CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
As we do each year, the “dream” part of MLK’s 1963 march speech was played as part of our worship at St. Mark’s. I’m stirred and strengthened every time.
That, coupled with David Letterman’s interview of Barack Obama on Netflix, has made me think about the lasting values I inherited/learned from my parents.
Obama spoke of how he might have gotten his color and name and brains from his father, but he got his Midwestern values from his mother.
The primary thing I learned from my father was hard work. That quality in him is so obvious that it needs no explanation. He and I did different types of work, but I learned from him not to be satisfied that you had done enough even when all the time was used up and you were exhausted.
The primary thing I learned from my mother was respect for all. Mother believed that everyone--especially those, like black folks, who were usually disrespected--should be treated with respect [except for her husband, but that’s a different story].
A few years ago, we were invited to a movie discussion night. A movie club, about a dozen or so folks, had watched “Mississippi Burning” and were discussing it. They had specifically invited me because I was the only person they knew who had been on the Selma march, the Montgomery end.
It had not occurred to me
to go on that march. I was a Yankee [Terre Haute, IN] and had two little
children. But the Alabama Methodist Student Movement called the Methodist
Student Movement folks, including me as the campus minister at Indiana State U,
and asked us to come down and march with them.
As we talked at the movie discussion, a man asked me, “What age were you when you became aware of the racial justice problem?” I had to say that there was never a time when I was not aware of it. An old Negro lady lived next door to us in Indianapolis, ages 4 to 10 for me. Mrs. Dickerson was the only black person for blocks around. Just how she got there, who knows? But Mother talked to her, the way she would anyone else. Mother was very clear that we should treat Mrs. Dickerson with respect.
And Mrs. Dickerson sometimes had me run an errand for her—having asked Mother’s permission—and would give me a nickel. That was enough for me to accept black folks! Weren’t no white folks givin’ me no nickels.
[Although great-uncle Joseph Gordon McFarland gave me $5 for singing the Prince Albert pipe tobacco commercial, Oh, fill your pipe up with PA, and take a puff or two. You’ll get that extra smoking joy, Prince Albert gives to you. at which point I announced, “Now I have five dollars and ten cents.”]
In addition to his mother, Obama gave tribute to John Lewis—his courage and his forgiving love--as the source of his own values.
Letterman had asked John Lewis about the nature of racial prejudice. He said, “It’s skin color.” He just left it at that, because it’s just that simple, and just that stupid.
Original sin always activates our desire to put ourselves “above” others, and the easiest way to know who is “up” and who is “down” is skin color [and NB gender].
I was always a little further out on racial justice than my contemporaries or congregations or the times, and I always got into a certain amount of trouble, but I never thought of that as strange. Of course, it was the right thing to do, and of course, there would be negative reaction.
I certainly never considered that anything I did, including going to the Selma march, was courageous. Yes, I lost friends and church members, and people got mad at me and said unkind things, and I didn’t like that, but that was no big deal. It certainly didn’t take courage. MLK and John Lewis and Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges and Elizabeth Ann Eckford… they were the ones who had courage. I was just acting on what I knew to be right.
That’s really my only value: I just wanted to be a good person and do the right thing. I knew that took hard work. Along the way, that has created a little bit of trouble, “good trouble” John Lewis might call it, and so much fun, and satisfaction, and the people I have gotten to meet in the process are such wonderful gifts.
Well, I really started this just so nobody in the family would say in future years, “Oh, we should have asked him about that when we had the chance.” Then it seemed like I should share it with you, too.
We’ve been marching for a long time. We’ve come a long way. We still have a long way to go.
John Robert McFarland
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