When I was very young, friends of my parents gave our family a handmade nativity scene from Spain. Each figure had stiffly coated fabric clothing, and there were delicate, removable golden halos for Mary and Joseph. Baby Jesus’s halo, I remember, was immovable.

A shepherdess carried perfectly sculpted apples in a basket—gifts for the little baby Jesus, or maybe for his hungry parents. Each child in our family would carefully unwrap a piece and set it in place. The set was perfect, except for one thing. Jesus was lily white. Finally, my mom went ahead and used some brown watercolor paint to make him look more like a child born in Bethlehem.

As a parent and Children’s Minister, I read the work of Sofia Cavaletti, Jerome Berryman and Sonja Stewart, who name the experience of being drawn into God through kinesthetic experience. Programs like The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, Godly Play and Young Children and Worship help Christian educators see that our role is primarily to make space for children to enter in to the wonder of worship. Acknowledging the multisensory nature of how children learn best, they attest that “biblical stories need to be translated into figures and materials that children can see and move about, giving them a sensorimotor way of responding to God.”

Some children have the privilege of attending churches where they are invited to hold and retell Bible stories every Sunday. Others are told to sit still, don’t touch, and follow directions. But Christmas season is one time when almost all of us know we have a God we can touch. My children breathe deep when I open our Christmas box and delight that our books and decorations carry the “smell of Christmas.” I am praying that that smell, which is burrowing into the folds of their memory, will lead them deeper into knowing, seeking and following this child who makes all things new.

My kids are experiencing Jesus through a nativity scene that was crocheted by a man serving life in a Georgia state penitentiary. He is one of the lucky ones who walked out of Georgia’s death row alive. Some friends in our community have been visiting and corresponding with him for more than 20 years, first when he was on death row and now as he is serving life. He learned to crochet in prison and made a complete nativity scene, including three camels that seem to be bowing down to the baby Jesus. My children love to gently flop the camels across the table, run their fingers along Joseph’s yarn beard, and feel the wooly coils on the lamb.

As I watch them play, I find myself asking the questions Godly Play has taught me to ponder: I wonder how this little baby is a light to the world, a light that no darkness can overcome?

Stricter prison policy now forbids our brother from crocheting because the hook could be a weapon. Although he has lived nonviolently now for 36 years, he is still a violent offender in the blind eyes of the system. The prison’s fear-based law negates a biblical vision in which he is a new creation and weapons are transformed into plowshares. I think about how his cheerful plush figures enjoy a freedom he does not yet know—the sounds of children’s laughter, the touch of gentle hands, the light of candles.

I do not give our friend’s name because I fear that some readers may immediately want to look him up and magnify the heinous crime he committed when he was a different man. I tell my children his name. I show them his picture in our community dining room. We pray, not only for him and other people on Death Row, but also for the families devastated by the crimes that have left them aching for their loved ones this Christmas.

This Christmas my heart is heavy with the reality of violence and a broken system that seems so far from God’s vision. I wonder what Georgia lawmakers, judges and prison officials learned about God as young children. Was God always distant and punishing?

I wonder what might happen if they were to reach out and touch our friend’s handiwork, the work of redeemed hands that once killed. Might they feel that little shiver of Emmanuel, God with us?

The morning after Donald Trump became President-elect, I met my mother-in-law and pastor at our church. I prayed with my mother-in-law in that old brick building, knowing full well that her vote had cancelled mine the day before.

She prayed that Jesus would make himself known to Donald Trump, bringing him to repentance and humility, and that people would not gloat in Trump’s victory because victory belongs to God. I prayed by name for my friends who may face deportation in the coming months, for Muslim friends, for survivors of sexual assault and harassment, for people who fear that their families and marriages are in danger. Our pastor prayed for all who are afraid and hungry for a love and security that only Jesus can fill. We prayed together for the church, in tears. We allowed ourselves to hear and carry the other’s petitions to a God whose love is deep and wide enough to receive it all.

My mother-in-law is one of the most faithful people I know. I baked her blueberry pie last Wednesday because it was her birthday, and she brought over chicken for my birthday the next day.  We both celebrated the little flames of our lives on this planet. Earlier this fall, she started helping with my laundry with one stipulation: she insisted I use the time to write. She tells me that she often doesn’t understand or agree with what I am writing, but she helps me make time to do it all the same.

