Love in Action
Free to Love and be All God Created You to Be!
Lydia and Rudolf – Love Online Testimony
Fannie Lou Hamer – Love in the South
Born in 1917 to sharecroppers, Fannie Lou Hamer became a powerful civil rights icon and leader within the voting rights movement.
After attending a meeting led by civil rights activists James Forman and James Bevel, Hamer became outraged by the efforts to deny Black people the right to vote. She soon became a leader in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and in 1962, led 17 volunteers to vote at a courthouse in Indianola, Mississippi.
Throughout her life, Hamer quickly gained a national reputation. By 1964, she announced her candidacy for the Mississippi House of Representatives but was barred from the ballot.
At one point, frustrated by the lack of progress in the political sphere, Hamer created an economic strategy called a “pig bank,” providing Black farmers with free pigs to breed, raise, and slaughter. A year later, she launched the Freedom Farm Cooperative, buying up land for Black individuals to own and farm on. With the assistance of donors, she purchased 640 acres and launched a coop store, boutique, and sewing enterprise.
Fannie Lou Hamer died of breast cancer at age 59 and her legacy lives on today. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993.
Lydia and Rudolf – Love in the United States, England, and Germany
I enjoy reading these kinds of stories (posted above) but, as a pig farmer’s daughter, this one particularly caught my eye. Fannie Lou Hamer didn’t forget the black farming communities when she was in a position of power. Yay for farmers, I say, they’re looked down on in many, maybe most nations of our world and yet without them, we’d be starving. As for Hamer’s free pigs to black farmers . . .MLK said “It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.
Each nation has its own dark history and most of us really don’t like to be reminded of it especially if it affected generations still living – much too close for comfort. Personal sins and failures, family failures, community failures, national failure, we just don’t like talking about our sins or failures at all – I’m not pointing fingers. As we know, there are nations whose crimes go back centuries and if they’re anything like the British it feels so far removed from them they have either forgotten, or worse, simply haven’t heard about it.
It’s interesting to me that those of us who travel the world or live in another country, sometimes find that we bear the sins of our country of origin. Sometimes people think of our country’s sins when they meet us and hear our accents. We personally haven’t committed those crimes or made those dreadful laws but our nation, our government did. And it can make us squirm a bit when people mention it, and certainly as a Christian with the many awful things said and done in the name of Christianity, I represent, for some, those terrible things.
I’m reminded of some of Israel’s Prophets in the Bible who came in humility before God and begged forgiveness for their people’s sins. The prophets didn’t break the laws of God, they “didn’t do it” – the people of their nation did, but they still took it on themselves personally and came as a representative before the One whom they had offended, confessed and asked forgiveness. Shocking – hmm sounds a little bit like the kind of thing Jesus did, he took on our guilt, he took on our shame, and he wasn’t guilty. My human nature shrinks back from taking ownership of the wrong things I have done, never mind for the wrong done by others.
It’s all complex. But these are topics worth exploring and for those who say ‘these kinds of things are divisive’ I say in response, if we desire true peace, we must first wade through the awkward and talk about that elephant in the room. True peace isn’t obtained easily. It’s like everything else that is a success. It’s hard work, exhausting, it stretches, it’s a learning experience and learning things is hard. But we can do hard things.
I’m thinking of the Good News, Christians should share the whole story, the good AND the bad, because good news isn’t good news until we know the bad news. We have to talk about all of it, which includes the ugly before we get back to the beautiful. And so we need not always really shrink from speaking about the bad and hard parts of a story especially if we really desire genuine unity. Time and place are important things to consider of course, but nevertheless, I think we are unwise to dismiss the challenging parts of our world’s history, to simply “move on” while others remain stuck. If we can help someone else “move on” with us, by acknowledging our corporate or national or personal failures, the ripple effect of is enormous as we have seen from time to time throughout history. And the effects of not doing so, we have also seen, as ancient hurts rear their heads many, many, many generations later only to begin new wars and sew new horrors.
Many of us who believe in God and what he has accomplished for us through his son Jesus Christ, we believe, as silly as this sounds, that He is the answer to everything. That means we have to look at how Jesus lived his 33 years of life, at his death, at his resurrection and much more. This is the foundation for seeking peace, for doing justice and for loving mercy. Jesus took our sins which he did not commit, on himself, and as a result, his Father God turned his back on him, not us. He made peace with God for us. It’s worth noting that Jesus lived a perfect life, he lifted up the women in his day who were treated dreadfully, he had compassion on the despised, he was the champion of the poor and downcast, he turned the world upside down for all these people, for the burdened, for the weary, for the scared, for all who have nothing to give him in return, for the rejected, the outcasts, even those who have hurt others, for the enemy, for all these he came, for me, for you. It is to this life we have to look as we try to do the hard, painful, awkward things.
Divisive? These hard places are where Jesus Christ shines the brightest if we are willing to do what is necessary, to be wise and gracious and sensitive, to love mercy, AND to walk humbly with God as we do justice and try to live peaceably with all.
It’s in the OT book of Micah we find that command to ‘do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God’ (all three at the same time by the way, Lord help us) so I believe we are actually expected to enter hard conversations sometimes. I don’t personally believe we can bring Jesus to any table where past hurts are seen as part of the problem, without being willing to first hear the complaints and try to understand by putting ourselves in each other’s shoes. (Of course, we are, in recent years, dealing with the ‘cancel culture’ movement which doesn’t see the benefit of putting ourselves in others’ shoes, but I’m not going there because my post is already long enough).
Marrying a man who grew up in Germany under the rule of Hitler during the horrors of WW2, living in another country and looking back on my own has helped upend my entire thinking about so many things. The new experiences uncovered many blind spots – everyone has them – and it’s not a comfortable experience having them uncovered but it’s important. Other cultures can open our eyes to things we had never seen before and never could see without learning their stories. Friendships with those who don’t sound, look or live like us, who think differently from us, they each can increase our field of vision and help us see more of God as we learn to see his image in those around us.
These issues I’ve skirted around and touched on here aren’t easy, we all know that, but I think our way forward is laid out before us, a way through has already been forged by the example of Jesus Christ: the way of humility, the way of sacrifice, the extension of that costly forgiveness and the freedom and healing it brings. In all areas of our lives, such attitudes of mind and heart can bring bountiful harvests of eternal good. Ramblings done. Baby steps forward? Baby steps forward.