It's an early Saturday morning. The days have been progressively getting shorter delaying the break of the morning light till 7:00ish or so. With the delay of light comes the extended darkness. It's dark out earlier at night, and it's staying dark later in the morning. On top of it, the temperature is cooling; it's the sign that Fall is here in California even though the temps in the day time, when the sun is out, have been in the mid 70's and 80's. What does that have to do with anything?! It means more sleepy mornings! Hahaha! That being the case, it is why I decided to take to the keyboard this morning, but it's part of the reason why I should. With more sleep comes more time to dream, and if we're not careful, we could sleep through a period of great change. A shift in or nation's history is happening and all of the events transpiring in present day is a sign of it.
More and more, the reports are coming in that this year's presidential election is no longer about economic differences that usually come up as the main theme in candidate platforms. No, it is something different this year. This year people say the election is about race and necessarily racism, and that's really the underpinning of economic inequalities in America. For a while, some people were trying to promote that we had solved the race problem evident by having a black president. What people seem to no see or acknowledge that although there were enough people that voted for Obama, it was only by a few percentage points over the number of voters that voted for McCain. It was not a 90% vote for Obama--that would've been more an indicator that racism might have been almost worked out of us as a nation. But it was more like a 52/48% vote that really says that every other person said, "No, not that guy."
It made me think back to my days in the church where everyone one has an equal chance as "salvation" because God, in theory, is an equal opportunity employer, but in actuality, there was and continues to be a class based system even within the church. The missionaries (mostly white people), the pastors (mostly white people but more diversity), everybody else that is saved. Think about that one later. It wasn't too long ago that I was sitting in my two-seater Toyota pick-up truck in my hometown of Minneapolis. As was the case during the early morning hours of this exact season, Fall, I would sit and wait a few minutes for my truck's engine to warm up so that, in turn, I could use the heater and warm myself up from the bitter cold just outside my window. These were the days of my early college years. I worked at 6:00 AM and usually had to leave half past 5:00 AM to get there on-time. It was dark out, and in Minnesota the temps would often get down to freezing. So if your coffee in the morning didn't wake you up enough, the cold air would smacking you in the face certainly did. Hahaha.
More and more, the reports are coming in that this year's presidential election is no longer about economic differences that usually come up as the main theme in candidate platforms. No, it is something different this year. This year people say the election is about race and necessarily racism, and that's really the underpinning of economic inequalities in America. For a while, some people were trying to promote that we had solved the race problem evident by having a black president. What people seem to no see or acknowledge that although there were enough people that voted for Obama, it was only by a few percentage points over the number of voters that voted for McCain. It was not a 90% vote for Obama--that would've been more an indicator that racism might have been almost worked out of us as a nation. But it was more like a 52/48% vote that really says that every other person said, "No, not that guy."
It made me think back to my days in the church where everyone one has an equal chance as "salvation" because God, in theory, is an equal opportunity employer, but in actuality, there was and continues to be a class based system even within the church. The missionaries (mostly white people), the pastors (mostly white people but more diversity), everybody else that is saved. Think about that one later. It wasn't too long ago that I was sitting in my two-seater Toyota pick-up truck in my hometown of Minneapolis. As was the case during the early morning hours of this exact season, Fall, I would sit and wait a few minutes for my truck's engine to warm up so that, in turn, I could use the heater and warm myself up from the bitter cold just outside my window. These were the days of my early college years. I worked at 6:00 AM and usually had to leave half past 5:00 AM to get there on-time. It was dark out, and in Minnesota the temps would often get down to freezing. So if your coffee in the morning didn't wake you up enough, the cold air would smacking you in the face certainly did. Hahaha.
In those minutes between warming my truck and driving to work, I listened to MLK sermon's and speeches on cassette tape. Yes. I had an Alpine stereo that played tapes in those days. As was the case, I was taking in one MLK's sermons and tying to understand it for what it meant to me in those days. Of course, I was in a missions training facility, and all of what we learned had something to do with reaching out to the masses but also how we should conduct ourselves with each other as 'God's people.' One of the sermons I listened to over the course of a few mornings. It was titled, "A Knock At Midnight." It was long as many of Dr. King's sermons were. I guess you can do that when you're the leader of the Civil Right's movement and still have people waiting for the next word to come out of ya even after an hour of preaching. The sermon began with the following passage from the Gospel according to Luke 11:5-8. It reads:
(NIV)
5 Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ 7 And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity[a] he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.
TO BE CONTINUED.....
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