The smell of campfire has lingered in the Southern air this week. There is fire, literally, in the mountains. After weeks without rain, the red soil is compacted and the land is a dry tinderbox. According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, firefighters are fighting fire with fire. “‘Creating fire on the ground is just one of the tools that operations use to help control the fire, ’ Clay Van Horn of the USFS said.”

I am loved and called to love by the God Scripture calls a “consuming fire.” To me, this post-election season sometimes feels apocalyptic. Dare I bring my little flame into this firestorm of words?

James, the brother of Jesus, wrote “the tongue is a small part of the body, but it boasts of great things. Consider how small a spark sets a great forest on fire.” I’m a woman with fire in my belly, and I cannot deny the voice God gave me. But I want to speak in a way that will build up and not burn down that bridge of love and prayer between my mother-in-law and me.

Dangerous words are flying around. I have at times allowed my passion to override compassion. The radical way of Jesus is bold, and consistent love must sometimes pray “forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.” But love is also vulnerable.

In his book The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin wrote,  “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word ‘love’ here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace–not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”

Love is challenging me to grow–to dare to know another James, my husband’s father James, whose death last year prompted my mother-in-law’s move to be closer to us. I’ve been getting to know James better through his computer. His love of beauty, his sense of humor and his love of God shine through many of the things that he wrote and saved. We lived on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but in his final years I learned to love and be loved by him on the solid ground of Jesus.

Here’s an excerpt from one of his essays:

“In one church in which I was a regular attendee I had a vision from the Lord.  In the vision I was standing in front of the church and was supposed to deliver a message.  However, all I could do was weep….

Instead of pursuing a real relationship with Christ, we pursue the American dream and it turns into an American nightmare…..  

Pray, Christians!  Pray!  Pray some more!  When you think you have finished praying you need to know you have only scratched the surface!  Pray!  Pray without ceasing!  PRAY!  And when you pray, do not ask God to change someone else.  Ask God to change YOU!  When Daniel prayed for Jerusalem he did not say, “they have sinned.”  He said, “We have sinned.”  The closer you get to God the more you will recognize your own sin.  Pray!”  

I read his words and remember our prayer meeting in the little church last Wednesday. And I wonder if even those flickering flames of prayer can become a fire that heals this aching land.

When my husband and I were considering marriage, he dropped a major surprise on me. No, he hadn’t slept with another woman, but the sense of shock and betrayal that came from his confession hit me with the same impact.

His confession? When he was a teenager growing up in Texas he displayed the battle flag of the Confederacy on his bedroom wall. No one in his whole white world ever questioned it. He grew up in a culture in which that flag only said, “I am proud to be from the South.” He was taught to love his neighbors and be kind. His family would not have tolerated overt racism. In fact they had been criticized in multiple situations by co-workers and friends for treating black people as human beings. Yet, he was raised in a world steeped in silence about the honest truth of our racist history.

When he moved to Philadelphia for art school he brought that flag and culture with him. It did not take long for a kind brother in Christ to sit with him and explain the history of racial violence and policy associated with flag. So he threw it away and, more importantly, took on the work of expanding his consciousness. By the time we met he had come a long way on that journey. As we were discerning whether to share our lives together he had to know if I would forgive him and still love him knowing the truth about his past.

My grandmother, raised by her grandmother who was born into slavery in Kentucky, was a great encourager to me. When I went to her and also to my parents for advice about whether to stay in this relationship they all nudged me to be courageous on the path of love–to love the man that he is not that he was. My family taught me not to fault people for their ignorance only for their conscious choice to remain ignorant. We had our own little truth and reconciliation moment and decided we could be family.

I didn’t give the Confederate flag much thought until our family moved to Georgia four years ago. I cannot go a day without seeing the flag displayed on cars, Confederate war memorials, clothing, even a second-hand bedspread in the home of a refugee family that I know. It is a constant hostile reminder not only of a horrible history but the terrors of this present day.

For months I had been mulling over how or when to write about this omnipresent reminder of racism’s insidious hold on our culture. In early June it finally came out as a poem that I wrote and shared aloud as part of a UGA poetry workshop.

