Which Person are You?

As I'm reading "Blood Brothers" -- a book about one Palestinian young man searching for how God is leading him to work for peace in the face of the horrible injustice done against him, his family and his people -- I read this quote spoken by one of his seminary professors. It ends with a powerful question for me and each one of us to answer.


"If there is a problem somewhere, this is what happens. Three people will try to do something concrete to settle the issue. Ten people will give a lecture analyzing what the three are doing. One hundred people will commend or condemn the ten for their lecture. One thousand people will argue about the problem. And one person -- only one -- will involve himself so deeply in the true solution that he is too busy to listen to any of it.

Now, which person are you?"


My sabbatical time has challenged me to reconsider staying silently on the sidelines when God shows me something that breaks his heart. This quote brought that challenge home to me again. Is there one injustice/problem/hurt that God is asking me/you to be that one person who will involve himself or herself deeply in the true solution?

Books, Books and More Books

It has been a while since I've posted. Sorry about the delay. It is hard to come up with posts even close to being as interesting as those from Israel or in the southern states when I am spending my time reading books! I love to read and am enjoying the time to invest in some serious reading, but I didn't remember how much effort reading can be as well. Some books are a lot of work!

I found that to be the case with "The Cost of Discipleship" which I finished last week. It is such a small book I figured I could get through it rather quickly. It may be small, but it is dense with content. I read slowly and still am confident that there is a lot in there that I failed to capture. I felt like I was back in seminary while reading that book.

My reading list did take a very worthwhile detour. "The Warmth of Other Suns" by Wilkerson was recommended to me, and I moved that up the pecking order. It was an excellent book that told the story of the Great Migration that occured in the United States in the early 20th century. During that time blacks escaped the Jim Crow south by moving north and west. What they found there, however, was far from the Promised Land they had expected. This book follows the path of three individuals who were a part of that Great Migration and tells their stories. It was an excellent book that paints a clear picture of the south that they were escaping from and the north/west that wasn't always eager to welcome them. It also gives a clear picture of why segregation continues still today in northern cities like Chicago, Detroit and New York. I would highly recommend this book. The only downside to my reading experience was that it was almost 600 pages long! I didn't realize how long it was since it was my first Kindle purchase and read. (By the way...I enjoyed reading on my computer more than I thought I would.)

If you enjoyed reading "Warriors Don't Cry" about the Little Rock Nine, you may also enjoy "A Mighty Long Way" by another one of the Nine -- Carlotta Walls LaNier. I wondered if the books would overlap too much, but they don't. Carlotta writes from a very different perspective and writes less about her experience at Central High School and more about her time before integration and a lot about her life afterwards. It is a very good book.

I have "The Divine Conspiracy" left to read yet. I might just take another detour first. One of you recommended "Blood Brothers" to me. It is the story of a Palestinian Christian working for peace in Israel. Since I didn't get to connect with Palestinian Christians as much as I would have liked to when I was in Israel, this would be a valuable book for me to read. So, starting tomorrow, that is next on my list.

I have found many different places to do my reading. Most often I can be found in my favorite living room chair. But I've hidden back in the West Wing without anyone finding me. I've sat in the sun on the Grand Haven beach. I've brought my book to the waiting room of the tire shop, oil change place and barber shop. I've gone to the library overlooking the lake on Mackinac Island. I've turned off the movie and read at 35,000 feet. This weekend I will be flying to California for the funeral of my dad's brother, Marv Meyer, who passed away suddenly at age 64 following a short bout with cancer. It is strikingly similar to my father's journey eight years ago. So, I'll bring my books with me on that journey as well.

I miss all of you at Ivanrest! This sabbatical time has been good for me and I'm thankful that it isn't over yet, but I am looking forward to being back with all of you again come September!

Day 10 -- Central High School, Little Rock

Yesterday was the final day of our trip (sorry I didn't get this posted last night, but my family took priority) and also one of our most powerful days.

We arrived at Central High School well before our 9:00 tour and our 10:00 appointment with Minnijean Brown and were met with a wonderful surprise. Another member of the Little Rock Nine walked in. So, before our tour we were able to spend a few moments talking with Terrance Roberts as well. In fact, after our tour, Minnijean suggested we join the group Terrance was leading at the memorial statues outside the State Capital building. It was a joy to be able to interact with both of them.

