Follow-up on a Day with Dad

After Dad and I made our tour of central Texas, where we saw not only hoards of goats and a few buffalo, but also a trio of elk behind a very tall fence, I traveled to NC for a few days.  Upon my return, I had about a week in Texas to get a few things done and prepare for a long stay in Durham to teach summer school at Shaw.  Yes, we did manage to get the university reopened for summer school, and I have two full classes.  We anticipate having the dormitories and dining hall reopened by the end of July in order to welcome back undergraduate students for the Fall 2011-12 semester.

Dad asked around and found a friend from church who was willing for us to get our rolling cart/shelf units using his pickup.  Moreover, having known my dad for some time through Sunday School class and other church activities, he decided to drive us himself.  He told me he couldn't think of much better than getting to spend a few hours with W. D. and hear him tell stories.

The drive was uneventful, and our friend was not disappointed.  All along the way, Dad would tell about a pastor whom he had known who served a church in the small town we were passing through, or about the time he preached a revival at a church on the side of the highway, or a funny story about a preacher or church in this or that town.  In fact, we worked Dad so hard that he started getting hoarse by the time we reached Huckabay, our destination for the furniture acquisition.  We took a slightly different route, and along the way we saw winter wheat and hay ready for harvest.

As I had judged earlier, the people at the Huckabay I. S. D. were very nice people.  If they got a laugh out of our last visit, no one let on.  Instead, the business manager apologized to me, as if her description of the units had not told me enough to save me from that first unsuccessful trip.  I reminded her that the auction listing did include the exact measurements, which I had failed to think through adequately.  It took only a couple of minutes to load both items into the truck and tie them down.  Then we were back on our way. 

We stopped again in Hico for lunch.  Dad and I had the blue plate special--meat loaf--which was excellent.  The dessert for the lunch special was "coconut pudding," basically a coconut merengue pie without any crust.  That's two pies I've tasted there--about fifteen or more to go. 

We got the furniture back home, letting Dad nap a bit while we told some of our own stories in the front seat.  I rolled them into the garage and piled them high with boxes, making a way to more easily move stuff around in the crowded garage.  That night, I moved another pile of boxes to get them out of my mom's way so that she would not have to deal with them while I was gone for a half the summer.  We also spent a couple of days getting her pantry and cabinets cleaned out and reorganized.  It was a busy and rewarding week.

The shelf units cost me a total of $16 at auction.  I suspect that equivalent units would cost $500 each, give or take a hundred dollars.  Even building them from scratch would take a long time and cost $100 or more in supplies.  They should be sturdy enough to do what we need.  Dad bought our friend lunch, and Mom cooked him dinner.  I bought him a tank of gas for about $80, making the total price of each unit $48 for me (I'm not counting the Day with Dad trip since we went to see Aunt Joyce.)  Considering the good times had by all, I would say we all came out very well.

From the Jubilee File--Hon. Rt. Rev. Dr. Willie James Jennings

I have a file buried several layers down in my Documents file on the laptop.  I have visited it often in the past two years to save or retrieve documents relating to community organizing work on the economy.  I named it when I was working on a theological reflection on the economic crisis with a group of colleagues.  Since so much of the biblical discussion of usury kept taking us back to the Jubilee practices of the Israelite society.  So I called the file "Jubilee."  A big part of my life and creative work for the past two years gets documented in the Jubilee file.

It's been a Jubilee year, and in the past few days I have been reminded to count my Jubilee blessings.  Willie James Jennings, my younger brother, turned 50 last Friday.  I was in Texas, fittingly grading papers, on the birthday of my brother in the professoriate.  I lift an analytical reading report in your honor, my brother, to toast your Jubilee Day.

Willie has worked as hard as anyone has to be my friend.  I take it that some of my professorial instincts and habits--absorption in private study, narrowly focused thinking, lack of awareness of the passing of time, occasional absent-mindedness (to put it lightly), aversion to being told what to do and when, being enamored by my own words--make it a bit harder to be my friend.  I hope I have other qualities that compensate.  But Willie thought it worth his time to keep a friendship going.