Then Charleston happened. A groundswell of support has led to yesterday’s historic announcement from the South Carolina governor that the Confederate battle flag should be removed from the state house. Governor Haley’s announcement was an important one to be celebrated, but I worry about the suggestion that it be moved to an “appropriate location.” I hope she meant the trash… or a museum. There is no other appropriate location for such a volatile symbol. Walmart just announced that they will stop selling merchandise from belt buckles to shower curtains that bear the Confederate flag. Parents who love God and love their neighbors need to teach their kids the truth and stop buying the lie of “southern pride” associated with that flag.

Just days after the shooting, a friend of mine was driving out of SC and saw the flag waving from the back of a pick-up. Getting the confederate flag out of government buildings is only a small step in the much larger step of moving toward becoming a beloved community in which we could feast together beneath God’s banner of love (Song of Solomon 2:4). And some people would rather do the devil’s work no matter what the law says. Anyone who flaunts their right to wave that banner of hate is saying to their neighbor, “I’m sorry you have so many burns, ” while pouring gasoline on their burning house.

I pray that this poem can stand among the chorus of voices that have been calling out for decades to finally lay the Confederate battle flag to rest. It’s time to lay her to rest once and for all.

Dixie Sister

She waves from the back of a pick-up and

struts up to the bar in that 150 year old dress-

scarlet, indigo, bone.

Poor thing, bless her heart, she swings from poles.

Just keeps on going, like a star.

She was my husband’s first love.

Whispered sweet in his lily petal ear,

“Be proud you’re from the South.”

He pinned her up in his room

in Philadelphia and a brother said,

“That’s not love.”

Hearing how men with

barbed wired bats,

shiny black shoes in offices

with whips, white sheets

executive power

had used her,

he dumped her.

I kept him, glad

to never see her

flappin’ around my town,

until we moved down.

Now she haunts me ‘bout every day.

I see her and her older sisters

out on highway 72, erected

by the sons of men now dead

who held on too tight to lies

about gray and black

and bein’ white.

I’ve seen her spread on my neighbors’ bed-

their house the smell of fish sauce and acrid memories of war.

They don’t know her history.

She’s just a used blanket, a gift of welcome to

another battleground.

She shows up in my dreams.

I see her hangin’ out in school cafeterias.

There she was slinkin’ around on a South Carolina beach,

in front of my children, as a string bikini.

A desecration!

This old rag’s been fightin’ all her life,

been workin’ like hell.

Even the men who love her

and claim her as their own

call her “blood-stained.”

They need to leave her be.

Let her lay out in the sun

on a bed of foxtails.

Let her threads get bleached and

fade into the soft black earth.

Let Queen Anne’s lace and chicory

sprout from her stars, and poppies bloom.

If only she could

just rest in peace.

To the woman who was sitting two pews back from me in church on Sunday, June 7, 2015,

Thank you for handing me those tissues. By the time I had gotten myself together, connected with my kids after Sunday school and washed down my plate of fried chicken, green beans, and potato salad with a cup of cold sweet tea, I looked for you and you were gone. I have gone to your church often enough that I don’t have to stand with the visitors, but I still haven’t really gotten to know many people yet. I’ll be back next Sunday to thank you in person, but I wanted to let you know what a blessing that little act of kindness was to me.

You did not ask me why I was crying or tell me that everything would be okay, and I thank you for that. You just gave me what I needed. My purse was crammed with keys, phone, sunglasses, hair rubber bands, band aids, water bottle, a rubber ball, scraps of paper, a plastic fork, a datebook and a pen, but no tissues. In all my years of being a mom, I try my best to be prepared, but I often come up short.

And there I was, all alone, with my glasses fogging up and my nose dripping on my Sunday clothes. I had a whole pew to myself. My husband had stayed home with my younger kids that day and the older two had gone downstairs for Sunday school. The pastor said something about nailing his own sins to the cross every day. He said something about not wanting to be a stumbling block in anyone’s faith journey. His words touched a ten year old wound which I thought had healed. There it was again, pushing out those saltwater tears. We all carry them, those trespasses we thought we had forgiven, those places that still need healing, those long held griefs for ourselves and for others.

