PARAKLETOS

The last few days have been crazy.  Monday was MLK day and we did some family things at the global market.  Then Tuesday was the inauguration of Barack Obama. And Wednesday my friend Dante and I spoke in chapel at
Bethel.

I got a thousand different ideas and feelings that are going through me but at this time I don’t have time to blog more about them.  But what I am able to do is post two lectures that where given at Bethel in the last week.  Part of my job at Bethel is to lead a trip called Sankofa.  It is a trip that we do over spring break where we take a bus tour of the civil rights sites of the south.  To prepare the group for the experience we have put together a lecture series, where we have invited leader from the twin cities to come and share about the African-American experience in the United States.

The first lecture was given by Professor Mahmoud El-Kati.  He has taught history for the last 30 years at one of the local universities, has spent his life being a civil rights leader, and is very involved in many community projects.  To listen click here

The second lecture was given by Pastor Earl Miller.  Pastor Miller grew up in Jackson Mississippi, was very involved in the civil rights movement, and is currently pastoring a church in St. Paul that is corner stone of the community.  To listen click here

I really believe that if we are going to understand MLK day and the inauguration of Obama we have to learn from people like Pastor Miller and Professor El-Kati.  To be honest I have heard too many people over the last few days say some really ignorant things because they don’t know our history.  Please educate yourself.

This is an event that we are doing in the neighborhood.  Everyone is welcome to attend.  Regardless of your political affiliation, come celebrate this historic milestone.

Over the weekend Erin and I watched a movie that I got as a Christmas present, “Stranger then Fiction”.  It is one of the best movies ever made and it is worth every minute that you invest in watching it.  The movie is about the search for life, life that is meaningful.

In my search for a meaningful life, I have found the journey to be one of great challenge and one that is hard to sort through all the clutter.  I hear so many voices telling me what is life, and most of those voices claim some kind of divine inspiration.  But those voices don’t make sense to me and when I have listened to them,  I have not found life, what I have found is meaningless religion and deadly nationalism.

So in my search when I find a voice that makes sense, a voice and leads me to real life, to be honest I just start to cry because of the joy and relief that I find in my heart.  Once again the other day I hand one of those kinds of experiences, I heard a voice that rang truth with the Spirit of God.  A voice that has in the past and again helped me make sense out of my world and helped me truly understand what God is all about.  That voice is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Finding King or King finding me (I am not sure which has happened) has been a long road for me.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was not and for the most part to this day is not a respected authority in the Christian tradition that I come from.  King was not quoted around the dinner table, he was not spoken of during the many sermons that I heard, nor was he taught to me in my seminary education.  But through a wide verity of experiences I have come to interact with King.

In my reading of King, listening to his sermons, visiting the many historic sites in the south where King lived and worked, and studying his life, I have come to believe that he is the greatest prophet and theologian in American History.  So for me being an American Christian I believe that I must be a student of Kings in order to be a faithful follower of Jesus.

So the other day in my search for life and my hunger to hear King I read “The Trumpet of Conscience”, a book that is based on five lectures that King gave in 1967 at the
University of Toronto’s Massey Lecture Series.  This series was given during the last year of his life.  The subtitle on the book is “The summing-up of his creed and his final testament.”  By this point in King’s life he was talking about the great three evils of racism, materialism, and militarism.  It is also in these later works that we start to see King’s thoughts evolving becoming very comprehensive.  I have heard people morn the fact that if King would have lived longer that his thoughts would have been able to evolving into something even greater then what we already have from him.  What has the world missed out on, I don’t think we will every really understand the great lost in the death of King.

Here is where things start to get crazy.  I have known for quit sometime that on January 21^st I was going to be speaking in chapel about peace.  That is a Wednesday, the Monday before that is MLK day so I was planning on using a lot of this material that day.  A few weeks ago I started to get really nervous thinking about the seriousness and the importance of the day.  But I really got nervous today when I realized that on that Tuesday is Obama’s inauguration.  Wow what a day to be able to speak in chapel.  We don’t have school on MLK day and we don’t have chapels on Tuesday, that chapel is the first after MLK day and Obama’s inauguration.  So I spent sometime today reflecting with a few co-workers, praying, and coming up with a plan to fit the weight of the day.  I am excited but unbelievably nervous all at the same time.