Although we met as students, it was after marching for graduation in 1994 that we stoked the fires of friendship.  Willie and I shared Saturday morning coffee for many weeks while our daughters (my youngest and his oldest) hopped and skipped and leaped with joy in the little kiddie's dance class.  We talked through some hard times and some good times.  He put a black man's mirror up for me to look at my white man's life in a racialized world.  I knew that something bigger than I could handle was happening to me.  I had no idea that he was finding in me some hope for the church's deliverance from its demons of malformed desire and imagination. 

I did not know this because as a scholar-friend, Willie kept his cards close to his chest.  I understand this a little better now that I've seen him in action recently on a panel to discuss his book, The Christian Imagination.  Some people in the gathering raised questions which begged for a polemical response.  They either did not understand his arguments from the book, or they just wanted to see if they could get a rise out of him. 

But Willie did not take the bait in his Jubilee year.  He generously referred to the antagonistic comments as "matters of deep importance," or something to that effect.  I was ready to pounce, but Willie gave his winning smile.   It may be that he was simply being political, having learned such skills as a faculty dean for so many years.  But I think it was also a commitment to listen and remain in a friendly conversation with people who are sure that he has gone off on a fool's errand.

This Jubilee year I was blessed to read The Christian Imagination with a class of Shaw students taking Systematic Theology.  As with J. Kameron Carter's Race, in reading Willie's book with my students I continuously found ways that it could challenge my previous theology lectures and supplement the textbooks with which I have become so familiar.  The Christian Imagination opened doors for me and for my students that made theology more alive. 

So often when we take theology to be the gleaned gems of a long [tired] tradition, we find it hard to get a lever on how Christian faith, its leaders, its institutions, and its social productions could become so corrupted and contrary to the ways of the one from whom they take their name.  Books like Willie's give us hope that theology does not have to be merely the crusty oozings from the cracked plaster walls lining the edifice of Euro-American World Domination.  Can there be life within those walls of ageless stone?  Could the academy have a heart of beating flesh?  Or are we destined to have hearts of stone?

So it is that in this Jubilee year, Willie opened the floodgates which had held back a deep lake of theological reflection, fed by mountain streams and woodland springs, flowing through the dark places of middle passage, bottom lands of enforced toil, and the hopeful self-direction of a Second Great Migration.  Along the way, a few droplets from the deeps had come my way, but the halls of Duke and Shaw, only thirty miles apart, are worlds away from one another.  If there were open conversations in Durham, I was out of that loop. 

Moreover, the fast scholarly pace of read, reduce, destroy that makes up hyperacademia is not on the menu at Shaw.  I don't mean to be "hatin' on" Duke, but they really are caught up in the university-military-industrial complex, on a high-speed train toward producing the next world, and the next, and the one after that.  Surely, Willie wisely let only a few droplets out so that when the flood arrived, it would be a season of reckoning.  Folks on the train would have to stop and get off if they were going to have a word to say about it.  He gave us far more in this Jubilee year than we could chew quickly, unless we want to choke on it.

So the back and forth clicking to the Jubilee folder was more than I realized.  In his year of Jubilee, my friend ripped open a place in my heart through which the Holy Spirit may shine to make me a better man than I was, burn away the malformations of desire, and kindle an imagination of another way of being Christian, of being a community that longs to know one another as God's bountiful creation and election.

Happy Jubilee, Willie.  Love that house full of women with all that you have in you.  And save a minute for me so we can plot the revolution.

Storm at Shaw University on April 16

It occurred to me that some of you may have heard about the tornadoes that swept across parts of the Midwest, South, and Southeast in the past two weeks, and particularly about a tornado that hit Raleigh and Shaw University's campus.  I was present and teaching on campus during that storm, so I am posting the report I gave to my dean about the events of that afternoon.

Hello, Dr. Grady, 

As you requested, I am sending you a narrative of the events of yesterday afternoon on the Shaw campus.  Around 1:30 pm, a student spoke with me about the anticipated storm and its effect on our schedule for divinity classes.  I told him my opinion, which was that we would be safer in the building than we would be out in our cars if a dangerous storm did hit.  I went online to WRAL and checked the live radar reports on the storm.  It was still in the Winston-Salem area at the time and not anticipated to arrive very soon. 