Perhaps you could have come up to me later and listened to what bubbled to the surface. Should I have described the years of injury that a pastors’ year of unfaithfulness and narcissism caused to a congregation I served? Should I have told you about the woman who finds it hard to pray and does not go to church anymore because her pastor raped her when she was twelve? Should I have told you how good it felt to hear a leader acknowledge that no sin is ever private; that our faith is strengthened in the presence of faithfulness?

You were two rows behind me but you saw me take off my glasses, wipe my cheeks, sniff. You reached across that empty space and tapped me on my shoulder. Those two tissues, like angel wings, came just when I needed them. I’m sure you’re no angel and neither am I, but you were at worship with your eyes open, and that is a gift. It made me think of that old gospel hymn:

Amazing grace shall always be my song of praise,
for it was grace that brought my liberty;
I do not know just why He came to love me so,
He looked beyond my fault and saw my need.

I shall forever life mine eyes to Calvary,
to view the cross where Jesus died for me,
how marvelous the grace that caught my falling soul;
He looked beyond my fault and saw my need.

So many folks don’t even bother with church anymore. They just can’t see Jesus in that room full of broken people. Their wounds are so deep and sometimes just being in church opens them up again. But, if I had just stayed home and found a good sermon to listen to online, I would have missed the blessing that came that morning. There was healing that came through the words in the pastor’s sermon, but your act of comfort will bring me back in those doors. Distracted as I often am with squirming kids and endless lists I’m going to try to remember to get a pack of tissues for my purse and keep my eyes open. I may not be able to lend a listening ear, but I could hand over a tissue, and by God’s grace that just might be what a sister needs.

Every Friday at noon our staff community gathers to pray. Sometimes, if the weather is nice, we share prayer requests and then disperse outside to pray alone or in pairs, then gather back together for lunch. This past Friday, the weather was foul, so we prayed together. Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I will be in the midst of them.”

I could not understand why the woman leading devotions seemed somewhat irritated at having been scheduled for that day. She read the date, April 17, and her chin began to tremble as she asked if anyone knew what had happened forty years ago. She spoke so softly that a person at the other end of the room didn’t hear the “forty years” part and remembered what they had heard on the news that morning – “The Oklahoma City bombing?” No, that was twenty years ago.

It was on April 17, 1975 that Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge began a reign of terror that left roughly 2 million Cambodian people dead and forced my friend and her family to become refugees. “It left a wound that was very deep and a scar, a very large scar.” She read from the book of Isaiah and then read the Lord’s prayer, urging us to listen carefully to the power of the words that Jesus taught us to pray.

With the shadow of death before us and the words of Jesus within us, we prayed. One young woman remembered this was the week three years ago when her mother died of cancer. Another remembered that it was this week last year when Boko Haram kidnapped 234 Nigerian school girls. I had just been reading a memoir about Liberia and realized it was 35 years ago this April that a coup d’etat unleashed decades of bloodshed and civil unrest. So we prayed for Liberia and friends who survived that war. We prayed for the Rwandan genocide that erupted on April 7, 1994.

Punctuated with a few prayers of thanksgiving, this prayer time became a litany to memorialize the April anniversaries of death and misery. After the prayers more lamentations kept flooding my mind–Rev. King’s assassination, the Boston marathon bombing, the Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres all occurred in April. During the prayers I said, “God, what is it about April?” A retired pastor told me later that April is the highest month for suicide, not winter when the days are darkest but in the spring as the light is returning.

It seems so cruel in April. At least in the northern hemisphere where I live, dogwoods are blooming, birds build nests and greens and yellows scream hallelujah. It’s a strange time to remember people tortured, suffering, and dead just as new life is bursting forth.

I am not the first to make this observation. TS Eliot wrote, “April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.”

It seems each April that the powers of death try again to claim victory and we are forced to remember and reclaim the power of the resurrection. I watch my friend from Cambodia hold her Bible and speak of her 40-year journey toward forgiveness, and I see Jesus’ nail-pierced hands in hers. I see another friend moving from death toward life because that is what her mother would have wanted, and I see Jesus drawing her close to his spear-pierced side. When we gather to pray as Jesus taught us, he joins us. We look upon the beauty of His face, shining brighter than the ugly face of death. Somehow, despair can turn to hope.

