As I look back over my life I am amazed constantly at how, as human beings, we have created such a complicated mess when to live a good life should be a simple accomplishment.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a martyr because he could not live his life ignoring the ills in the society which surrounded him. Most of us live our lives contributing to those ills and making them worse. Our needs are not simple. They grow more complicated as we age in a society which markets hourly with goals to enlarge already out of control egos which we are willing to pay very high prices to satisfy.
I remember Martin Luther King, Jr. from my days as a teen ager. He was not a big hero, he was a young man, studying at Divinity School and doing what he could, with others, to mitigate and change the apartheid which existed in these United States.
A particularly strong memory of Martin King was the time when the Jr. High Choir at my Church went on a trip, driving across the back roads of Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama. Rev. Nicholas Hood was the inspiration behind those trips and we met up at different places with Andrew Young and Martin King. We were about integration and attempting to break down barriers. Amazingly, as I look at my life, that is what I have been doing all of my years on this earth and I don’t see many results from the effort. To try to mitigate evil when it is so strongly entrenched takes more than my life has been able to deliver.
We spent many weekends visiting white churches and always stayed the night in the home of whites where there were young people our ages and on Sunday mornings we sang with them as a part of the Church Service where Martin King preached the sermon.
Our reception in the homes of these white families where we stayed was always warm and welcoming. We ate together, got to know one another and Sunday morning services gave meaning to what we were doing and why. It was truly God’s work. Doing that work, however, you come to know that good is always combined with evil and I saw for the first time what racism was all about.
Having been raised in a middle-class African American community, we were involved in a fairly closed community so our sense of self-worth and who we were was intact. I won’t try to explain that – if you don’t have any idea my sympathy goes out to you.
While I had white friends and white family and the city in which I was raised didn’t make a big deal out of that, but accepted much of that back and forth, it was not what the world in general accepted. Those weekends visiting white churches were about to open my eyes to the evils that existed in this world in ways I could not have imagined.
As we arrived, on a Saturday, in one town where we were to spend the weekend and sing in Church that Sunday morning, we were introduced to the young ‘white’ Jr. choir – our counterparts. At the end of dinner we were split up and sent to spend the night with families who volunteered to be our hosts for the weekend.
While we were getting ready for bed, frantic calls went out from one house to another and the next thing we knew, the ‘white’ families with whom we stayed had swiftly rounded us up and had practically thrown us into the station wagons which brought us and we were speeding down country lanes where we saw Martin King, Andrew Young and Nicholas Hood hanging in effigy from the trees as we passed. We began to realize what was happening when we saw a group of whites coming down the road trying to catch up to us. They were led by an older man with a shot gun. He was not the only one in that crowd with guns. What amazed me was the anger, bitterness, horribleness of their emotions against a group of 14 to 16 year olds – a church group visiting their neighborhood, come to sing in their church on a Sunday morning where Martin King was to preach.
That was the first time I saw racism in its raw form and saw the threat that my very existence posed to all of those people so furious that we dared to think we could sing in their church with their children. Since, as African Americans we didn’t self-segregate, their out of control emotions would force us to with guns and sticks and bricks and bats. Who was their god? It was clearly not God we worshipped on Sundays and met to talk about and study Scripture supporting the structures built to worship God – to learn about Jesus – to worship Christ. Their Churches had the same trappings as the one in which we worshipped – the same kind of cross, the stained glass windows, similar architecture with bibles in the pews, but clearly it was not about the worship of God. They had created a god with whom they could relate with values, a character, and all the trappings we build around religion which worked for them in their need to exist as ‘white supremacists’. The viciousness and ability and need to even murder if that is what it took to maintain themselves as “better than” – supreme over all others – oppressors of peoples not like them was so strong nothing else seemed to matter to them. If they could have caught up to Nicholas Hood, Martin King, Andrew Young they clearly would have hung them instead of the effigies they placed on the road we were driving down.
