love inhabits

Execution. I honestly didn't know. Not until I saw my friend's Instagram post last Thursday. I don't follow any news; Tim's job keeps him inundated with news, so we encounter stuff in differing ways and moments. Besides, he's been busy when home, chopping wood for next winter.

My friend lives in Minneapolis. She visited Eugene once, years ago,  and we spent a great day together. She works a mile from where George Floyd died. Her blog has become a chronicle of some very dark days, in a year (decade?) where darkness may grow exponentially.

For us, I mean. We people who don't tend to live on the edge. Or at least we don't think we do.

Every time I drive to my church--and as treasurer I'm there, at a distance from a few others, several times a week--I pass or encounter street people. Being residents of Oregon, we see few non-Caucasians, but I wish to greet everyone with a smile (boy, when our son was learning state history in homeschool, did my eyes get opened to Oregon's unwelcoming stance toward former slaves and others).

I grew up in Illinois, Oklahoma, and Washington State. A shy kid in junior high, I was encouraged nearly every day of ninth grade by two brothers, Jetson and Clarence, who took it upon themselves to cheer me up with humor and antics, even though I was the girl who'd been teased by Sabrina all of one term in math class (each of these three students were of browner skin than myself; they were individual people, and thanks to friendship that's what I saw).

My dad would help anyone he encountered. Mom tells the story of a white woman who came to see him at our home, the church parsonage, and in her purse she carried a gun. Dad helped calm her down. Later Mom calmed down, too.

In Tacoma, my parents chose to send both of my brothers to an inner-city school, Stanley Elementary (there were computers--way before PCs). Later, Mom taught remedial reading at Tacoma high schools and middle schools, enriching students from all backgrounds.

My aunt Bea (yes, I have one!) came to Tim's and my 1979 wedding with her four kids, my black cousins. She was a single mom (she and my dad shared the same father), living in Eugene, where her marriage in the sixties to a black man had not endured. After Tim got out of the Navy, we briefly lived near them, and Tim fixed several of their appliances. Bea's mother died a few years ago at nearly 100. I'll never forget that funeral. Great-grandchildren performed tributes, singing about how she stood up for them, taking no nonsense from anyone regarding her beautiful family. I don't know how confrontational she got with others, but her descendants had no doubt that she, a white woman, understood their difficulties. She truly felt their pain.

I guess I'm writing this, first, because darkness must rightly be identified and never forgotten. An Orthodox priest, whose blog posts I savor, had this to say:

Someone recently wrote on social media that it was time to “choose up sides,” as if there was a line in the sand on which to make a stand. Obviously, this came from someone who didn’t have all the lights turned on upstairs. But more importantly, that kind of talk only throws gas on the fire.

We don’t need inflammatory speech like that. The temperature in the land has already busted the top of the societal thermometer. We’ve had enough.

Everyone has had enough: enough of riot and destruction, enough of bigotry and injustice.

On all sides.

Because when it comes to humanity and justice, peace and unity, there can be no “sides.” We are one country, one human race.

Every human being should be horrified by the torturous execution of +George Floyd. Every human with a sense of justice (and this should cover everyone made in the image of God) should be angered by the delay in the arrest of the fired officer who murdered him, and the ongoing delay of the arrest of the other three ex-officers who are accomplices in the murder. Every adult who’s seen death up close will shake his head in disbelief at the official autopsy: asphyxiation cannot be camouflaged by euphemism.

It is logically and Christianly impossible to excuse or minimize this injustice. And, frankly, there is much reasonable cause for social protest.

But there is no cause at all for riot and rampage … no cause for water bottle throwing, cherry bomb and bottle-rocket firing, and in-your-face spouting of cursing and vulgarity … no cause (except for cheap criminality) for breaking windows and looting … no cause on heaven or earth (but maybe hell) for setting buildings ablaze.

There is, at the same time, no cause at all for the President to clear a street with militarized police, tear gas, and flash grenades – all of this just to brandish a Holy Bible in a gesture that I, a PK who’s watched thousands of Billy Graham-type sermons, have never seen.

The Bible cannot and must not be held up as a sign of hardfisted power.

I'm writing this today, secondly, because of timing and because of light. I mean, I'm still that shy kid from junior high (though recently I turned 60), but today I am, officially, also the grandmother of a boy whose skin is browner than mine.

Chris came into my daughter and her husband's life at nine months, and they have been his foster parents nearly two years. This morning, at 6:00 our time, Tim and I combed our hair, yawning, and joined the kids' Zoom adoption hearing (Clover the cat showed up, too, purring). I think the judge and social caseworker, while remaining fully professional, enjoyed themselves. Let's just say the meeting was bright as sunshine on the Willamette, with a finale of cheers and applause.

We already considered Chris family. Now society has granted him to us (his mother did, as well, voluntarily releasing her parental rights months before this).

All the light-filled joy I felt this morning arrived in the marvelous timing of never forgetting. Darkness. Execution. Death. They aren't new arrivals. We live on the edge every moment. Christianity centers around a person unjustly executed as a criminal. I believe Jesus inhabited death, because it couldn't hold him. Reality is a rescue story. I believe Jesus Christ broke the bonds of ultimate hatred, taking on its shame and pain to do so.

What does this mean a shy grandmother is supposed to do? I want to fully love, as much as Bea's mom, every grandchild, my own and others'. I want to offer the open palm of humility, perceived weakness, unconditionally. Tim taught me something long ago. He and I express things differently, but he has never shrunk from love, from giving all he has to his neighbor. When a landlord-neighbor, back in the day, used to spout racial unkindnesses, I asked Tim, "What can we do about this?" He said nothing. A week or so later, though, he invited friends from Portland to visit, a mixed-race couple, and we enjoyed their family's company in full view of our neighbors.

My words will not protect Chris or anyone. But I'm so grateful we can live and embrace him amid all the darkness, leaving remembrances of, I hope, a few points of light.