Crossing the Bridge

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith from a place of winter For the Years of Winter…


My old friend, Paul Unger [1], likes to make fun of those who quote themselves. “As I was sayin’ to Martha today, Martha, it’s a hot day.” You have to hear him to get the full effect, but you know people like that, self-quoters. Well, today, Paul can make fun of me.

Another old friend, Bob Parsons [2], is on vacation. Why a school bus driver would need a break, I don’t understand, but he’s left Austin temporarily for parts of the South farther east.

On Facebook he posted a picture of the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, AL, where on March 7, 1965, black people tried to march for civil rights, to protest voting violations, and where they were savagely attacked by AL police. [3] Two weeks later, 3500 marched across the bridge on their way to state capitol Montgomery, where they rallied and listened to MLK. The crowd was very large by the time it got to Montgomery. I was a part of that crowd, because the Alabama MSM (Methodist Student Movement) had asked the Indiana MSM to come down to march with them. [4] Wesley Foundation student president Bob Mullins, Sociology Professor Andre’ Hammonds, and I represented Indiana State U and Rose Polytechnic Institute.

Now I’ll quote what I wrote in response to Bob’s Facebook post: Power never voluntarily gives up a bridge to those who are left on the wrong side. Somebody has to have the courage to start walking across to the other side.

I think that is as true today as it has ever been. There are those in government and elsewhere who want to turn back the clock, start denying hard-won rights, trying to push people back over to the powerless side of the bridge.

The 1960s was a time of marching across the bridge to greater freedom for all. People marched so that black folks could vote, so that young men who were sent off to die in foreign wars had the right to vote, too. Students led the way in demanding those rights. People in power pushed back against the students. As a campus minister, I found that of all adults, it was old people who were most sympathetic to the cause. The youngest and the oldest marched together across the bridge to freedom. Old people had nothing to gain, and perhaps they were free to cross the bridge because they had nothing to lose, either, but they knew what was right.

I’m often embarrassed to admit that I’m old, [4] because today’s old people are often so selfish. “Do whatever you want to anybody else; just don’t touch my Social Security and my Medicare and my discounts. Oh, and the early bird special.” It’s time for old people to get on that bridge again.

Power never voluntarily gives up a bridge to those who are left on the wrong side. Somebody has to have the courage to start walking across to the other side.

JRMcF

1] Paul is younger than I, but I call him an old friend because we have known each other since 1959.

2] Bob Parsons, Paul Unger, and I were friends together as undergrads at The Wesley Foundation (Methodist campus ministry) at Indiana U. Bob and I started seminary together at Perkins School of Theology at SMU. After I got thrown out there, I finished up with Paul at Garrett Theological Seminary at Northwestern U. Actually, it was Dallas that threw me out, not Perkins, for racially integrating the community center Helen and I directed.

3] An old high school friend, Bob Wallace, was an AL state trooper and head of Gov. Wallace’s bodyguard.

4] I was the Wesley Foundation minister to Indiana State U and Rose Polytechnic Institute in Terre Haute at that time. You can read more about this episode in my book, THE STRANGE CALLING, Pages 110-116.

5] You might be saying that I have no choice but to admit that I am old, but I have looked like I’m 70 ever since I was 40, so…

{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

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