With wet eyes closed, we ended our time together with the words Jesus taught us to pray:

Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come; thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom
and the power
and the glory
forever and ever.
Amen.

We sat down to eat together, and the rain finally broke.

Jesus told his disciples “Don’t give that which is holy to the dogs, neither throw your pearls before the pigs, lest perhaps they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.”

The other day I had a conversation with a friend who questions the value of sharing writing on the internet. Why lay out tender matters of the heart in a place strewn with rude anonymous comments?

This was a hard conversation because I have been having the same thoughts lately. So many on-line forums smell like virtual pig sties. Would it be best for those who love Jesus to just stay away? Certainly, there are forums so toxic that they should be avoided altogether. One must be discerning about which conversations to join. However, I sometimes wonder if internet communication is toxic in and of itself. Without any apparent investment in one another’s lives, what motivation is there to be kind?

I have been told, “Just don’t read the comments, ” but I do it anyway. Inevitably, I am flooded with feelings of hatred, frustration, righteous indignation, hurt, and confusion at that which spews from the fingers of strangers to people who have dared to put their thoughts into words. Often not only the ideas but also the character of the writer or commenter are challenged and trampled. Insults are hurled. And I’m just describing the Christian websites. After reading some comments I walk away feeling angry and discouraged—and not just at what I have read. I also struggle with the feelings of rage I am tempted to express to strangers.

I don’t think I changed my friend’s mind, but I entered into this conversation with him hoping as much to convince myself that I am not just throwing words into a pit. I write to people. I am writing this to you, dear reader, because I know you are there on the other side of the screen, seeking truth. And I am asking, please, that we not let these screens become the muddy walls of our own self-made pig sties.

Are the raging fires of unfettered e-cruelty a refining fire that will burn away the dross or just the destructive fires of hell? Toughening up or giving up would only hasten our collective demise and give power to forces of evil.

Howard Thurman gave a series of talks in 1948 about a remedy to what he called the hounds of hell: fear, deception, and hate. That remedy which has not lost its potency is the love we see in Jesus Christ. Thurman’s speeches became the book Jesus and the Disinherited, which influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders to walk in love in the face of hate. Though Thurman was writing specifically about Jesus-centered, nonviolent resistance to racial oppression, I believe that his book has a prophetic word to the rise of hatefulness that has grown like wildfire on-line.

Thurman acknowledged that when we feed the dogs of fear, deception and hate, even in the face of extreme cruelty, our own souls are utterly destroyed. Christian love in action, which transcends our natural instincts, is a means of radical resistance and survival against those destructive forces.

In his chapter called “Hate, ” Thurman names the problem of “contact without fellowship.” For example, he describes white and black people interacting regularly while playing their expected roles of oppressed and oppressor while never really knowing one another. He goes on to say,

When we give the concept a wider application, it is clear that much of modern life is so impersonal that there is always opportunity for the seeds of hatred to grow unmolested. Where there are contacts devoid of genuine fellowship, such contacts stand in immediate candidacy for hatred.

On-line encounters with strangers can be natural invitations to hate.

Imagine the impact if, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we all refuse to accept that invitation?

Instead of hurling insults or allowing poisonous words to infect us, we can release the antidote: the strongest four letter word. Love.

Though we cannot nurture deep personal relationships with every internet contact, we can honor each encounter and choose fellowship. We can act like we belong to one another, like we believe that our eternity of fellowship with Jesus and one another begins today–because it does.

Jesus invites us to step out of our mucky pig sties and walk in the light—not of a glowing screen, but of the one who fashioned us in his image. We can look up from our screens and choose to love the people in our midst. We can see our own faces reflected back to us on our screens and pray for our enemies and ourselves. And if we have something to say, we can choose our words carefully.

Jesus offered the sweet pearl of his life and ministry and was mocked and tortured to the point of death on a cross. But he was not destroyed. I am assured that the same power that raised Christ from the dead can be at work in the words we choose.

Then, perhaps, someone seeking good news in this hateful world will dare to read even the comments and know that we are Christians by our love.

