Author Archives: PearlS

Fighting injustice the no-knee-jerk way

We’re colored people, and we live in a tainted place

We’re colored people, and they call us the human race.

We’ve got a history so full of mistakes 

We’re colored people who depend on a Holy Grace

DC Talk

I took my dog and ten year old for a walk, the same route we take every night.
“Hey, look,” Jubal pointed as we rounded the park path.
“There’s new graffiti on that park bench.”
We paused to take a closer look. Our city is, one park bench at a time, becoming a billboard for disrespect and insubordination.

I sort of get it; I sort of don’t. Why are we at such a tipping point, why is the level of emotional response so high? Why did it take a video of a man stepping on another’s neck, crushing his windpipe, for people to be awakened to awfulness in the world?

What were you doing if you weren’t loving people?

How were you spending your time if it wasn’t loving people?

Why were you distracted by lesser things, when loving people was the main thing?

Did you always assume it was perfectly fine to live in a bubble and not make eye contact with people who don’t look and talk like you? Were your main concerns always for your own politics, people, and your comfort level? Was it the “quality” of schooling for your own children, the “safety” of certain neighborhoods? What caused you to be discriminating in your own self pursuits but neutral and uncaring when other people were involved? Why did you ever think it was okay to look out for your own needs but never the needs of others?

What were you avoiding while you waited for the tidal wave to come crashing down on your shore? How is it that the reality of hate in this world never darkened your door until now?

Moreover, why can we not see that this injustice stretches the entire world and not just the part covered in red, white, and blue? For the awakened, why haven’t you considered the other corners of your neighborhood? The elderly who are ignored in nursing homes. Children who are neglected to the point of child protective services stepping in. The illiterate immigrant, working her tail off to make ends meet while wading through laws and stipulations no one takes the time to explain. The rest of the world, the ones who die of hunger at an alarming rate of 25,000 souls a day. Orphans, folks who have fled guerilla warfare, families living in poverty. To be woke, to be impartial, to live a life that demands justice–it cannot spring up and die like a weed in the ground each time the media brings something terrible to our attention.
No– a noble life is a tree that bears fruit and bends and sways through the seasons.

When we moved away from our mountain life two years ago, our main goal was to expose our children to the real world, not one conjured up as an “American dream”, complete with toys and hobbies only accessible to the wealthiest. We pulled our kids from ski school and privilege and plugged them into a public school where they made up the ten percent with white skin.

It was intentional. It was sometimes uncomfortable. At our neighborhood park, my kids still ask their playmates innocent questions: What language are you speaking? Where are you from?

It could, after all, be one of several dozen. With my limited Spanish, I’m sometimes able to engage in pleasantries, but mostly we just smile and nod fervently, urging our kids to go up the steps and down the slide, together in this weird world where we cannot understand each other perfectly, but know the simple rules for getting along.

Our kids have only benefited from the experience, our conversations have only ever been open doors. God has erased our worries and expanded our love for people.

We have not saved the world. I am not saying we intend to, but we have learned to love our neighbor because we have learned who our neighbor is. We have learned there are people outside of our made-up “safe” zones that are worth getting to know.

There are still people who wield weapons unnecessarily. There are still people who wave flags that should be retired. There is still hate and oppression.
But we have chosen to not be stirred up by hate.

The world right now is begging us to engage and react–it tells us if we are silent, we are part of the problem. I disagree. My own family has been moving in a direction that is anything but passive. Quiet obedience to God is not inaction, even if that’s the vibe our world puts off. It wants us to toss in our two cents to play the game. A shouting match on Twitter, hackles raised, like two dogs ready to tear into each other. The world doesn’t want to wait for revenge; God says it is His and not ours to pursue. He promises justice for the poor and oppressed, but it will not always come in this lifetime.

Because of Jesus, because of His love that keeps growing inside us, our eyes have been opened to the ways we can act instead of our flesh instinct to react.

Our actions are definitive arrows of faith. This is also what we intend our kids to see as they grow up in a world that is so reactive: move in obedience to God rather than recoil in horror. Advance before there is pressure to retreat. Be bold examples of love, wade into the uncertainty, maintain a stance of offense, not defense. Stop looking to the left or right for clues on how to live, who is picking up rocks and where we all ought to throw them; instead, look up at the perfect Savior and follow His lead.

