Passionately Embraced
It’s a few days into Lent, and it’s evening, and I am sitting down to eat dinner on the couch, and, against the norm when eating on the couch, I am not watching TV, because, as I said, it is Lent, and TV is one of the things I have given up. As I am not inclined to stare at the wall while eating, I search for something to read, and thus I find the Oprah produced, O magazine, which, though not generally an attractive reading option for me, has in this instance particular promise, as this issue features an interview with Steven Tyler, the lead singer of Aerosmith. When finished reading the article, which is located near the back of the magazine, I decide to read Oprah’s closing reflection where, not to my surprise, she talks about doing Transcendental Meditation with the citizens of a town called Fairfield in Iowa, where it is a natural part of civic culture. Anyways, in this reflection she talks about a recent challenge she issued to her readers to sum up their lives in six words, a challenge called “You In Six Words.” I am a sucker for these things, and consequently, I read the challenge, and the examples that various readers sent in, and I come across the following:
Love.
Death,
Emptiness:
Trauma,
Then Lama
After this, I read a brief blurb where the lady who wrote this Zen-like poem explains that she was traumatized by the death of her parents, and then set free from the trauma when a Buddhist Lama told her that she is not her trauma. Upon reading these words my heart pops with peace, and I start thinking, “Lord? Is this you??” And something like the following comes to mind, “You are not your sin. You are not your brokenness.”
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By the way my six words…
Passionately embraced by nail scarred hands
Wrote the following comment on March 12th, 2012 at 4:02 pm #
In the midst of considering something smarmy to write, it occurred to me that I could instead, simply write, as in free-style or a type of automatic writing. Now, I don’t mean automatic as in automagic, but rather that I would allow my thoughts to flow freely, and thereby provide an opportunity to express and explain.
Here for the past several days, I have been writing about politics in Alabama, my home state. And, as we’re told, “Super Tuesday” is tomorrow, and several Southern states will be holding their party primaries and some, their caucuses.
Since I was a youth – and I mean a very young boy – I have been interested in politics. To illustrate, I recollect when late, former Governor Wallace campaigned against Albert Brewer, which remains described to this day as the most vicious and vitriolic of any election in our nation’s history, bar none. Most folks know nothing of Wallace save racist opinions and actions which formerly motivated him. They do not know of his Christian conversion experience and resulting repentance, that he, of his own free will, went one evening to Dexter Avenue Baptist Church – the Montgomery church once pastored by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – and shared with the parishioners present how wrong he had been, and genuinely sought their forgiveness. They neither know that had he not genuinely succored their favor he would not have enjoyed their support for him as Alabama’s only four-term governor.
Few of these things make it into popular media. And many are wont to recollect his “stand in the school house door,” and his oft-played quote of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” statement made in 1963.
However, many neglect, or are simply ignorant of his epiphany, and his genuine Christian conversion experience.
Washington Post writer Carl T. Rowan interviewed the now-late former governor in 1991, and wrote that the “Wallace gave me a computer printout of the 1974 gubernatorial election returns, which show him getting a whopping majority of black votes, and he gave me a Birmingham News-University of Alabama poll indicating that 74 percent of blacks regarded him as “the best governor the state ever had.” He also talked about the politics of race across America, saying Ronald Reagan had used tactics of divisiveness to install “a tax structure that is the most crippling system in the country… . The rich got richer while the poor and the middle class didn’t get anything at all.”
George Wallace, Jr., the only son of George C. Wallace & Lurleen B. Wallace – our nation’s third and Alabama’s first female governor whom also died in office, a victim of cervical cancer – has written a story about his late father, entitled a href=”http://www.georgewallacejr.com/”>Governor George Wallace: The Man You Never Knew.
About his father he wrote “I realized as time passed that there was so much people did not know about my father and I wanted them to know. His life in many ways was a modern day Shakespearean drama as he experienced joy, pain, suffering, regrets, redemption, reconciliation, forgiveness and ultimately salvation. Of all his victories his greatest was his relationship with our Lord. During his last years as I would visit with him late into the evenings, he would tell me, “Son, I used to think politics was the most important thing in the world, but it is not. It is our relationship with the Lord.” He got it right, and he was at peace with it all.”
And so, how does all this relate to your entry?
There are a couple things I consider on how it relates. One, that conversion in our lives is clearly evident to others by the changes we make, and; Two, that Republicans are liars.
Okay. Not all Republicans. Just most of ’em.
But seriously, the second is a political observation, that “being about [our] Father’s business” entails many things, among them enacting law that assists in bringing about the practices of equity and justice. We are to occupy until He comes. And yes, that means not only Wall Street, but Main Street and K Street.