Again to our reality...

    Saturday night passed with little property damage and no deaths or serious injury.  Operating under the cover of an 8pm curfew, a massive force of national guard, highway patrol, Minneapolis Police and others restored order to the streets. The curfew meant that anyone on the streets was in violation of the law and subject to arrest. The discipline of the law enforcement personnel in avoiding inflicting injury or death meant that ware no violent acts to trigger a violent response. Enforcement personnel simply did not allow crowds to exist thus taking cover from those who would foment a riot.

      Friends Pastors Becky and Thomas von Fischer, wrote the following piece as their reaction to our troubles.  In their words....

To our family and friends,

Thanks to many of you for your calls, texts and emails of concern over the current maelstrom in our beloved city.

We are privileged to live out of harm's way ... at least for now.

Here's our reality

The police lynching of George Floyd took place one block from Calvary, where - as most of you know - Becky and I served as co-pastors for 13 years prior to our retirement in 2008.

These are our beloved people ... our beloved community.

We know the Cup Food store, outside where George died ... and the neighborhood - for decades, a challenging, troubled place.

But also a place where people have invested so much to make it a desirable place.  And with modest success.  

Over the past years we've seen a new, hope-filled energy ... new businesses ... new vitality.

Only to have this senseless murder again evoke immeasurable pain in our midst.

On top of the profound grief and loss we all feel from the pandemic, here we are bombarded with another tragic reality.

Tuesday, as people began to gather in the intersection outside Cup Foods, Becky walked over.  (I couldn't bring myself to go.)

Although the announced demonstration time was yet hours away, a huge crowd had already gathered.

It didn't take long for tears to fill her eyes as she wept for the city ... turned around and came home.

We're finding we have little to say to one another.  It's just hard. 

So much pain ... so much anger ... so much fear.

In the words of Hans Lee, the current pastor at Calvary: 

For generations, those in power have refused to address the white supremacy that is at the core of the Mpls. Police Dept.  This has caused pain and trauma among many, including people within our own community. Our emotions are all messed up as we witness the destruction of parts of the cities we love so dearly.  We feel the rage of the protesters (and we are the protesters), at the same time we lament the rage that too easily turns to violence, and we lament the mayhem caused by those who just don't care about our neighborhoods.... We pray for peace and a restful night, but we know in our heart of hearts that there will be no peace without justice. 

It begs us to cry out in the biblical tradition of lament. When God's people have found themselves in the midst of situations that make no sense, searching to understand what is going on, they have called out to God: "Why do you stand so far off, O Lord, and hide yourself in time of trouble."

Lament, we do ... out of pain ... out of confidence that God is listening.

  

Having been blessed to live much of our adult life in the African American communities - in Columbus, OH, south side of Chicago and now south Minneapolis - Becky and I have the experience of voices of many Black elders ... both those living and saints who have gone before us.

We hadn't thought much lately about Frederick Douglass.  But these words (from his speech on the 24th anniversary of emancipation in 1886) ring with new clarity.  Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

Ironically, these words were posted on the Facebook page of a small, white-owned restaurant nearby, badly damaged by rioters.

They know - as many of us in the city know - that we've been sitting on a ticking time bomb for a long time.

In the words of one of our Black pastor leaders, "Anyone who didn't see this coming wasn't paying attention."

Flashback to 50 years ago

Becky and I met and married in the late 1960s.  

Back then, Nightly News featured a double dose of violence: blood-drenched scenes from the battlefields of Viet Nam along with the urban battlefields of our burning cities.  

Martin Luther King's words rang true then ... still do.

Riots do not develop out of thin air.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.

As much as we invested our lives and work over the past decades dreaming and hoping that progress was being made, the brutal reminders continue: much unfinished business yet awaits us..... One of the vivid encounters caught on camera from a helicopter was of an African American activist, standing outside the Lake Street Target store as looters were coming out with arms full of stuff.  He hollered: "Hey... bro!  Really?!  What are you doing?"  At which point, one looter recognized the activist, put his loot down and walked away.

It will take integrity on all sides to begin the long, hard work of reconciliation.

Kyrie Eleison.

May the healing presence of the Spirit guide and bless us all.

Tom and Becky

Takk for alt,

Al

PS Both Lisa and Lars are members of Calvary.