PARAKLETOS

The last few weeks have been crazy for us.  We had a block party on the 14^th.  Around 90 people came out for some great BBQ (thanks to the neighborhood chef Michael), kids games (Erin organize the kids to make mural and stepping stones), dance performance (thanks to Robert and Herb), a magic show (thanks Paul) and great conversation from all that came.  The following Tuesday a church gave us some money to talk some kids to a water park so we had some good time summer fun, and I showed a few kids how to play water basketball (a few of them almost beat me but I came through with a win).  We also had a group volunteer to work in our community garden.  I really wish I could post some pictures (I am working on that and hope to have a solution soon) to show you just how great it is looking.  I think in the next week we might get our first food off it.

With all that great stuff happening being on the internet has not been a priority for me, so this blog has not be updated for a while but I now want to start a blog about racism and reconciliation.

To start off I think one of the things that we have learned over the last 2 years is the need to be truth tellers.  To tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but often when it comes to issues of racism the whole truth is not told.  We might tell bits and pieces of the truth but we don’t often have the courage to face the whole truth.

One of my jobs at bethel is to help lead a trip where we take 15 students of color and 15 white students on a road trip to the historic civil rights sites of the south.  We spend 9 days hearing first hand stories, watching videos, seeing museums and talking about our experiences of racism.  The thing that stuck me most about the trip was how little I (a 31 year old white male) had faced the story of racism in this country and how little I was aware of how that story continues to get played out in our world today.

This morning I sat around a table with 3 African American leaders of our community, all of them my elders.  It was a high holy time for me to sit at their feet and learn. And one of the things that they shared with me was how our history is written from the perspective of those in power and that perspective is not the whole truth.  We need to hear the story of our country from many perspectives if we are really going to know our story and it is only through knowing that full story that we are going to be able to move forward as a people.  They quoted W.E. B Du Bois so here is a quote that I think is very important….

One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over.  We must not remember that Daniel Webster got drunk but only that he was a splendid constitutional lawyer.  We must forget that George Washington was a slave owner and simply remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring.  The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect man and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.  - W.E.B. Du Bois (African American Civil Rights Activist)

If we are going to really face the issue of racism we must be less concerned with making the story look good, and more concerned to face the truth.  In the short term it is always easier for us whites to make the story look good and leave parts of it out.  But I really believe that the pain of facing our past, the pain of realizing where we come form, the pain of realizing that we have had a part to play in all of this, the pain of not knowing, the pain of being embarrassed, the pain of saying something stupid, the pain of saying something that causes more hurt is a pain that must be faced.

Setting around that table today with 3 African-American Leaders, made me very uncomfortable at times not because of how they treated me, they where very welcoming and as we left they told me that I was always welcome to come back,  What made me uncomfortable was the fact that I know so little, that the issues that thought about where issues that I spend very little time thinking about.  And I have to start asking myself why is that?  That is a hard question for me to ask, I like to think of myself as an educated thoughtful person.  So when it comes to racism for me to admit that I know so little and have thought so little about the real issues is very hard for me, but I must do it if I am going to learn and be changed.  So no matter how uncomfortable it might be for me to sit around tables like that one this morning, I am committing myself to continue to place myself around those tables.

I believe in the end the more honorable way is to face the truth about yesterday and today and then to move in a direction that give humanity to all of us, to build on the good of the past and to tear down the bad.  So are we willing to place our selves in place where we are going to have the truth told to us, for some of us it might be watching a video, others starting a hard conversation, attending a church where we are the minority, or seeking out relationships with those who have a different skin color then ours.

Our story is one where we have learned that the truth sets us free and that freedom is a very good thing to taste.

I just waned to give you out there in blog world a quick update was I end my day.

First this is my second week not working at Bethel and being in the neighborhood full-time and i thought that I was going to have more time to blog and get some things organized but finding the time is more diffecult then what i thought it was going to be.  As in all relational work where here or at bethel, things don’t always go as i plan and one of the things that i am making a priority is that when i connect with people that i take the time that is needed to be with them.  There are many of days that i only get one thing done on my to-do list at Bethel because of the students that i run into and the ministry that happens as students come into the office and i am finding the same thing to be happening in the neighborhood.

We also have a few things doing on right now.  we have a block party this weekend, a kids fun day on the 17th (we are talked about 15 kids to a water park) and then the following week we are starting our weekly BBQs.  So we have had a few details to cover.

Here are something that you can be praying about:
1) the block party- that people will come out and that some great connections will be made between neighbors (with the foreclosure issue being what it is we have had a lot of turn over on your block so there are a lot of new faces this summer.)
2) neighborhood wide summer events- Juneteenth, Peace Games, Art Flow and others.  pray for the planning the volunteers needed to make them happen and that they will bring people together
3) Violence- when summer comes, the action also increases. please pray for peace.
4) I know of two families right now that are renting and are going to have to move because the place they are renting is getting foreclosed on.  Find a new place is not an easy thing for a family of 7.  Pray they will find a places and that it work out so they can stay there for sometime.

thanks again for being interested in our lives and the lives of our neighbors.

I am hoping to share some of things that i have learned over the last 2 years about race issues in the coming months.  I want to do a series of blogs telling my journey for rural Iowa to the Northside and what i have learned about how race has affected me and those around me.  So be looking a series of blogs to start coming in the next few weeks.

Tanden