November Haze

Driving home from town, just before I reach the turn to my road from highway 25, I catch the most breathtaking view of the Blue Wall.  Mountains that are often shrouded in summer humidity, giving the horizon a graceful curve of peaks and valleys against a canvas-like light blue sky.  It reminds me of a painting, really, with the perspectives laid out to scale, colors chosen and blended to perfection.  They call those mountains the Blue Ridge for very good reason; despite all the color of fall that usually takes our breath away, for much of the year they are the bluish hills that define the very edges of the sky under which we live, work, worry and play.

November is usually a month of color.  A coolish mix of grey skies and wet leaves, gold and garnet, orange and brown.  This year though, the rain has abandoned us, leaving the ground scattered in brown crunchy leaves, our trees looking sadly barren of their usual Autumnal show.  Far worse though, are the thick clouds of smoke masking the view of our mountains in the distance.  Some days the fog hangs so thick we nearly forget there are mountains out there in the distance.  The edges of our sky have become shapeless, thick with smoke that fills our lungs and burns our eyes.

It seems that somewhere, someone decided that destruction should win over beauty.  That smothering smoke and hazy skies were more important than a breath of fresh air and the complete awe of viewing sunlight through the canopy of a tree covered in yellow leaves.  Someone decided that for us.  They gave us no say in the matter and now we lament our loss, shake our heads in bewilderment wondering who could possibly be so ignorant, so evil, so irresponsible.

We walked outside today, the cool, dry November air nipping at our fingers as we explored our own backyard.  Thirteen acres of meadows and woods, a few trees standing resolutely off to themselves in the middle of a freshly mown field, straw crunching at our feet, we found ourselves right at home in nature.  A few birds scurried from under bushes, probably wondering what we humans might get into while in their territory.  We found a huge old rock and scaled it for the view, took some pictures of the vastness of all the untarnished land.  I looked up at the sky, big and open, no power lines or big tree limbs blocking the view and thought that field would be the perfect place for star-gazing some night soon.  The sun was sinking fast behind some trees, it's welcome warmth leaving us too soon as we tromped our way back up the hill, through the neighbor's back yard and back to ours.

We discovered piles of brush, piles of bamboo all dried out and stacked neatly together, for what purpose, no one knows.  My boy climbed on old tractors and ran up a mountain of crushed asphalt, thrilled that he'd found the perfect boyhood playground for pretending he is fighting wars and hiding from the enemy.

Eventually we came back around the last building and into our own back yard.  I stood for a moment in awe, looking down the hillside, across the huge field that faces the driveway.  I took in the beauty of Autumn's art-work, searched in vain for the mountain tops above the trees.  I could barely make out the silhouette of one rounded mountain top, shrouded in the November haze of a fire burning miles away.

Isn't it just like life?  We go about our business, smelling smoke, noticing something just isn't right, but never really fretting over it because, after all, what's happening is happening far away.  Sure, we might get a whiff of smoke or miss out on a beautiful view for a while, but really what does it have t do with us?

Meanwhile firefighters are spending days and nights away from their families.  Forest animals are scurrying to try to find new homes.  People are being evacuated from their homes for days at a time--likely worried that they might not have a home to go back to.  Kids are banned from going outside because the air quality is so poor.  No one will sit by a campfire this Thanksgiving night.  But we still carry on as though it doesn't matter.  After all, the fire will eventually go out.  It will rain again.  We'll get our fresh air back and our pretty mountain views, though singed and spoiled for a while, will grow back lush and green in a few years' time.

Our willful ignorance and our incontrovertible hopefulness, things we cling to so tightly and want to call virtues, do not allow us to see the real damage being done.

I speak of course, of our forests, our mountains and wildlife.  But I speak also of the many human spirits who suffer at the hands of injustice, prejudice, hate and ignorance.  I speak of our willful blindness to the plights of our fellow man, the ones whose entire lives consist of struggle, a kind of hardship most of us will never know.  And why should we concern ourselves with them?  Sure, we know they are there, we see the signs of their presence, but we like to believe they are miles away from us.

How many times have you driven past the run-down trailer park, and instead of wondering why the landlord runs a slum, you've judged the people who live there as being lazy, drug users, illegal immigrants, loose women, the dregs of humanity?  How  many times have you shaken your head when you saw a dirty child in too-little clothes, too shy to speak to a stranger and assumed his mother must be bad?  How often do you inventory the groceries of the mom ahead of you in line at Ingles using her EBT card to buy food for her family and silently judge her for what she purchases?

You see the smoke, but you cannot acknowledge the fire.  It's too far from you--someone else will handle it.