We were accused of being part of a sex ring. We were supposedly in town and staying with the boys and girls our ages to have sex with them, to morally corrupt them and on and on it went.
As I experienced all of that I experienced a group of ‘whites’ who were so corrupt themselves that they were projecting onto others their sins. I also experienced a group of ‘whites’ who were truly in their church to worship God. In the lives of this last group, they acted out of their belief system which is probably why they were the people who invited us to be a part of their communion. Seeing the evil amidst the good in which they lived and raised their children they were moved to act. At that same moment Nicholas Hood, Andrew Young and Martin Luther King, Jr. were there to help facilitate what they needed to do to bring love, goodness, justice, into the lives of their community.
Since that time I have seen ‘whites’ who live in many radically different ways. Some follow the call of God in their lives and understand they are one with us all. Some follow the call of the god they created and re-create as the need exists to help them live as unauthentic a life as possible, projecting an image onto the world which is very different from who they really are – always hiding the shame they feel -not trying to be perfect, but trying to project a perfect image of themselves – actually living out of their sin instead of living into the authenticity of their beautiful and flawed selves.
The next Sunday Nicholas Hood gathered us together and we studied Scripture while talking about that experience. He was determined to put what happened to us in the context of the Gospels.
Since that time, Martin King walked a long ways on that road and had many encounters with people who came after him the way that group came after all of us because they were so threatened by a Jr. High Choir singing in their Church on a Sunday and staying in the homes of their friends and parishioners some of whom they had known all of their lives, but were still able to accuse of exposing their children to ‘those sex fiends’.
I still see that group of people running down that back country road trying to stop, shoot and kill young teenagers who were such a threat to them and their way of life.
Martin King gave his life to save such people. Donald Trump gave his to make sure such people would live eternally on this earth and be able to wreck as many lives as they can reach and to destroy as much of life as he can reach – including his own.
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Martin Luther King Day at Bettina’s
Tuesday, January 20th, 2015copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2015
Hate murdered a man, at 39 years of age, who preached love.
It has been amazing and humbling to watch the progress of the Martin Luther King holiday over the years. We watched from the beginning, when there was much conflict, confrontation, opposition, loud voices of angry protest at the very idea that such a man, with his history and achievements should be honored. We watched until today when the determination and love of those who were going to make sure Martin and the work of the Black Civil Rights movement was recognized. This 2015 year we celebrated and recognized a man and a movement with time out of school for our children, to the closing of banks, the post office and some of our corporations. To get even this far, has been a long, hard, painful, but very rewarding journey for many.
How do we treat greatness when discovered or suspected in African Americans?
We attended and participated in events which recognized Martin Luther King and the movement of which he was one of the leaders. The events, their venues, the people participating were a cross section – not only of America – but across parts of the world where the work of the Civil Rights Movement was remembered.
There was much “breakfast table talk” about the history which brought us to this day. We hope it continues throughout the year. I thought we would share some of that conversation with you:
“We had a fantastic breakfast – I would have to call it a ‘breakfast seminar.’ Only one person at the table had been through the Civil Rights Movement which created this holiday. The rest of us were either not yet born or were on the other side. I was one of those on the other side at the time because, to me, what was happening with the protests, the disruptions, the dogs, the hoses aimed at the hurting of even young children was something I couldn’t abide. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with life the way we were living it. My point of view was not that of those who were willing to die for their freedom and were looking to the future at their children’s future, but of someone whose life was being disrupted. Not seriously disrupted, but enough to be inconvenienced and I just wanted it to stop and things to go back to the way they were. I don’t know when God took hold of me to shake me up and to shake those attitudes out of my life, but somehow it happened and I am now a part of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. My grey hair can be seen among all of those young people and I hope somehow, even though it is a very little and very late, my efforts will matter to those who come behind me.”
Are you listening out there in Simi Valley? How diverse is your neighborhood!
WOW!