Tonight Kelly Ann Gissendaner will be executed in GA. The State Board of Pardons and Paroles denied her request for clemency. They looked at who she was not who she has become. Her friends and family have circulated a petition begging the governor that her life be spared. As of this morning the petition has 40, 000 signatures and it will be sent to his office. Tragically in Georgia, the governor does not have power to grant clemency to people facing execution. Only an intervention by the GA Supreme Court, courageous resistance by state employees, or Christ himself can change where this road is leading.

Georgia Forecast

for #KellyonMyMind

with thanks to Ray Charles

Her execution was postponed

due to snow and freezing rain.

The governor

has the power

to shut down roads and declare

a state of emergency.

God forbid there be an accident.

She asked another man

to kill for her,

and he did–

an awful crime.

Georgia will pay another man

to kill her,

and he may.

They say justice is blind.

Jesus

died for Kelly,

and she sees

like Saul

who was blinded

on that road.

He had done

such an awful thing

to Stephen.

Kelly’s friends and family

beg for mercy

from a governor

with no power

to block this road

and pray

to a God

who reminds us

that death

is not the final word.

Tonight roads

may be slippery

but safe enough

for business as usual.

just fog, the forecast says.

Maybe rain.

Feels like it’s raining all over the world.

The State of Georgia has set Tuesday, January 27 at 7pm as the execution date for Warren Hill.

Mr. Hill is a mentally disabled man who went to jail for life for shooting his girlfriend. He was sentenced to death after beating a fellow inmate to death.

In 2002 the US Supreme Court ruled in Atkins vs Virginia that it is unconstitutional to condemn mentally disabled people to die. Georgia plans to kill Hill anyway, claiming that his counsel has not proven his disability beyond a reasonable doubt.

Mr. Hill is not innocent, but psychologists have said that he seems to have the mental capacity of an eleven year-old child.

There is still hope in these final hours that his sentence could be commuted from death to life without the possibility of parole. That is not much better, but a life sentence has that one word—life—which makes all the difference.

For the past few months people in my community have been reading and passing around the book Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. Stevenson, who founded the Equal Justice Initiative, describes over two decades of his work as a lawyer for incarcerated death row inmates, children, women, and mentally disabled people who suffer greatly in the US criminal justice system. He is a powerful storyteller who not only reveals the humanity of people our society has condemned but also shares honestly about his own struggles while trying to defend them.

One of the most common defenses I have heard for the death penalty is, “What if someone killed a member of your family?” Just Mercy offers a response. Stevenson describes the horror of his own grandfather’s murder—a murder that could have left the author embittered and vengeful. Instead, he dared to wonder about the circumstances that could lead someone to become a murderer. Rather than seek vengeance, he is following the path of mercy.

In defending people who are guilty of murder Stevenson turns the question from, “Does this person deserve to die?” to “Do we have a right to kill?”

One of the stories that Stevenson describes is that of George Stinney, a fourteen year old boy who was killed by the state of South Carolina in 1944. He was accused of killing two young girls even though there was no evidence linking him to the crime. Stinney was so small that he had to sit on his own Bible to fit in the electric chair. For seventy years his family has suffered under the weight of this injustice. Just last month, Stinney was exonerated by a South Carolina judge.

Will a Georgia judge review Warren Hill’s case decades from now and say, “We should not have killed this man”? Why not show mercy now while the blood is still warm in his veins?

I would like to invite every person and especially every Christian who supports the death penalty or believes that our criminal justice system is fair for poor people and people of color to get together with a few other people to read and discuss the book Just Mercy. Allow yourself to read their stories and ask yourself, “Do we have a right to kill?”

I would like to invite all people of prayer to join me in praying for:

Warren Hill and his family.

The families of his two murder victims. (The family of his fellow inmate victim is not seeking Hill’s execution and has publicly urged the State of Georgia to show mercy.)

Warren Hill’s lawyer, who has been working for 17 years to preserve Hill’s life.

The people on the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles, who are discussing his case today; they have the power to commute his sentence from death to life.

The members of the United States Supreme Court, who have the power to intervene and insist that the State of Georgia not execute a mentally disabled person.

The prison guards, whose job it will be to serve Hill his last meal, strap him to a gurney and witness his death.

The journalists who will witness and report what they see.

The medical doctor who, in violation of the Hippocratic oath, will accept an undisclosed amount of money to inject an undisclosed dose of an undisclosed poison from an undisclosed source into Mr. Hill’s veins.

