Monday, June 22, 2015

This may be all I have to say about that ...

I actually had a rather long post about the horrible murders in Charleston last week typed up and ready to go, but I don't know if I want to put it up.

Watching so many people wanting to use this nightmare of a terrorist attack on a people, a church, a city, a culture - for their own petty and small political agendas has just drawn me thin.

They don't know, they don't care, they aren't interested in what is really at stake. Maybe later this week I'll put that post up, but as a lot of it is about me, I'm just not comfortable doing that right now.

The below will have to do, and it does quite well.

For those who have been fetishistic chasing bits of cloth, hunks of metal, and the detritus of your own worldview - maybe I cannot explain the South of 2015, or at least my corner of it. For those who mean well but just are not from the South let me just say this; it isn't what you think, what Hollywood tells you it is, or what the people at the Kennedy School of Government postulate about it.

It simply isn't.

Today, I'm going to go somewhere I don't as much as I should. I've usually avoided more than passing mentions of religious beliefs as that is not the nature of this blog. Though as this blog is just me, it seeps out now and then.

Like all fallen men, my religious nature waxes and wanes. The last few years has been a waning phase, so my postings on the topic has been a bit thin.


Of all I've read and heard to inform myself since last Wednesday, and ideas I've thought to use to explain to others, nothing is better than the below, so I'll use that to share with you. 

I'm an evangelical, so the AME style isn't too far from my comfort zone - but even for high Anglicans, Jews, agnostics, pagans or even Unitarian-Universalists, you'll be fine ... please listen to it all.

If you don't or can't understand what is going on in Charleston - listen (especially the 6-9 min point) and open your mind and your heart. Things warm up at the 16-min point ... so keep at it.

Either way, for now I will let the Reverend Norvel Goff of the Emanuel AME Church of Charleston speak to you. I would also offer that you listen to Reverend John H. Gillison here first. 

My South; we're working on it.

No comments: