shocked and appalled
Many years ago, prompted by Laurie Beth Jones’ book The Path, I wrote a mission statement for my life and work: My mission is to appreciate and challenge my family and community with resonant stories from literature and my life. This mission statement inspired me to start a book group thirty years ago which still exists today. It inspired me to start a small group in my summer community that reads Scripture together at noon five days a week, which has been going for twenty-five years. It influenced what I give away for Halloween. Every year I collect and stockpile used children’s books and let the kids who come to my door paw through them to make their own selection. When I learned of the Little Free Library movement, I installed one at my home in California. I also built one out of found furniture pieces that I place near the sidewalk that runs by my summer home. I put a guest book, made by my daughter-in-law, in each one and delight when someone signs it with a message of gratitude or inspiration.
This week I went out to see if I needed to replenish the books, and I was appalled by what I found written in the journal…there was the N-word and a swastika. What made it more ironic was that on the previous page just days before someone had written Jesus loves you!! with such enthusiasm that the words were still embossed under the page with the vile epithet and symbol. What a horrifying juxtaposition! Jesus weeps.
I’ve heard that some people don’t believe that racism exists anymore. Here in this predominantly white and financially successful enclave, there is still someone who feels emboldened to write that and leave it for others to find. I would say that racism is still very much appallingly alive.
In her novel, Trancendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi’s main character and narrator is a young Stanford researcher named Gifty. She tells a story about her brother playing on a soccer team where he was the only black member. In one game the father of an opposing player yells, “Don’t you let them N------s win!” This spurred her brother to play with a ferocity that made him look like a furious blur on the field, scoring goal after goal. Gifty remembers it this way: “I was too young to understand the word the man had used, but I was old enough to understand the change in atmosphere.” After the game, once her brother’s fury had left him and Gifty and her father and brother got in the car, the mood shifted to celebratory joy and playfulness. But Gifty says, “It would be easy to assume that we’d all but forgotten what that man had yelled. That we’d forgotten we had any cares at all. But the memory lingered, the lesson I have never quite been able to shake: that I would always have something to prove and that nothing but blazing brilliance would be enough to prove it.”
The need to perform through all of life with blazing brilliance is a heavy burden to bear. Racism does still exist. I need no further proof than my Little Free Library. I hate that my family members who are black, might open my Little Free Library and find something so vile. Of course, I tore out the page. But I’ve not thrown it away. I keep it as proof that racism will continue to exist. To say otherwise, one might as well say that sin no longer exists. And the Apostle John said, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” I John 1:8
If we say that we have no sin, no racism, no homophobia, no sexism, no agism, no xenophobia in our country and culture, then we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
Lord, have mercy!
Liz