But what we forget when we refuse to help fight the fire is that when one of us is struggling, when one of us is fighting a fire that is overwhelming, we all eventually lose.  Why must a struggling young family who can only afford to live in a small trailer have to also live with the stigma of the people in their community assuming the worst of them because a landlord chooses not to keep up her property?  Why can't we fight that fire by demanding better for the families who want to grow and thrive and build big beautiful lives for themselves in our midst?  Why do we choose, rather than to reach out and help, to be flame throwers?

This is our hazy November, and in the coming years, the haze will grow thicker all around us, even long after the forests have ceased their burning.

What will you do in your hometown, in your own little corner of the world to find the flames of destruction and put them out before our whole country becomes engulfed?  You and I, we cannot afford to turn our heads or stay inside to avoid seeing the smoke.  We cannot count on someone else to stamp out the embers smoldering in the underbrush.

You and I, we are the firefighters, and this fight is going to be a long one.

Are you ready to suit up and take it on?

November Haze

Driving home from town just before I reach the turn to my road from highway 25, I catch the most breathtaking view of the Blue Wall. The mountain range often shrouded in summer humidity, gives the horizon a graceful curve of peaks and valleys against a canvas-like light blue sky.  It reminds me of a painting, really, with the perspectives exactingly laid out to scale, colors chosen and blended to perfection.  They it the Blue Ridge for very good reason. Despite all the color of fall that usually takes our breath away, on most days the bluish hills define the very edges of the sky under which we live, work, worry and play.

November is usually a month of color.  A coolish mix of grey skies and wet leaves, gold and garnet, orange and brown.  This year though the rain has abandoned us, leaving the ground scattered in brown crunchy leaves, our trees looking sadly barren of their usual Autumnal show.  Far worse  are thick clouds of smoke masking the view of our mountains in the distance.  Some days fog hangs so thick we nearly forget the mountains out there in the distance.  The edges of our sky shapeless, thick with smoke that fills our lungs and burns our eyes.

It seems that somewhere, someone decided that destruction should win over beauty.  That smothering smoke and hazy skies were more important than a breath of fresh air and the complete awe of viewing sunlight through the canopy of a tree covered in yellow leaves.  Someone decided that for us.  They gave us no say in the matter and now we grieve our loss, shake our heads in bewilderment wondering who could possibly be so ignorant, so evil, so irresponsible.

We walked outside today, the cool dry November air nipping at our fingers as we explored our own backyard.  Thirteen acres of meadows and woods, a few trees standing resolutely off to themselves in the middle of a freshly mown field, straw crunching at our feet, we found ourselves right at home in nature.  A few birds scurried from under bushes, probably wondering what we humans might get into while in their territory.  We found a huge old rock and scaled it for the view, took some pictures of the vastness of all the untarnished land.  I looked up at the sky big and open,  no power lines or big tree limbs blocking the view, and thought the span of Earth would make a perfect carpet for star-gazing some night soon. The sun was sinking fast behind some trees, it's welcome warmth leaving us too soon as we tromped our way back up the hill.

We discovered piles of brush, piles of bamboo all dried out and stacked neatly together, for what purpose, no one knows.  My boy climbed on old tractors and ran up a mountain of crushed asphalt, thrilled that he'd found the perfect boyhood playground for pretending he is fighting wars and hiding from the enemy.

Eventually we came back around the last building and into our own back yard.  I stood for a moment in awe, looking down the hillside across the huge field that faces the driveway.  I took in the beauty of Autumn's art-work, searched in vain for the mountain tops above the trees.  I could barely make out the silhouette of one rounded mountain top, shrouded in the November haze of a fire burning miles away.

Isn't it just like life?  We go about our business, smelling smoke, noticing something just isn't right, but never really fretting over it because, after all, what's happening is happening far away.  Sure, we might get a whiff of smoke or miss out on a beautiful view for a while, but really what does it have to do with us?

Meanwhile firefighters spend days and nights away from their families.  Forest animals are scurrying to try to find new homes.  People are being evacuated from their homes for days at a time--likely worried  they might not ever go back home. Kids are banned from going outside because the air-quality is so poor, but we still carry on as though it doesn't matter.  After all, the fire will eventually go out.  It will rain again.  We'll get our fresh air back and our pretty mountain views, though singed and spoiled for a while, will grow back lush and green in a few years' time.

Our willful ignorance and our incontrovertible hopefulness, things we cling to so tightly and want to call virtues, do not allow us to see the real damage being done.