People who have been given a death sentence in Georgia and the rest of the world.

People who hunger for vengeance.

People who hunger for justice.

People of faith who ardently support capital punishment.

People of faith who ardently oppose capital punishment.

Lord, have mercy.

Christ, have mercy.

Amen.

Dorothy Day said, “The greatest challenge of the day is how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us.”

I ask my friend who is a recent immigrant why she doesn’t want to live in the big city anymore. Without enough English skills to carefully mask her thoughts she says to me, “I am so afraid of the big black guy.” She goes on to tell me about some of the traumatic encounters her friends and family had with some black neighbors on US city streets.

There is an awkward silence, while I stare at my hands, the same brown as hers. I am used to hearing people in polite conversation cover their fear of black men with words like “crime, ” “dangerous neighborhood, ” or “poverty.” But she is new to this country and language, so she just says what she means.

Hurt, yet strangely thankful for the bluntness of her words, I think about where to go with this conversation. There is no second guessing, no subtlety, no decoding the meaning of what she just said. Now that she has spoken her fear so directly to me, I have an opportunity to respond to her with the same directness. To remain silent would imply agreement. Had she never spoken, I wouldn’t have this opportunity. I am thankful for a chance to speak into her fear with love.

I say, “You are talking about my people. My father is a ‘big black guy, ’ I know I may not look like it to you, but I am a black person. People of all colors do many bad things; people of all colors do many good things.”

She leans in to me, grabs my hand, shakes her head and apologizes profusely. I tell her I am not mad at her, just sad that she felt that way and sad that those negative experiences shaped her thinking about black men in particular. I tell her I am hopeful that her thinking can change. I know this one conversation will not instantly erase her fears, but it is a start.

We start talking about our kids. She tells me about her kids’ school and her face lights up when she says, “Last year my son’s teacher was a black man and very good. Their principal too is a black man. He is very good.” She is speaking these positive words about positive black men in her family’s life to rewrite the negative file in her head. She might just be telling me what I want to hear. But it’s a start.

Deciding not to fear our neighbors takes work. Choosing to love people, even after negative experiences, does not come naturally. There is a great deal of work that must be done on all levels of society to build trust. Acknowledging and choosing not to live in fear is work that each of us can do, wherever we are.

I look at images of current national events and replay the negative files in my head, from history and personal experience, and it takes all the strength I can muster to say, “I will not fear the police.” Even as I write these words, I think, “Lord, have mercy. Let it be so.”

How can I say I will not fear the police when a little boy in Cleveland just a few months older than my son was shot and killed by the police while he played in the park? I remember the men, women and children who marched in Alabama, singing “We Are Not Afraid” even when dogs and fire hoses were brought out to scare them. Their courage gives me strength. Choosing not to act on our fears is a decision more than a feeling.

I say, “I will not fear my neighbors, even the police” because I hope and pray that people like my friend will have the courage to say, “I will not fear black men.” Even though her friends, survivors of war in their native country, were murdered and mugged by black men in America, I pray that they will live not live in fear.

I say, “Let’s love one another beyond our fears” because if we continue to be a people that live and react out of fear, there will be no end to violence.

In a recent interview with NPR, attorney Constance Rice spoke of her work to build trust between the LAPD and communities of color. She was overwhelmed by the number of police who confessed to her privately that they are afraid of black men. She acted more as therapist—listening, empathizing and encouraging police to move beyond their fear and go into a place where they are hated with an attitude of humility and love.

We may not all be able to agree on a workable definition of racism, but perhaps we need to shift the focus to fear. We all know how it feels to be afraid. Maybe those of us who want to follow Jesus, the one who came to rescue us from sin and death, will look for him in the eyes of the people we fear.

We may not all be able to march, give speeches, or rewrite legislation to enact the systemic transformation that is needed. But if we want a better society, one in which human dignity is honored, we can start listening to each other’s fears. On a friend’s living room couch, in a lunchroom, at church we could name our fears and pray for the courage to trust that God will move us to compassion and love even for our enemies, even when we feel afraid.

