I was doing some vacation coaching for some family members and was going through some old pictures of our trip to the Grand Canyon in 2006. The photos almost all suffered from an abundance in haze. It’s like the big dust storm in the air right now. The air blurred the background and kept things from being in sharp focus.
I applied some of the new digital tools that are available to me now. The picture on the right has had much of the haze removed. The colors are sharper and reflect what sunrise felt like to me on that cool morning. I remember it feeling so wonderful.
Removing the haze is necessary to see more clearly. I think our culture is in the process of lurching forward in race relations as more white people are ready to spend the time necessary to listen and hear the experience of black people in our country. Someone I don’t know stumbled on to my sermon of June 21. They wrote me a note. They said in part, “Recently, I was asked to be on a Racial Task Force group… As an "elderly" white woman, born in Hannibal, Missouri, but grew up in the Land of Lincoln across the river....I find myself on a committee knowing virtually nothing about the true struggles of Black Americans.”
She is trying to de-haze her pictures as am I. As much as I have read, as much as I have studied, I continue to be overwhelmed by the pain and suffering that the legacy of slavery has left in our world and the racists ideas that still lurk around in my soul. I assembled a reading list (here is a link to it again HERE). You could learn to use the new information and tools to see much more clearly and help lift our community up through understanding and compassion.
A group of pastors and lay leaders in Athens have started to meet. We are calling ourselves the Athens Race Taskforce. We are meeting weekly (social distancing and masks) and developing a strategic plan to help the city of Athens as it is developing a master plan. Our focus will be, “Improving race relations in Athens.” We are looking to create a multi-ethnic, multi-denominational, age and gender diverse group of about 40 people to study, pray, brainstorm, and formulate recommendations to bring to the city council. We would love your prayers as we try to cast a huge net in our city to involve people from all over our community and draw them into the process of making Athens the place God believes it can be.