“What a history lesson! I remember studying the Civil Rights Movement in school. We learned about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and what that time was all about, but I had never talked to someone who was a part of that history before. This was a very different perspective. I think of history as being about the study of dead people and past times. Here I was in the middle of a conversation with someone who lived that history and those past times are still with us today. I have never been a part of a demonstration of any kind. Never talked to anyone who had. Didn’t intend to talk to anyone who was a part of something like that and here I was in the middle of breakfast deep into a conversation that changed my life. Thank you to my breakfast companions for putting up with me. My responses must have been horrible to you, yet you were so kind – well almost kind, after you got over the shock of my being at the breakfast table. I don’t know what I expected, but certainly not what happened. I have never even thought twice about the Martin Luther King holiday. No different from all those other holidays I don’t celebrate. Maybe it is the newness of this one – with the pain still being felt by those who experienced the events which led up to this being important enough to remember once a year. This is, however, a holiday I am bringing back to my family to celebrate every year by learning something new about that time in history and by trying to be a little better about dealing with my prejudices which have caused so many people pain. But – is ‘celebrate’ really what I want to say. I almost feel as though we should all be in sack cloth and ashes for what we’ve done, but ‘celebrate’ is what I feel.”
A truth the world needs to hear! From the world’s elite, the corporate billionaires, the religious aristocrats, the homeless on our streets, no one is immune from the need to be silent so we can be accepted. “I am sorry, but I can’t get involved. Only when my earthly masters signal their approval.”
“A small group of us (women all) get together every year on Martin Luther King day to try to continue to work through our conflicting thoughts about the Black Civil Rights Movement. It was a difficult time for us. Women – who were discriminated against, not only by the wider society, but also by the Black Civil Rights Movement. It was very male oriented and some, in the movement, felt embarrassed if women were perceived as being in any leadership position. We withdrew, but still supported what was happening with our money, by marching and by being a part of. At the same time, we gathered together to fight for the equality of women and here was an example where those discriminated against were discriminating against us. That is so the human condition! Flawed, full of sin, dragging our own history and almost blind to that of others. Our time together, each year, is to try to reconcile and acknowledge our being human and to root out our separateness to be able to embrace everyone and not feel victimized as we work with those also fighting for their freedom in a society which seems to need to have a group on top and a group less than and which needs to manage and continue their being on top by playing one ‘less than’ group against another.”
“I love Bettina’s. It is a safe place to be able to express whatever and you never know who is going to be at breakfast. May you all live long and prosper.”
Ed Note: We had a lot more expressions of breakfast at Bettina’s on Martin Luther King Day. We shared just a few. The places where people came from, knowing the history of King and the Movement amazed even us. We could put this all together in a book, but we will stop here. Hope this gives more meaning to your day and information to your life.
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Want to join us? Have a home that you want to open to become one of Bettina Network’s Hedge Schools? Call us and lets talk – or email us.
Ed. Note: Members of the Bettina Network Lifestyle Community can contribute to the Bettina Network Blog whenever they have anything they want to say and be heard by this fantastic group of people. Send your blog to bettinanetwork@comcast.net or mail it to us at P. O. Box 380585 Cambridge, MA. 02238 or call us on the telephone at 617-497-9166 to tell us what you want to say and we will write it for you.
Volunteer with Bettina Network Foundation, inc. to work estate sales; to help move items from one home to another; to contribute your ideas on how we can better use our resources in this effort to relieve and eliminate homelessness and poverty. We also need photographers; designers; and more. However much or little time you have, we are grateful.
Send your event information to be included in Bettina Network’s Menu of Events to: bettina-network@comcast.net
This is a curated blog so you cannot write your responses at the end of each entry. TO RESPOND TO THIS BLOG email bettina-network@comcast.net or info@bettina-network.com
TO LEARN MORE about Bettina Network, inc. try www.bettina-network.com
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Tags: African American history, bed & breakfast, Bettina Homes, Bettina Network Information, breakfast table talk, Martin Luther King, Racism
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