We then settled into a conference room where Minnnijean Brown gave us about two hours of her time. Our conversation covered a wide range of her experience from how she became one of the nine to how her personality shaped her experience to her family background that prepared her to her experience throughout the year at Central High School to encounters she has had in the 56 years following to what lessons she would have us learn still today to how this experience has shaped her spiritually. It was an honor and a privilege to talk with this passionate woman.

A common sorrow around our conversations at Little Rock was how few people today pay attention to the significant events that happened here in 1957. The ugliness of Central High School in 1957 revealed to the world the evil entrenched in the south and the complacency regarding it in the north -- much of it done in the name of Christianity. One quote I read from one of the nine was a sobering statement: "Some of the angels in chapel were the devils in the hallway." Ouch! Of the 1800 students at the school 100 of them actively abused the nine, 20 of them befriended the nine and 1680 of them were silent witnesses. I wonder how this ugly moment in our nation's history would have been different if the silent witnesses together would have risen up for what is right. Sometimes it is our silence that condemns us.

It was great to get home again. It was a wonderful ten days of learning and absorbing. Thank you again for your prayers! Now I get down to tackling my reading list (which just seems to keep growing!) and reconnecting with home and family. I'm not exactly sure how I'll maintain this blog. I'm thinking I will probably share some insights as I read and then reflect on each book as I finish it. We will see how that goes.

Day 9 - Memphis to Little Rock

National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, encounter with Dr. Kyles, Little Rock High School National Historic Site

Wednesday...the National Civil Rights Museum was open! We arrived when the museum opened. If you aren't familiar with this location, this museum is located at the Lorraine Motel where MLK was assassinated while he was working for the rights of the sanitation workers in Memphis. They did an excellent job walking us through the whole Civil Rights Movement from the very start through efforts continuing through today. It was a great place to pull all the pieces of our trip together and place them appropriately into one larger story. I realized how much we have learned and experienced when again and again I looked at pictures or displays and thought, "I've been there already."

God again gave us an unexpected treat as well. Our time at the museum opened with a 30 minute video entitled "The Witness" featuring Dr. Kyles. Dr. Kyles was the young pastor leading the movement in Memphis and who called Dr. King to come and help them. He was also the only individual who was on the balcony next to Dr. King when he was shot. As we were finishing our time across the street from the motel at the location where James Earl Ray took the shot we noticed someone being interviewed on the motel balcony -- a place tourists are not allowed to be. Of course, we went back across the street and confirmed our guess -- it was Dr. Kyles. We went back into the museum and took the opportunity to find Dr. Kyles and have a brief conversation with him and shake his hand. To be able to talk with these individuals who were eyewitnesses or participants in the events we are learning about is a privilege we hadn't anticipated.

I am impressed again at the power shown through humility and self-sacrifice that is evident in both the leaders and the participants of the Civil Rights Movement. I haven't had the time to draw the specific connections between our time here and the Beatitudes, but it is obvious that it will not be difficult to do. The power to change the world does not rest in guns and bombs. It is found in humility and self-sacrifice and a willingness to pray and move for justice in Jesus' name.

We arrived in Little Rock late this afternoon with enough time to go to the Central High School National Historic Site. Tomorrow we will be on the first tour through the school and then walk across the street to sit down with Minnijean Brown-Trickey -- one more participant. From there it is to the airport and home!

Day 8 -- Memphis

Today we hit our first tour snag. We woke up eager to walk to the National Civil Rights Museum at the site of the Lorraine Motel where MLK was assassinated. Before we left we pulled up the website to confirm that it opened at 9 and not 10 only to find out that the museum is closed on Tuesdays. Oops! Thankfully, we scheduled a bit of flexibility into our schedule. We will get to the museum when it opens on Wednesday morning and still make it to our last destination, Little Rock, in time to accomplish what we need to before our Thursday morning interview with Minnijean Brown-Trickey.