I speak of course, of our forests, our mountains and wildlife but also of the  many human spirits who suffer at the hands of injustice, prejudice, hate and ignorance.  I speak of our willful blindness to the plights of our fellow man, the ones whose entire lives consist of struggle, a kind of hardship most of us will never know.  Why should we concern ourselves with them?  Sure, we know they are there, we see the signs of their presence, but we like to believe they are miles away from us.

How many times have you driven past the run-down trailer park, and instead of wondering why the landlord runs a slum, you've judged the people who live there as being lazy, drug users, illegal immigrants, loose women, the dregs of humanity?  How  many times have you shaken your head when you saw a dirty child in too-little clothes, too shy to speak to a stranger and assumed his mother must be bad?  How often do you inventory the groceries of the mom ahead of you in line at Ingles using her EBT card to buy food for her family and silently judge her for what she purchases?

You see the smoke, but you cannot acknowledge the fire.  It's too far from you--someone else will handle it.

But what we forget when we refuse to help fight the fire is that when one of us is struggling, when one of us is fighting a fire that is overwhelming, we all eventually lose.  Why must a struggling young family who can only afford to live in a small trailer have to also live with the stigma of the people in their community assuming the worst of them because a landlord chooses not to keep up her property?  Why can't we fight that fire by demanding better for the families who want to grow and thrive and build big beautiful lives for themselves in our midst?  Why do we choose, rather than to reach out and help, to be flame throwers?

This is our hazy November, and in the coming years, the haze will grow thicker all around us, even long after the forests have ceased their burning.

What will you do in your hometown, in your own little corner of the world to find the flames of destruction and put them out before our whole country becomes engulfed?  You and I, we cannot afford to turn our heads or stay inside to avoid seeing the smoke.  We cannot count on someone else to stamp out the embers smoldering in the underbrush.

You and I, we are the firefighters, and this fight is going to be a long one.

Are you ready to suit up and take it on?

The Four-Letter Word

I remember being small, maybe 4 or 5 years old, when I first heard my preacher speak about love.  Now, I knew about love before then.  We sang Jesus Loves Me in Sunday School, I knew my parents loved me.  I knew what it was to love something, someone.  But the first time I heard my preacher speak of love, I got the subtle message that love was maybe not a good thing.

I remember his words to the effect of, "These people who are saying God is love are weak and sinful because God is not love, he is wrath and judgment and I will not preach about God's love, I will preach about God's wrath.  If you don't like that, go to church somewhere else."  No, not his exact words, but pretty darned close.  I heard that sermon time and time again as I grew up in a Fundamentalist Baptist church in the South.  I heard it so often that without even consciously knowing it, I began to think of God as the great equalizer.  Sure, we sang Amazing Grace and learned John 3:16, but love was not something we were encouraged to nurture or embrace.  Not our love for others and not God's love for us.

Our duty, I learned, was to get Saved.  It was to separate ourselves from the rest of the world--to set ourselves apart as different, special, BETTER.  Along with that idea of separation came a long list of rules that grew ever-longer.  A defeating scroll of man-created demands that demeaned us as females and exalted the males became our new Bible.

With our effort to "separate" came the ever more urgent need to find things about ourselves that were not like the rest of the world.  We became finger pointers, condemners.  We often said things like, "Well at least I don't do THAT."  Or we'd say, "You know she wears pants....goes to the movies...moved out on her own before she got married...etc..."  It didn't matter that we also sinned.  It didn't matter that we were also imperfect and in dire need of God's grace; we suddenly felt justified in our judgment and condemnation of other people, Christians and non Christians alike.

I grew up immersed up to my neck in a church that espoused thinly veiled hatred for all things different.  Martin Luther King Jr. was referred to as a heretic so often that by the time I reached high school and listened for the first time to the "I Have a Dream" speech, I could hardly reconcile what my parents and my preacher had taught me about him with what I was hearing in his speech; a speech that brought tears to my eyes even back then.  I don't recall anyone ever saying "Don't love black people" but I don't recall anyone ever saying "Love you neighbor" either.

I grew up confused.  Our church collected money and supported about 50 different missionaries all over the world.  My best friend when I was 11, moved with her parents to Papua New Guinea.  I didn't see her for a long time but  I knew that her parents were there to teach black people about Jesus.  I knew they attended church together, ate meals together, cared about each other. But at our church, black people were not welcome.  They weren't welcome because our pastor worried that allowing black people to come to our church would encourage interracial relationships between our young girls and black boys.  I never completely understood any of it, but I went along with it because I was a kid and I did as I was told.

