National Civil Rights Museum

Our family likes to travel right after Christmas, and this year one of the places we stopped was Memphis, Tennessee, and there we visited the National Civil Rights Museum. It was a moving experience to walk through a long timeline oriented exhibit that narrated the experience of African American persons in America.


The museum itself is located in the Loraine Motel, the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Something that I did not know before this visit is that this motel was Black owned, and
thus the place that leaders such as King commonly stayed. So a would be killer could make a good guess that he would be there at this location.

It is always interesting and a little disconcerting to talk about history that has taken place in one's own lifetime. One of my minister colleagues from California, Rev. James Lawson, was one of the leaders with King who was prominent in the pictures and quotations on the walls.

We walked through a bus of that era and saw the life sized figures of Rosa Parks and the bus driver, and read about the confrontation that began the Montgomery bus boycott. Details on the wall also outlined that she had been trained at the Highlander Center and was prepared mentally and spiritually for this moment when it came. Often when we hear about it in the media it is presented as though she was just especially tired and fed up on this day and decided not to move on an impulse. This is certainly not the whole story. Rosa Parks was also a trained organizer, and part of a group.



A heart stopping exhibit was a bus that had been bombed that was in the museum. The aluminum that was stretched and blown open was a dramatic example of the force. And I was reminded of how much the current terrorists who blow things up have in common with the racist terrorists in the American South. The combination of murders, intimidation, arrests, jailing, police dogs, beatings, bombings, fire hoses - it was something pretty powerful to address. And to do so with non-violence.

I had not thought about this era for some time. The museum also elicited a good conversation with our daughters.


Over dinner I shared with them that although it all seems so clearly cut and dried, good and bad, just and unjust, at the time all of this was controversial. It was not so clear cut in the media or in politics.


I also shared with them the analysis that prior to Presidency of John Kennedy that the Democratic Party could depend on the "solid south" to deliver lots of votes for President in national elections. And after President Kennedy's efforts, and those of his brother Bobby Kennedy during this era, and especially after the Voting Rights Act passed by congress and signed by Lyndon Johnson, the south is now solidly Republican. The Republican party has taken up the mantle of White resentment.

I found it sorrowful that the museum seemed to stop the narrative around 1968. Sometimes it feels like there has not been so much progress since that time.

Children's Time

Each week in worship at the Church of Peace there is a moment called "Children's Time," when the kids come up to the chancel and we talk for a few minutes. Well, this last Sunday there was a larger group than usual. Last Sunday was the week of the Children's Christmas Program, it was about bells. And there was a good group of kids present. And I have a fork in my hand and telling the story of the woman who wanted to be buried with a fork in her hand, because there was more to come. So she should keep her fork.

So the decorations are beautiful in the church, and there is a good group of kids, and many of them are looking at me and listening to the story!

It is good for children to know that they have a time and place at church.

Cars in the Parking Lot

A number of years ago I heard about a frustrated business owner, whose business was not going as well as she had hoped, and she believed that her employees were slacking off, and that was the root of the problem. In a staff meeting she proclaimed, "I want to see those cars in the parking lot!" You know, that is a measure of what is going on at a facility. The cars in the parking lot.

That crossed my mind a few weeks ago when I arrived a little late to church on a weekday. There were already a number of cars in the parking lot, and there was no church meeting scheduled for the day. These were the cars of the employees, and some students in the Lights ON for Learning program.

That started my mind rolling. Our church staff roster lists eleven members. There are six persons who receive a paycheck from the Community Caring Conference. There are three employees of Blackhawk College who report directly to the church building to do work for the college. And this does not mention various supervisors who work in other locations and have some responsibility for activities that take place here at the church. The way I think of it, some twenty persons think of the church as the place where they work.

This is a high water mark for the time that I have been here. The Church of Peace itself has three more employees than last year - their jobs are funded by various grants we receive. In an economy where unemployment is up it is good to be working in the opposite direction. (We do wish that the jobs we provide were higher income.)

Many years ago when there was debate about whether the church should move or stay at its present location one of the reasons to stay was to provide an "anchor" in the neighborhood. The fact that twenty folks count this as their home office shows that we have indeed provided an anchor of sorts.

Of course, with twenty different people working in and out of this building life is more complex, with more relationships and all. But it is a good sort of complexity. A rich complexity of personal interaction - and that does not mention all the volunteers for each of the organizations that are in and out of the building on a regular basis. And then the church meetings. And the meetings of the Community Caring Conference, and the meetings of the Lights ON for Learning.

You know, with all of this there are indeed more cars in the parking lot. On a regular basis.