After meeting with a student until about 2:30 pm, I went to meet my class in room 302 of Leonard Hall.  I noted to the students that the attendance was low, and they responded that some students had stayed away because of the predicted storm.  I repeated my opinion that we would be safer in the building tan out in our cars.  We checked the radar, which I projected onto the wall.  It showed storms which would arrive in our area in the next hour or so.  Then we proceeded with class. 

With occasional checks out the window, we proceeded with classes.  Apparently, at least two other classes were meeting in the building.  Sometime near 4:00 pm, we noticed the storm becoming much more intense outside.  Within a brief period, several things happened to alert us.  A student received a phone call from his wife, reporting that the TV weather report was placing a serious storm approaching downtown Raleigh.  Another student whose laptop was online received a weather alert about severe weather approaching downtown Raleigh.  And I noticed that the scene outside the window had become a blur with objects moving horizontally and none of the usual buildings, trees, parking lot, etc., visible. 

I advised the students to come out of the classroom into the hallway between the classrooms.  About that time the electricity went out in the building.  I closed every classroom door so that there would be no direct line to a window from which flying glass might approach us.  Some students asked whether we should move to the central staircase.  Certainly, a lower floor would be better, but passage to the staircase would require moving into the hallway between the restrooms and the main building, and I thought passing through there would be unsafe.  I urged students into the short hallway of the classroom wing, and we waited while the building shook violently for some time. 

When the intense storm had passed, and light began to come from windows around the building again, we reentered the classroom.  The outer window had bowed inward but not broken.  Water and debris had entered the room, getting all over Michelle Outlaw's books, computer (a closed laptop that seemed to only get wet on the surface), papers, and bags.  Otherwise, the room was in the same condition as before.  There were no broken windows on the third floor.   Cornelius Atkinson checked the restroom and told me that there was considerable water damage in the men's room.  I later went to check and found that light was coming through from above the false ceiling and some ceiling tiles were broken or damaged.  The women's room also had damaged ceiling tiles. 

Students milled around, talked with one another, and made phone calls for a few minutes.  We had a prayer of thanksgiving led by Horace Mason, and then we began making our way out.  I looked around the building.  In the Lewis Lecture Hall, at least one window had bowed under pressure sending water and debris into the room.  Overall, no damage was visible there.  I did not check the second floor, although other classes may have been meeting there.  I checked all the Wiggins Library windows, and no water had come in through them.  I saw Dr. Greaux also scouting the building before he left. 

A number of students, Mrs. Goldston, and Dr. Brock continued to assist one another and check out conditions in the building and parking lot.  Dr. Walker-Barnes, her husband, and her son were in their car as the storm approached, and they drove to the Leonard Building for shelter.  Students went outside to find that their cars had been damaged by broken trees and flying debris.  Claudia Cofield had a very large dent in the driver's side of her car from a fallen tree.  Cornelius Anderson had a broken window.  James Collins had the rear hatch of his vehicle pulled open by the storm.  Other students had windows broken.  My raggedy old 1989 Corolla was untouched. 

A tree was blocking the entrance to the Leonard parking lot, so people had to drive over the curb and grass to exit to the road.  Some of us attempted to pull the tree out of the way, but it was intent on staying where it was.  Two oil tanks were pushed over by the wind.  Between the two doors at the end of the Duplex building there is a tank painted silver.  It was lying on its side.  As best I could tell, it is not currently in use and likely had no fuel in it.   Around the back of the Duplex another oil tank painted brick red had been knocked down and pulled around the AC unit and the back porch until it reached the limit of its fuel line going to the furnace.  I sniffed around and smelled a faint whiff of oil when I got right next to the fuel line.  I could see no obvious leak at any of the joints, valves, or pressure points. 

I attempted to report the roof leak and the oil tank to security numerous times, but the power outages prevented my getting through to them.  Sometime after 4:30 pm I left to return home.  A few students were working together to tape up their car windows.  Dr. Brock, showing his pastoral heart, was doing his best to take care of everyone that he could.  Mrs. Goldston was also still in the building.   

You spoke with me around 5:00 pm as I was driving home, and you took an oral report on these events.  At that time I brought these two matters of the roof and oil tank to your attention.  I have seen reports of the Fire Department inspecting the Shaw campus today, so these matters should be inventoried and resolved soon.  It still may be advisable for you to forward this information to persons in charge on campus. 