Problem is, as I grew up I actually adopted some of those beliefs.  It was not out of hatred that I embraced those beliefs but out of ignorance and a sincere desire to do right.  These things, I was taught, were right.

In my late teens I started working at a daycare center where I cared for children of every race.  I remember a little Japanese boy who cried for his mom all day, a little Hispanic three year old who knew how to curse in Spanish and get away with it.  I knew a sweet, dark skinned, big smiled boy named Danny who stole my heart.  Danny was adopted by a white woman who was a senior citizen. She brought him to the center every day to get a break and to give him the chance to play with other kids.  He was long and lanky, a fast moving little creature who couldn't nap without a back rub and a blankie.

At the time I was pregnant with my first daughter.  On weekends I sometimes babysat Danny.  One weekend in particular my ex husband and I took him to a carnival near our house.  I was walking around at one point, carrying Danny, his skinny rear perched atop my pregnant belly, looking for my husband, when I noticed sidelong glances being shot my way.  Every white person I passed looked at me in utter disgust.  I heard people make comments behind me as I passed them.  One person even yelled the N word as I walked by.  Perhaps he was referring to me, or to Danny but in that instance I realized I had been wrong all my life.  It took coming face to face with that kind of hatred for me to realize people are people.  Love is love.  Hate is ugly and it always will be.

I grew up attending a church where known sex offenders took up space on pews every Sunday.  They held office, sang in the choir, had continued access to new victims.  I witnessed a leadership in my church that turned a blind eye to sexual assault and abuse.  It seemed so easy for them to do, that I began to think it should have come easier to me too.  I forced myself to be kind and gracious to my own abuser, and to the abusers of other girls and women in our congregation because that's what was modeled for me by my church leadership and even by my family.  I shared Christmas and Thanksgiving dinner with my abuser, year after year feeling it was my duty as a Christian to forgive even though he was not repentant.  Feeling it was my duty to not speak of it, to pretend it never happened.  It was easier for everyone to ignore it, gloss over it or claim their Salvation undid the harm these men caused.

One of them had the gall to come up to me at my dad's funeral a few weeks ago.  He's old now, shaky from Parkinson's Disease, but still as bold as ever.  He stood there trying to hold a conversation with me, wanting to tell me all about his illness.  I walked away.

I know now what I didn't know then.  I do not have to accept anyone into my life, especially someone who is harmful to me or to others. I know that I can deny them access to me without hatred in my own heart, and that it's okay to hold people accountable for their unacceptable and harmful behavior.  I no longer have to look the other way or pretend it never happened.  I no longer want to.

It's easy for me to see how so many people were able to overlook the sexually predatory behavior of our president-elect.  I grew up seeing the same thing in my church. Here is where I get to my point.

My heart is broken, not because a man I don't support won the presidency, but because on a smaller scale, right before our eyes and in front of impressionable young minds, these same attitudes and abilities to gloss over things so atrocious are affecting people in deep, lasting ways.  It brings back the trauma of seeing my abuser sing in the choir.  It makes me remember that my being victimized was not a problem for the adults in my life--but my inability to forget about it was.

It makes me remember the time I wanted my friend Benita to come home with me on a Friday to spend the night, so excited to spend time with my friend, and having my mama say she couldn't come after she found out she was black.  It makes me ashamed of where I came from.

However, there is hope.  If someone like me, someone who was raised in such a bubble or racism and ignorance can find her way out of that mess, other people can too.  For me it took getting away from my hometown, creating distance between myself and those who would have held me back, and it took really getting in the trenches with my fellow man in places of servitude.  I've worked with people of all ages, from infants to old people, people of all races, all sexual orientations, all religions.  I've worked with them as they came into the world and as they took their last breaths.  I have seen what humanity is, and I know that at our core, we are all worthy of the same love, respect and positive regard.  I learned better.

Other people can learn too, but we might just have to take them by the hands and pull them along. We might have to show them that they have nothing to fear from opening their hearts and minds to people who are different from them; to people who believe differently, look different, love differently.  It might still take time for them to learn that another person's way of life doesn't threaten theirs, and that their beliefs can stay their own without becoming a threat to others.

I'm not losing hope because I know where I came from.  I know I haven't arrived at perfection, and I know I have a long way still to go.  I will try to have patience and extend my hand to anyone who is brave enough to come with me to a place of love and acceptance.  I hope we can find mutual understanding of the fears and heartaches we have all endured, and realize that humanity makes none of us immune to hurt.  I hope we can all learn to treat each other as equals, that no one is ever promoted over another as superior or favored by God.

Love is not a dirty word.