Forty Years Ago

We carry things with us for a long time. Some of us never drop off our heavy baggage. I happen to know this is true – I drag a large footlocker around with me everywhere I go. It is a fact of life on this earth that cold and harsh winds sweep down and change our lives – forever. However, decent, evolving and maturing human beings attempt to turn some of this darkness into light. 

Jeremiah Wright has incited in me an anger and estrangement that I have never experienced. He has pulled ghosts from many of our closets. He is said to be a ‘preacher of the Gospel.’ If he is a ‘preacher of the Gospel’ then I am, as one of his heroes has proclaimed, ‘the devil.’ There are two attributes I possess that make me ‘the devil:’ I am white and I am male. 

Everything I have tried to do – my thoughts, my benevolence, my liberality, my transformation, my not-thinking-or-talking-like-my-dad-and-uncles – is trumped by this egotistical, race-baiting, unforgiving, slime-talking, media-hungry clanging cymbal. He has set us back decades and he has dashed the hopes of an African-American presidential candidate. If he has his way – this country will return to the anger and violence he wishes to wash his hands in.

Reverend Wright – it is 2008 – some of us have changed and it has been tough and tedious. But we did the right thing. Why don’t you join us? Why don’t you read your Bible? Why don’t you find some forgiveness? Why don’t you change? Why don’t you move forward from 1968? Why don’t you participate in the liberation that is yours? 

In Christ there is no East or West – there is no black or white. 

No Malcolm X, no Billy Graham, no Jeremiah Wright