Thanksgiving 2013

Life is so much about change and adaptation to changing circumstances and seasons of one's life.  Thanksgiving can tend to bring that to one's attention, and it certainly did for Bunny and I this year.

My parents are deceased, Bunny's mother died in 2013, her dad is age 92, and both of our kids live out of state.  For Thanksgiving 2013, we did what my guess is will become a tradition for us.  We are home from spending Thanksgiving Day at Potters House (the soup kitchen) at the Greensboro Urban Ministry.  We helped feed and host 500+ hungry, appreciative men, women, and children to a beautiful turkey dinner. Aching feet have never felt so good.  It was a beautiful, uplifting, peaceful, blessed day. 

It began with a beautiful blessing said by an old black lady who was there volunteering with her daughter and her granddaughter.........three generations of annual Thanksgiving volunteering at Potters House.  Her blessing and the example of her family was a sermon. 

There was wonderful gospel and Negro spiritual music being piped in through speakers.  There were a number of single mothers with 4 for more children to feed, a lot of 'street people', some middle class folks down on their luck, a room turning over with stories of need.  God made provision for them, today at least, and to just be present in that setting was a blessing. 

My guess is Bunny and I will continue to adapt to the changing seasons of our lives. We seem to get it 'more right' with each passing year.  Blessed Thanksgiving to all.  And a thank you to Pastor Alan, for continually reminding us to be the church in the community.  It's getting into our blood stream.

Racial Segregation - The Absurdity and The 'Wrongness'

Anacostia High students at Griffith Stadium praying that the school wouldn't be integrated, c. 1954 [Washington Star photo].

I never cease to be amazed at how wrong we were.  How could we have been so completely on the wrong side of history and on the wrong side of that which was right? 

Progress has, of course, been made, but America has not gotten over race.  In so many areas and around so many issues, race continues to be the 'elephant in the room' in America.  The issue of civil rights in America is probably the most significant and engaging issue of the past century.

For me, it is amazing and beautiful that we have had a black President of the United States.  But the issue of ethnicity, race, and related issues such as immigration, will continue to confound us. 

Above, they pray for segregation.  I would pray for clarity, reconciliation, cooperation among all God's brothers and sisters.