So what exactly can you do? How can a person bend their ear to all injustice, to follow the way of Jesus in a practical, non-hell-bent, knee-jerk way? Does it take scrapping the farm and moving to the city, learning a new language, immersing oneself in another culture, enrolling the kids in a minority school?

No, but you might end up there. The first step is truly valuing the life of someone who looks, thinks, and lives completely different than you. Ten years ago, we came to love a little twelve year old boy from Haiti through a child sponsorship program. For around forty dollars a month we invested in his future. We put our money–tight at the time–where our mouth was. Then as we were able, we did it again. And again. And again. God kept showing us what, and who, was precious to Him, and we walked in that direction.

That little boy, Fainelson, is now a man. He sent me a video a few weeks ago. He was singing me a song. He sang in Creole, and I couldn’t understand all the words, but it had my name in it. This black man, this precious child of God. My friend, my dear sponsored son, the bridge that prompted me to follow Love down every turn in the path.

Reconciling all the injustice in the world–Jesus can do it, to the glory of the Father. How wonderful when we get to play a tiny part in the story of redemption.

 

Could child sponsorship be your first practical step? Go to World Vision or Compassion to find out more. 

 

Of Teachers and Lemon Bars

Last school year, we took lemon bars to school. Again and again we made lemon bars and packed them up, as my first grader caught wind Mrs. C liked them. It might as well have been the only food she ate, so determined was Luke to supply her with an unending stream of goodies.
When we were missing her last summer, we mailed her the recipe for lemon bars just in case, as Luke noted in his letter, she might have to make them herself.

In a couple of weeks, she mailed us a thank you package. Luke couldn’t believe it. Kids like you are once in a lifetime, she said. But we knew it was the other way around.

It is only the beginning of summer, but I’m already missing teachers. I’m sad with how the year ended, how we had to return our books with masks covering our faces and gloves on our hands. We did not hug teachers goodbye or thank them with one last tupperware of lemon bars. We didn’t get to assemble “summer starter packs” –magazines and gift cards to Chipotle, a fancy insulated cup, Fanta in a bottle. Our plan for one last fun surprise was turned on its head because we were all trumped on a boring Thursday in March by the surprise ending of our school year.

I recently had an interesting conversation with a person I love, one who does not share my affinity for public school. He was adamant, he repeated over and over that public school is nothing more than a daycare for kids whose parents ought to know better. That learning and loving is better–best!–at home, not something that can be replicated away from the family home. There’s no magic in public school, he said, just like there’s no magic in any type of schooling. He argued that parents who care make all the difference, that no “canned curriculum” would ever be a recipe for academic success.

I didn’t disagree with him. I have to admit, this year wasn’t the smoothest sailing for us even before the novel ‘rona sidelined us. We had our misunderstandings and grievances. There was a phone call from the principal, an email from a teacher. We transferred a kid to a whole new school. But it still hurt to hear him discredit and dishonor the establishment that feels more like family to me than I can express.

I remember every teacher who has ever loved me. I say that with the most sincerity I can muster–it is as true as the sky is blue.

My first grade teacher marched down the hallway belting out, You’re a grand old flag, you’re a high flying flag! And she expected us all to sing along as if the cavalry was returning. She packed me and twelve other kids into a passenger van every Wednesday so we could go to church and practice our Christmas musical. One time she picked me up in her convertible and we drove an hour to the Lake to play bumper boats in the pouring rain with her granddaughter. I never knew a grown up could be so charismatic and fun. When she laughed, she tossed her head back, salt and pepper curls bouncing, like Heaven itself ought to be let in on the secret. She was music. She didn’t have to love me, but she did.

My kindergarten teacher read to us while we sat on the lettered carpet, practicing untying and tying her shoes. She let my family move into her house for a week after our house got flooded. She was out of town, and she called my mother to offer the place as a temporary living arrangement. We thought we were on vacation–we sat in her air conditioned den and watched old Superman movies and took showers in softened water for the first time in my life. There was even a tiny TV in the kitchen, the impressive things nine year olds dream about. Even at nine, I couldn’t believe she let us actually live in her house. She still writes me a Christmas card every year. She didn’t have to love me, but she did.