Our rescheduled day today started with a tour of the Burkle Home, otherwise known as SlaveHaven, which was a significant site on the Underground Railroad through Memphis helping slaves find their freedom north in Canada. Hearing the stories of that house and seeing the trapdoor and and then the tiny hole in the wall leading to the cellar room which held so many people and their dreams of freedom was a valuable way to spend the morning. By the time we were done it was hot enough that we took the trolley back to our hotel for lunch.

In the afternoon we took a chance on something we hoped would be somewhat connected to the southern experience and went to the Cotton Museum. We had no idea what we were going to get, but were pleasantly surprised at the quality of the small museum. There is no way you can honestly talk about the history of cotton here in the United States without addressing the role that slavery and then the abusive share cropping system played in harvesting that massive cash crop. Thankfully this museum didn't ignore that truth.

After a birthday dinner at B.B. King's Blues Club tonight we are soon going to turn in so we will be rested for the two big stops we have left -- The National Civil Rights Museum and then Little Rock High School.

After that there is just one more location left...home! We are getting along wonderfully in these close quarters, but we are certainly ready to see our families again. Thank you all for your prayers for our safety and for our families. We are blessed!

Day 7 -- Money, MS and Vicinity

Bryant Grocery Store, Unnamed Cemetary, Tallahatchie County Courthouse, Barn in Sumner County/ETHIC Museum, Bridge over the Black Bayou


How do I put on this blog the experience of today? Whatever I put here will not be able to capture the experience. What we saw amounted to very little. We saw an old grocery store that is so run down that you see more vines than bricks on it's roofless four walls. We stepped through an overgrown plot of land on the side of a farmer's field where a few headstones were hidden in the grass. We went in an old sheet metal barn that used to be a cotton gin. We stood on a bridge that long ago was closed to cars and looked down into the Black Bayou which drains into the Tallahatchie River. We poked through a county courthouse whose better days were long, long ago. Besides one person at the county courthouse, we were the only visitors to these sites. Yet, each of these places moved us significantly.

These places tell the story of 14-year old Emmett Till who in the summer of 1955 traveled from his home in Chicago to visit his cousins in Money, Mississippi. Not knowing the culture of the Jim Crow south, a whistle in the direction of Carolyn Bryant at Bryant Grocery store triggered a sequence of events that night that found young Emmett kidnapped, tortured, murdered and dumped in the Black Bayou. Emmett's mother insisted on an open casket back in Chicago and for the first time the nation took notice of the horror and injustice blacks were suffering in the south. That reality struck the nation again when the all white jury acquitted the two men (who later sold their story of guilt to Look Magazine for $4,000) in just 67 minutes (which included a soda break). This tragic event was the trigger for this nation to begin paying attention to the Civil Rights movement. Please add one more book to your summer reading list. Read Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case by Chris Crowe. (It isn't too long and it even has pictures.) You will be shocked and saddened as you get a serious dose of the evils which were being perpetrated in the name of racism and prejudice in our nation.

Being at these sites moved our minds and our hearts in ways that all the reading and studying of this event had tried to do. Speaking with the man whose father was one of the murder's most trusted employees and was commanded, as a black employee with no rights or authority, to dump Emmett's body in the bayou was another moving moment as we heard how that broke his father for the rest of his life. History came alive today in a powerful and painful way.

"When we pray, we move our feet"

At the base of the Edmund Pettis Bridge is a plaque with John Lewis' picture and the African proverb that he famously quoted, "When we pray, we move our feet". What a fitting place for that quote. Lewis prayed for justice in the face of segregation, but he didn't then sit back and wait for those prayers to be answered. He listened for how God intended to work through him to answer that prayer. He moved his feet in the direction of his prayer...even if that meant moving his feet straight towards Alabama State troopers with clubs and tear gas. And because he dared to move his feet in the direction of his prayer, God answered his prayer powerfully.

As I thought about that standing there I prayed through the Lord's Prayer which I recite often. I went through that prayer line by line asking myself how each line I pray should direct my feet in practical action. I invite you to spend some time either individually or as a family praying through the Lord's Prayer together too and celebrate how your feet are already moving or consider how God is asking you to move them. We need to be people who move our feet in the direction of our prayer.