Be not afraid. God has spoken these words to his people throughout history through angels and dreams. From Genesis to Revelation. “fear not” is repeated. It’s not a suggestion; it’s a command

When Peggy Campolo was staying at home with her young kids, someone who didn’t quite understand the magnitude of the word “mom” asked what work she was doing. This is what she said:

I am socializing two homo sapiens into the dominant values of the Judeo Christian heritage in order that they may become instruments for the transformation of the social order according to the eschatological utopia planned by God from the beginning of creation!

These words were given to my husband and me by our premarital counselor to encourage and prepare us for the noble and humbling task, should we choose to accept it, that we call “Christian parenting.” I have kept Peggy’s words with me, and added to them the words of other moms and dads who try to keep perspective while in the trenches. Her statement reminds me that in our role as parents we are participating in a much bigger story of which God is the author.

We have only been at it for eleven years–twelve if you count pregnancy, which I sure do. But we have learned that parenting is a job that brings us to our knees. To our knees in prayer, yes, but also to crawl on the floor looking for lost shoes, to kneel by the toilet with morning sickness and sick kids or with a rag and bucket to wipe up what didn’t make it to the toilet. We’ve found ourselves on our knees after falling down hard while trying to teach a kid to roller skate and before one another to beg forgiveness for lost tempers and quick flying words. Back down to our knees again in prayer.

It is slowly dawning on us that no matter what happens to us or our kids, we will be parents for the rest of our lives. As our children assert their independence, make their own choices and begin to find their paths in life, we might as well invest in some quality knee pads.

Recently, Peggy and Tony’s grown son, Bart, has gotten some press for making it known that he has stepped out of Christianity into secular humanism. In his new role as a humanist chaplain at the University of Southern California, his job is to provide pastoral care for people who don’t believe in God but want to do good in the world.

When I first heard this news I felt sad because Bart brings so many gifts to the body of Christ and, like any amputation, it hurts that he is cut off from that body. I felt sad because what he had to say about prayer and spiritual warfare really influenced me and so many others. I wondered why he would step out of that shelter of faith.

But I also took heart knowing that Bart is still the same person: still a good friend and mentor to my old roommate who is a missionary, still encouraging and supporting people who want to work with the poor and still loving toward those of us who claim Jesus as Lord and savior. When I considered the alternative of him continuing to lead without conviction, my sadness, though still there, was mixed with admiration for his honesty.

What made me sadder was learning that some have taken Bart’s departure from Christianity as an opportunity to offer advice for Christian parents–specifically Christian parents in leadership—on how to keep their children in the fold.

If we are honest with ourselves, we all know families where some are atheists and some are deeply religious, where some are addicts and others are counselors, where some parents cannot believe while the children have rock solid faith. We also probably know people, maybe even people in leadership, who stopped believing a long time ago and are too afraid to speak it aloud for fear of rejection and alienation by their friends and family.

Despite all the conferences, books and trainings out there, faith and a relationship with Jesus are gifts that can be nurtured, but they cannot be formulaically reproduced.

As much as I long for every knee to bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, I know this cannot be forced–even upon our children.

I admire the values of safety, honesty and compassion evident within the Campolo’s family culture. Peggy and Tony have raised a son who feels close enough to his parents to be honest with them, is loyal and loving to his wife and kids, and cares deeply for the outcast and marginalized in society. Bart also has parents who show unconditional love even when they disagree and feel sad about his choice to no longer follow Jesus with them.

In his past and current work, Bart Campolo has indeed been an “instrument for the transformation of the social order.” It is entirely up to our sovereign God to determine the final judgment and outcome, but it seems like his parents have and are playing their part with amazing grace. This realization that God is in control is what brings me to my knees.

One evening when I was pretty unhappy with my daughter’s behavior, I placed my hand firmly on her head and prayed for her. I prayed that she would do what I wanted. She said to me, “Mama, I felt like you didn’t love me when you were praying for me.”

She was right. My anger and disappointment were on the surface, and I was using prayer as a way to exert power over her, not as a way to release both of our burdens into the capable, patient and loving hands of God. Her words brought me to my knees. I pray now that God would give me the grace to yield to his gentle will, not to force my children to yield to me. I pray that my kids would always feel loved and thus be able to receive and give the unsearchable love offered to us all through Jesus.

Could we be so filled with God’s amazing grace that we could extend it not only to our own flawed selves and children but to other parents and their children as well?