Those are just the first two teachers I ever had. The next eleven years were no different, filled with faces who loved me. A red-nosed grandfatherly P.E. teacher who called me Sugar. Art teachers who encouraged messes and creativity, then tacked our projects up in the hallway, proud as peacocks. I had an eighth grade social studies teacher who wore the Starburst candy wrapper rings I made him. An English teacher who talked me into Speech club, the best surprise hobby I never knew existed. My music teacher, who bought a card for my birthday and had the whole class sign it–she didn’t know how difficult it was for me to show up to high school every day. In her loopy handwriting, she assured me my voice was just right to sing Alma del Core as a solo, even though I didn’t have a stitch of self-confidence or vibrato to my name. One assistant coach called me an “athlete”–laughable to every ninth grade teammate who knew me, but kind, generous promise to my late-blooming, uncoordinated body.

Teachers are people. They are the best kind of people. They notice what parents don’t. They are sometimes the first and only people who tell kids they are worth believing in, that here and now isn’t all there is to life. They encourage and discipline, they establish routine, accountability, and reliability–and many kids have none of this at home. Teachers witness growing and maturation, and somehow they know just the right words to set off small avalanches of hope.

I will concede–not every teacher is patient and exceedingly kind. As our world revs up its social distancing, as tensions rise and personal lives become political statements, there are potentially more teachers in the pot who are there to make a point. Their manners of educating kids are flavored with unpalatable social views or immoral behavior. Not every teacher has my best interest in mind, nor do they share my worldview. I’m aware of tension and I am tuned in to potential problems. I can still say, as a parent (and up till now), it is worth the weeds to hit gold.

It isn’t realistic to say every teacher will change your life. But it’s likely that one might.  This is the chance I’m willing to take on public school.

This is why I’m so sad for the future of public school with masks and minimal contact. Our district’s tentative outline for the fall includes staggered starting times, daily temperature reads, disinfecting between classes, limited class numbers, bagged cold lunches in the classroom instead of hot cafeteria meals. Music, art, library, P.E.–all will be modified, limited, or eliminated for fear of spreading germs and sickness.
Last night, we practiced some homeschooling (because nothing learned at home can ever account for anything but homeschooling, j/k) and did the math: As of now, coronavirus is attributed to 111,367 deaths in the US, .03% of the population. One-third of those were elderly folk who died in nursing homes. Thankfully we know this is not a kids’ disease.
I’m not sure what this means, exactly. It was good to stay home for awhile and keep our germs to ourselves. But I’m afraid the ripple effect will be devastating to the public school landscape.

Returning only partially to school is not enough for teachers and students to build rapport, let alone beef up or revisit the academics lost due to Covid remote learning. Surely there are a thousand other considerations, too, but I am saddest to lose teachers. I’m sad to lose the hope of what teachers do and how they enrich the lives of children in little and big ways, everyday. Like letting kindergartners scoot close enough to the shoes of the teacher to practice tying and untying. Or singing silly songs and marching down the hallway. Day in, day out building safe relationships, teaching kids by example how to be awesome adults.

I love teachers. I don’t know what life will look like without them. I don’t want to know. But it’s very likely we will face this scenario, because I will not force my kids to wear masks to school or sentence them to a socially distanced life.

I’m curious to know what other parents are thinking. What are your school options for the fall? What are some wonderful experiences you have had with teachers? How has public education been a lesson in love? To teachers, I ask: How will new guidelines impact your success as a teacher? What can parents do to speak up in support of teachers and staff in a time like this?
We see you, we love you, you have changed our lives. Send me your address and I’ll mail you a summer starter pack.
And here’s a recipe for lemon bars. For now, you might have to make them yourself.

Lemon Bars
Crust:
1/2 pound salted, softened butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 cups flour

Mix together, press into 13×9 pan. Bake in preheated 350 degree oven until lightly browned, 15-20 minutes. Let cool while making filling.

Filling:
5-6 large eggs at room temperature
2 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 tablespoons grated lemon zest (4 to 6 lemons)
1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 cup flour

Beat together well, pour slowly onto crust. Bake 30-35 minutes, until bars are set. Let cool, cut into squares and dust with powdered sugar.

