Dear Caldwell,
Coming Together, Staying Together
As we move from Sunday to Sunday this week, we continue to seek to live constructively in the tension we feel around us. My sense is that the city has shifted somewhat from immediate protest and digestion of the case of Keith Scott to planning for healing and solutions to the justifiable anger many feel. This is where it gets complicated. (The Observer ran a helpful story in understanding all the various groups at work.)
It is also, as Anne Hunter Eidson reminded me this week, where we need to take care of each other. Nerves are frayed. Our bones are weary. Uncertainty – and fear, for many – prevails. Whether it is on an individual-to-individual level or as different groups and coalitions seek to work together, the risk is that we turn on each other in our fatigue, because we are in proximity with each other, if nothing else. The opposite needs to happen, of course. We need to unite. There is important work to do.
Spelling LEAP
On Sunday, I asked those in worship to think personally about how they would spell LEAP. By that, I mean, L.E.A.P. as an acronym. What words that start with the letters L, E,A and P might describe what you are ready to do with your time, talent and treasure through Caldwell to bring healing to a broken world?
That question lies at the heart of this season of discernment about where God will use us, together and individually, going forward. We practice a “Faith of Leap,” after all, not one of timidity but of bold, self-giving and generous response to God’s abundant grace in Christ and God’s gift of Caldwell as a place where we can bear witness.
So, as you receive your Pledge and Information packets (this week in the mail if you did not on Sunday), think about how you would spell LEAP in practice of your faith. Commitment Sunday is Oct. 16 or you can read up and pledge via US mail or online here.
For example, the acronym I offered Sunday is:
L is for Love, the strong love to stand in the gap with others.
E is for Evangelism, the sharing of the Good News that God has ushered in the Kingdom of God and called us to advance it every day.
A is for Advocacy, as in working for others (AD-VOCATE), knowing the Divine Advocate, the Holy Spirit, is in our midst always.
P is for Don’t be a Peter. Get out of the boat and walk toward Christ – because Christ is not about sitting in the safety of the boat. (See Matthew 14)
Keeping Promises
On Monday night, the NAACP and the Charlotte Clergy Coalition for Justice held a joint meeting where several people spoke about the Scott case and the broader inequities of our city, state and nation. Many in our “Troubling the Waters” class were there. I was asked to offer a few thoughts, which are below.
Finally, our friend Greg Jarrell with QC Family Tree, our partner in The Third Plate, has begun a book study and discussion at noon on Thursdays in The Third Place that is highly relevant to these times. Greg writes on Facebook:
“The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, followed by The Fire This Time, a new collection edited by Jesmyn Ward. I’ve had terrific response from people wanting to join when we started talking a couple of weeks ago. Obviously, the events of the past week make this all the more urgent.
All are welcome. I especially encourage white folks to attend. To do better work we need better analysis, and this literature can help us to listen and build that analysis.”
Finally, we are thankful that member Dee Blackburn had successful surgery on a cancer near her spine yesterday and has a positive prognosis.
In Christ,
John
Remarks Monday Night
Good evening.
My name is Rev. John Cleghorn and I am a local pastor.
We are here because Keith Scott is dead.
We are here to say we must have a thorough, independent investigation. Sun light is the best anti-septic, and in Charlotte we have an open wound – a wound that now the whole nation sees – a wound that needs pure sunlight.
We are here because this must be the last police shooting of an African-American that might have been handled without the use of deadly force.
We are here to say that our protest is not against the police. It is against police policies and how they can better value black lives.
I came to Charlotte 34 years ago from Atlanta, a city that called itself “too busy to hate.”
I came because I thought Charlotte was a city of promise to all of its citizens – so much promise that it might actually fulfill the words Atlanta used as a chamber of commerce slogan, such promise that all might participate in the prophet Jeremiah’s dream of a city of shared peace and prosperity, a true covenant community of justice and love.
But Charlotte has not kept her promise.
Oh, some might say it has – for many people who look like me.
White. Privileged. Connected.
But Charlotte has failed in her promise to far too many others.
Charlotte didn’t keep her promise to provide integrated, high quality schools for every child in every neighborhood.
Instead our schools are vastly re-segregated by race and class, a reversal of 30 years ago.
Charlotte didn’t keep her promise that economic success would reach all of her citizens.
Instead, we are faced with almost intractable poverty highly concentrated in minority neighborhoods.
Charlotte didn’t keep her promise to provide enough good, safe affordable housing.
Charlotte has not kept her promise. Nor has North Carolina.
How do you feel when someone breaks a promise?
You lose trust. You lose hope. And you feel anger, the kind of anger we see in our streets – the anger many have felt for a long time.
In a sense all of that is why we are here.
So, while we are here to ask for sunlight that cleanses and heals and for more life-honoring ways to de-escalate dangerous police situation … there is other, harder work to be done:
Work to make good on Charlotte’s promise – a promise that still can be fulfilled – but only when more people who look like me, from the city to the suburbs, listen much more, talk much less, share power more willingly and live as if they believe that Black Lives Truly Matter.