The other night I went to this major going-out-of-business sale at an old warehouse downtown. The place was chock full of framed artwork, fine linens, and designer shoes. Even the sidewalks were spilling over. And then I woke up and my great dream evaporated into a tangle of hot bedclothes. What a nightmare! I had labored hard over each selection (whether it was it a need or a want?). The things I thought were real had been taken away in a blink of an eye.
So it is for so many people of color with the so-called American Dream. The freedoms and privileges that looked so real crumble so easily in times of adversity. We have seen it in heart-ripping color during the weeks following the terrorists' attacks on America. With the rising of the September 12th sun, a new group of American residents have been victims of profiling, threats, and plots of murder.
Sadly, though, it is not a new nightmare. It has happened to Japanese-Americans (six years of internment for looking like a kamikaze pilot), Native Americans (the Trail of Tears, the forced westward migration of all eastern tribes in 1840), black Americans (the Dred Scott decision, countless lynchings, Jim Crow laws, and on and on). Sadly, these terrors will continue in some form or another to peoples of color in the US. This is America, after all -- a sometimes Christian, sometimes humanistic, always volatile experiment in the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.
The next time you sing “God Bless America,” replace the name of our country with Americans that don't look like you, maybe even some that were born on other soil. If you don't know any names, then take that as a wake up call to expand your concept of our God-blessed land. It has taken more than mountains and prairies and foamy seas to make it lovely and sweet.
.August 2005.
About 17 Seeds
Hi. My name is Linda Hargrove. I'm a North Carolina native. I write (fiction mostly), I design things, and I'm an adoptive mom of three boys.IN THE BEGINNING
Around 1992 I became involved in an urban ministry called Building Together Ministries (BTM). As a CCDA ministry, BTM has racial reconciliation as one of its tenets. My husband and I became co-leaders of racial reconciliation discussion groups that we called 'supper clubs.'
The clubs were made up of blacks and whites from various denominations throughout the region. Each month we met in homes and church basements to discuss how we, the church, might better address racial problems in our country. We used books like More Than Equals by Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice and Breaking Down Walls by Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein.
THINGS GOT RADICAL
In 1995 I began a personal Bible study of John. When I started John 17 it was like I was reading a new Word. Jesus's prayer for oneness struck a cord with me. In my eyes, we Christians weren't living out that prayer. It saddened me.
I felt God's leading to do something 'racially radical' so that, as John 17:22 states, the world might be drawn to Him. Around that same time, God was leading my husband to become involved in a predominately white church. I gladly followed. Within a year, we became members and started a racial reconciliation prayer group. In time I began speaking at the church's women's conference on racial reconciliation.
THEN CAME ISAAC
In 1996 I started writing my first novel, The Making of Isaac Hunt, to help Christians better relate to the principles of racial reconciliation. In 1997 my husband and I moved our highly educated selves into the 'rough' part of town around BTM, striving to live out one of the three Rs of Christian community development--relocation.Reconciling faith and race is not an easy thing. This blog is my attempt to understand race in this country (a mighty big task) but more importantly, to plant seeds of oneness within the Body of believers across racial lines.
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