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen.

 

Twelve Years A Slave and the myth of “getting it right”

On one of our lucky Covid/stay-at-home jaunts to the little free library near our house, I picked up a book I’d always wanted to read. Published in 1853, it is the autobiography of a free, northern-born black man captured and sold into slavery in his thirties. Twelve Years a Slave details the agonizing period of time Solomon Northup endured at the hands of southern slave owners, unbeknownst to even his own family.

I was so moved by the writing, I read parts of it aloud to my children as we swung in hammocks in the backyard and listened to covers of Follow the Drinking Gourd on Amazon music. I edited as necessary for the under ten year old crowd, but didn’t skimp on detail. Northup relates the unending sorrow of slave life in Louisiana, the hopelessness and pure hate sown and reaped along with cotton and sugarcane.

I cleared my throat and called my children to pay attention to the text–I read to them hard labor, the two hundred pound sack of cotton around the neck of a slave, master whipping their backs all day long. The toil and sweat–no matter how fatigued and weary he may be, no matter how much he longs for sleep and rest, a slave never approaches the gin-house with his basket of cotton but with fear. If it falls short in weight, he knows that he must suffer.


The kids’ ears perk up–this is a true story, more captivating than any fiction–and I read more:

His done, the labor of the day is not yet ended, by any means. Each one must then attend to his respective chores. One feeds the mules, another the swine–another cuts the wood, and so forth; besides, the packing is all done by candle light. Finally, at a late hour, they reach the quarters, sleepy and overcome with the long day’s toil. Then a fire must be kindled in the cabin, the corn ground in the small hand-mill, and supper, and dinner for the next day in the field, prepared. All that is allowed them is corn and bacon, which is given out at the corncrib and smoke-house every Sunday morning. Each one receives, as his weekly allowance, three and a half pounds of bacon, and corn enough to make a peck of meal. That is all–no tea, coffee, sugar, and with the exception of a very scant sprinkling now and then, no salt. I can say, from a ten years’ residence with Master Epps, that no slave of his is ever likely to suffer from the gout, superinduced by excessive high living. Master Epps’ hogs were fed on shelled corn–it was thrown out to his “ni***rs” in the ear. The former, he thought, would fatten faster by shelling, and soaking it in the water–the latter, perhaps, if treated in the same manner, might grow too fat to labor. Master Epps was a shrewd calculator, and knew how to manage his own animals, drunk or sober.

My ten year old boy has tears in his eyes. My six year old’s eyes are wide. The latter is the child who came home from his colorful kindergarten class earlier this year and thoughtfully, innocently remarked, “Mom, you know what? The darker the skin, the nicer the person.”

I read on:

The corn mill stands in the yard beneath a shelter. It is like a common coffee mill, the hopper holding about six quarts. There was one privilege which Master Epps granted freely to every slave he had. They might grind their corn nightly, in such small quantities as their daily wants required, or they might grind the whole week’s allowance at one time, on Sundays, just as they preferred. A very generous man was Master Epps!
…When the corn is ground, and the fire is made, the bacon is taken down from the nail on which it hangs, a slice cut off and thrown upon the coals to broil. The majority of slaves have no knife, much less a fork. They cut their bacon with the axe at the woodpile. The corn meal is mixed with a little water, placed in the fire, and baked. When it is “done brown,” the ashes are scraped off, and being placed upon a chip, which answers for a table, the tenant of the slave hut is ready to sit down upon the ground to supper. By this time it is usually midnight. The same fear of punishment with which they approach the gin-house, possesses them again on lying down to get a snatch of rest. It is the fear of oversleeping in the morning. Such an offense would certainly be attended with not less than twenty lashes. With a prayer that he may be on his feet and wide awake at the first sound of the horn, he sinks to his slumbers nightly.

The softest couches in the world are not to be found in the log mansion of the slave. The one whereon I reclined year after year, was a plank twelve inches wide and ten feet long. My pillow was a stick of wood. The bedding was a coarse blanket, and not a rag or shred beside. Moss might be used, were it not that it directly breeds a swarm of fleas.

