees near the bypass.  It is native to China and was innocently introduced in America to control erosion and serve as an ornamental shade plant.  However, it also absorbs all the sunlight for the plants under the canopy, suffocating them.  It now occupies an estimated 3,000,000 hectares and is destroying the environment at a rate of 50,000 baseball fields per year! Kudzu transposes living organisms into lifeless topiary support structures.  I was then forced to stop for a passing freight train whose cars were covered in graffiti.  I witnessed similar spray-painted graffiti being used to desecrate our national property and fellow citizens’ communities.  Both the Kudzu and lawless violence are a smothering scourge on our country.  And both are indications of more underlying problems for the future.

As an American citizen, I fully support needed social change and righting wrongs.  That’s the promise and job description of America.  But freedom is not the right to do as we please.  It’s the opportunity to do what is right!  I believe in the premise that love, not hate, is the most powerful force for personal change and for changing the world.  As an individual, I intend to do whatever I can to build a better world.  And I plan to exercise my lawful right to vote! 

BREATHING SPIRIT INTO A COUNTRY

Falcon 9 Launch, NASA Kennedy, FL.

PENTECOST SUNDAY 2020

This Pentecost Sunday in the year 2020 finds the world in the midst of a deadly pandemic and this country in the throes of a nationwide protest over the televised death of a handcuffed man who suffocated under the knee of a law officer.  People are reacting in the spirit of humanity at its best and worst and many are voicing their reactions.  The month began with people protesting that they couldn’t go to the gym or get a haircut and is ending with a maned rocket launched into outer space and street rioting because they can’t stop some bad actors from killing them.  Sadly, the protests turned to riots because bad actors had also inserted themselves there as well.  Our senior pastor’s message today included the observation that unlike animals, we human beings are the only creatures that have the super power of restraint, the ability not to do something that we’re capable of doing. 

I found two tweets today that succinctly organized my frame of mind on this Pentecost Sunday:

“Jesus breathed upon his disciplines, and in that breath, he gave them the Spirit of courage and mission to bring healing to a broken world. [John 20:22] Pentecost is one way to reflect that the power of God is greater than the power that took away the breath of George Floyd.” –Francis X. Pray

“I know your pain, your rage, your sense of despair and hopelessness. Justice has, indeed, been denied for far too long. Rioting, looting, and burning is not the way. Organize. Demonstrate. Sit-in. Stand-up. Vote. Be constructive, not destructive.”  --John Lewis

Immediately after God put his spirit on every human being at Pentecost, the apostle Peter addressed a crowd in Acts 2 by quoting the prophet Joel:

“God says,

I will pour out my Spirit on all people.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy,

your young men will see visions,

your old men will dream dreams.

I will show wonders in the heaven above

and signs on the earth below,

blood and fire and billows of smoke.”

NASA astronaut Doug Hurley shouted just before ignition of the Falcon 9 rocket yesterday, “Let’s light this candle”.  A bystander was quoted as saying “We’ve been bombarded with gloom and doom for the last six, eight weeks and this is awesome.  It brings a lot of people together.” 

Little did these men realize that more than a candle would be lit up last night in major cities all across the country and the senseless murder of one man would bring a whole lot of people together for a release, the unrestrained ability to unite and turn a wrong into a right.  

And all the while, a deadly virus still silently moves among us.