A personal introduction & appeal:
4 Words that saved… & save a nation, each day, to this day
“I was delivering a vehicle for a company to Florida, coming all the way from California, when I noticed 2 ladies in a car on the side of the road. This was before cell phones. I stopped & backed up. I try never to pass a stranded motorist without determining if they need some assistance. As I approached, they both got out of the car. It appeared as they might be mother & daughter. They were also black. As I enquired if I could lend assistance, I noted the concern on the ‘mother’s’ face, but a measured concern, as she took stock of the man in front of her. But I also noted, with some shock, that the younger girl, maybe 17-18, looked at me with abject terror. I have NEVER been reacted to in my life that way. It was a very humiliating experience. As the woman recognized the fear of the girl, where before I had offered to give them a lift or make a call as needed, I saw her relief as she hit upon a proper resolution. She advised me she had a daughter who was a sheriff in the next county & if I could reach her, they would then be fine. I took the number, glad to both be of substantial assistance, but also relieved to offer such assistance in a way the young girl could accept. I quickly sought an exit to the highway & made the call. Reaching her daughter, she was so grateful for the call. The next day I realized the day before had been Martin Luther King, Jr., Day.” I most remember that girl’s terror as I offered a ride. It still hurts to think of it.” Chris Jordan
“The victims of various types of wrongdoing express the ineffable experience of deep bitterness & helplessness. Such an experience of pain is called han in the Far East. Han can be defined as the critical wound of the heart generated by unjust psychosomatic repression, as well by social, political, economic, & cultural oppression. It is entrenched in the hearts of the victims of sin & violence, & is expressed through such diverse reactions as sadness, helplessness, resentment, hatred & the will to revenge.” Andrew Sung Park
“The attitude & ethos that distinguish the politics of a civil society is civility, i.e., a solicitude for the interest of the whole society, a concern for the common good. The civil person, when he has to decide & act in a situation in which there is conflict, thinks primarily of the civil society as the object of obligations, not of the members of his family, or his village, or his party, or his ethnic group, or his social class, or his occupation.” Edward Schils
“Civility in private life & civility in the face-to-face relations of participants in public life are NOT essentially different from each other.” Edward Schils
“Whom would take knee in repentance, for harms created, offers no power to others, but to oneself, offers no honoring but to self, where the 1st betrayal occurred, hence, the 1st debt to be paid.” Chris Jordan
“These are the times that try men’s souls; the summer soldier & the sunshine patriot will in this crisis turn from the service of his country, but he that stands it now deserves the love & thanks of man & woman.” Thomas Paine
“We need today… a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor & challenge his false sense of superiority. But the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption, the end is the creation of beloved community… It’s love which will bring about the miracles in the heart of men.” M.L. King, Jr.
“… (we have) consistently defended justice while exposing fraud, corruption, & other social ills.” Hak Ja Han Moon
“To restore the soul of a nation” …quite a declaration as to the social state of a nation, now presumed to have been not only accused, but also convicted & thus, now awaiting an appropriate sentencing.
Fact: America is horribly off course. Morally & therefore by any other socially significant measure. The world now knows it, if there was ever really any doubt.
Fact: Americans betray daily… & have betrayed, with ‘pride,’ the most important four words to be included in the Bill of Rights & Constitution.
Fact: there is a religious movement in America, seeking to betray & divert the very nature of the country away from 1st principles such as “ALL.. are created equal”. They seek to establish a particular form of religious test for citizenship. Establishing such a power base that ONLY a particular interpretation of religion will be allowed to influence all social & legal policies.
Fact: The betrayal of such a value orientation, as is inscribed in such words as “ALL… are created equal”, is the line in the sand that separates the patriot from his consumer counterpart, the citizen or other social agents, NOT SO COMMITTED TO THOSE VALUES DEMANDED, rather seeking to force a new standard for defining the true American patriot.
Fact: We are so apathetic & uncaring that we ignore such politically significant social civility, it now beyond any normal, current or morally significant considerations, hence, we just continue on our way.
Fact: I am part of that problem.
Conclusion; my 1st social act MUST then to be to offer repentance, aimed at not only the deepest change of heart informing values, but a repentance to be henceforth sealed in behavior, to counter the unconscious habits of 71 years of living & living indoctrination.
To whom must I repent?
When I was 5, I was sent to a ‘black’ local church. The black minister taught how Ham’s ‘sin’, at his shame at encountering his father’s nakedness, led a God to curse all Ham’s ancestors to be the servant of servants… hence, American slavery.
When I returned home, I objected so strongly to this ‘morality’ that my mother did not dare send me back to that church.
But I soon forgot that experience.
Yet, I have seen the fruit of that history. The black mother, who upon discovering I was the one knocking at her door, when I asked for her son, we having a lunch engagement as friends, inquired as to “Why is this honkie at my front door?” As I discovered, I was the 1st white friend he ever had… he was in college, in San Francisco.
But today… Americans are leading us to a hell such as we have not observed & experienced since Jim Crow was fully flourishing. White Christian Americans are the source & support, economically & politically, for this nationalistic & morally corrupting movement.
Racism, & its siblings. sexism & environmental poor stewardship, are defended & advanced by a people who actually claim a religious exceptionalism & entitlement to such values & use every means, religious, political, economic & plain old stereotypes, to control a system meant to create the 1st truly civilized society.
Thus… before I offer anything else, I offer the deepest repentance, & seek the forgiveness of every African American, every woman/sister, every racial minority or other group that has been victimized by people like me…
Today, I offer a repentance…
A repentance due America… the nation primed to true family values…
A repentance due black Americans; my elders whom have loved & forgiven whites in the silence of aloneness amongst many…
A repentance due black Americans, whose silent suffering is offered up by white Americans as if some measure from God…
A repentance due black America for bearing alone the quality of such forgiveness, the ‘acts of love’, silently offered for generations…
A repentance due ALL women, my mothers, my sisters, my daughters.
A repentance due all indigenous & other abused minorities, my unrecognized extended family…
A repentance due the earth, as our common birth mother…
Thus, on bended knee, with bowed head, at your feet, I seek forgiveness, your forgiveness…
I offer the ONLY repentance worthy of the word… a repentance birthed in the heart of shame, but a healthy, cleansing shame. This shame acknowledges that ‘what I was’, what I am, none should have suffered. Hence, today, I need help, I need your help. To become new wine in new wine skin. Today, I need my enemy… to love… & to be loved by.
History now places me before you, & I ask, “Can, will Americans forgive me, by aiding me, to “be all I can be,” to you, for you, for myself? This, that I can properly serve you, as you served me, in your silence. Never destroying your enemy, suffering us in a resigned silence. But a silence that once offered, sustains life, even as it is threatened, each & every day.
I cannot offer you anything… for what was taken is not any persons to return, only to acknowledge it should never have been taken… who can return honor not already offered? We cannot… but we can offer it now. By ‘being’ the dignified quality of human that properly knows its place & thus...