An hour before day light the horn is blown. Then the slaves arouse, prepare their breakfast, fill a gourd with water, in another deposit their dinner of cold bacon and corn cake, and hurry to the field again. It is an offense invariably followed by a flogging, to be found at the quarters after day-break. Then the fears and labors of another day begin; and until its close there is no such thing as rest. He fears he will be caught lagging through the day; he fears to approach the gin-house with his basket-load of cotton at night; he fears, when he lies down, that he will oversleep himself in the morning. Such is a true, faithful, unexaggerated picture and description of the slave’s daily life…

I closed the book and we sat silent for a few moments.

Coincidentally, it feels like last week has also been a good time to sit silent for awhile.

I have no intention of hashing out faulty politics or racial tension, though I think we all can easily stand brazenly and shout for justice. The peculiar vibe I am getting is a collective, internal rage. It is the same I felt as I read Solomon Northup’s words nearly two hundred years after he wrote. Where were the witnesses? Oh Lord, where was the justice?

Northrup addresses the violence in southern Louisiana among white slave owners:
Every man carries his bowie knife, and when two fall out, they set to work hacking and thrusting at each other, more like savages than civilized and enlightened beings.
The existence of Slavery in its most cruel form among them has a tendency to brutalize the humane and finer feeling of their nature. Daily witnesses of human suffering–listening to the agonizing screeches of the slave–beholding him writhing beneath the merciless lash–bitten and torn by dogs–dying without attention, and buried without shroud or coffin–it cannot otherwise be expected, than that they should become brutified and reckless of human life…It is not the fault of the slaveholder that he is cruel, so much as it is the fault of the system under which he lives. He cannot withstand the influence of habit and associations that surround him.

Consider what this man was saying, a black free man, kidnapped and forced against his will to be a slave. He bore a death threat for twelve full years. After twelve full years he was able to objectively tease out the motivations of hateful men. And all it amounted to was systematic hate, hate perpetuating itself.
Today is hardly any different: we are embedded in a cultural system that routinely washes up wickedness and desensitizes us to every cruel action of man. One oppresses the other with their views and opinions, fearmongering and threats.One a victim, one a perpetrator.

What I’ve noticed lately in current events is this unspoken, dangerous rule: Get it right.
Speak up, louder…but not too loud. Actually, don’t speak on things you don’t understand. After all, you don’t really know someone else’s struggle. Support, but don’t overwhelm. Acknowledge differences, but don’t differentiate. It isn’t enough, your apologies and pretentious words of restitution. Show up, just don’t assume you have anything to offer. Broaden your scope, enlighten yourself. Expose your children to others’ points of view and culture. Cultivate sensitivity. Tolerance. Accept the tension, swallow your discomfort. Admit you’re part of the problem.

Get it right.

Please pardon me, truly–we will never get it right.

This is why a perfect man, Jesus, was put to death for our sin. God himself wedged his foot in the door of our system, the one where we lived proud, ignorant lives, and told us to love one another, just as I have loved you.

Purposeful living, where God made us to worship Him with our whole lives, to be the light of the world and lovers of good, kind, tenderhearted–it fails when we take Him out of the equation. We are just a bunch of fools jogging on a hamster wheel of a broken system. We are counterfeit peacemakers apart from Jesus. The hate that simmers under the surface–it lingers as we make up rules of engagement, petty suggestions to get it right. It quickly rips into a monster flame when we stir it up by continually intaking a thousand social media cues and news of disaster and despair. Hate is only ever eradicated at the foot of the cross.

Jeremiah said it like this: we are broken cisterns who cannot hold any water. Our compassion for our fellow man, our love, is dry. We need Living Water. We need a good dose of history, a recollection of how far hate has ever gotten us in the past.

I am grateful I stumbled upon the little old book in the little free library. As the story closes, Northup expresses little more than disdain; he does not pour any extra gas on the fire. He exists in perpetuity as his own witness, the facts and dates, verified places and times and account of his suffering. We read his words to remember and not forget, to awaken ourselves to systematic injustice, yes, but also to the hopelessness of humanity apart from Jesus.

Sow with a view to righteousness,
Reap in accordance with kindness;
Break up your fallow ground,
For it is time to seek the Lord
Until He comes to rain righteousness on you.
Hosea 10:12