After seeing the damage to the cars outside, I was glad that I had advised students to stay in the building rather than risk driving through the storm.  Of course, none of us could have predicted that Shaw's buildings would be right in the path of such an intense storm.  Even so, all who were in the building were safe with no injuries. 

Submitted respectfully, 

Mike Broadway 

Lift Every Voice and Sing

Last weekend at the Shaw University graduation we sang, as always, "Lift Every Voice and Sing." Fore some time now, I have been able to sing this song without checking the printed words. When I first began teaching at Shaw in 1994, it was a song with which I was only vaguely familiar. At our convocations and commencements, roughly three times a year, I got practice singing this James Weldon Johnson anthem.

The words of this song have inspired many writers in Black studies. Various phrases have become book titles, such as "Lift every voice" or "Stony the road we trod." Singing it as a white man in the midst of people of African descent has certainly stirred reflection on the different point of view my skin color and heritage casts on the lyrics. No line more consistently stands out to me as being sung with a different meaning by me and the person next to me than, "We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered." White or black in the U.S., the generations have trodden a bloody path, but the relationship to the bloodshed is not the same. That's part of singing this song for me.

Shaw University is the place I learned to sing this song and learn its significance. The 2010 commencement is the last time I will sing it together with my colleagues at Shaw. I pray that what I have learned will continue to grow in me as I move on in my pilgrimage.

David Goatley Writes on Youth and the Church

Rev. Dr. David Goatley put his own thoughts together on the Lott Carey Youth Seminar that was held last week at Shaw University's campus in Raleigh, NC. I read the article on EthicsDaily.com. This article reveals Dr. Goatley's insight and commitment to the right kinds of priorities for keeping the church from becoming a museum of our past. Those of us who work with young people should be encouraged to know of his perspective.

Down on Today's Youth? Try Spending a Week with 500 of Them
David Emmanuel Goatley
Thursday, July 2, 2009 6:04 am
EthicsDaily.com

People who believe that young people are hopeless should have been with me June 20-26 at the 55th annual Lott Carey Youth Seminar on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C.

Nearly 500 youth and their advisors spent a week for missional learning, serving, worship and fellowship. One of the most beautiful sights in the world to me is coming across a bridge on campus in the evenings, seeing hundreds of young people who have gathered for this missional impact week in the quadrangle courtyard talking, playing and building relationships that sometimes last a lifetime. Each year I share with our youth seminar, I come away feeling that the world can be OK.




I remember feeling that way six or seven years ago when I was in Guyana with my then 10-year-old son. He accompanied my wife and me on one of my international mission assignments. He and two or three Guyanese youth went with me everywhere I went. They visited churches with me. They visited an Amerindian community that we had to reach via boat with me. They visited a Christian campground with me. They visited a hospital with me. They visited a rainforest with me. They worshipped God with me.

At the end of the assignment, I asked my son what was the difference between Guyanese and United States children. His response: "They play cricket, and we play baseball." I remember thinking, "Let's turn the world over to the kids who have not yet been corrupted by the grown-ups."

Our annual youth seminar is the major event in our International Youth Development work, where we help churches to nurture new generations of Christian leaders for the world. We believe that helping youth to learn through service is important to becoming a disciple of Jesus.

This year we included helping our young people to learn about advocacy – what it is, why it matters, why Christians must do advocacy along with ministries of mercy, and how they can make a difference. We included presentations from ONE, Genocide Intervention Network and NAACP College and Youth Division. We believe that connecting serving, learning, worship and fellowship is worth investing in for young people. It is hard work, but it is good work.

When my last youth director left to pursue other opportunities, we did not hire a replacement. The economy was rapidly turning downward, and we could not afford to pay someone fairly. Therefore, we divided the responsibilities, with me assuming my share of leadership.

I have had some of my colleagues look at me peculiarly because I am playing such an involved leadership role in our International Youth Development work. You see, I am the CEO. While I understand the arguments about good stewardship of time, why is it more important for the CEO to spend time with the adult leaders than with the youth leaders and youth leaders-in-the-making? Why should I spend time with potential donors and not with potential leaders?

Furthermore, I learn a lot from youth. How else can we learn to serve the present age unless adults take the time to listen and to seek understanding from youth? How else can we anticipate where the church needs to focus energy and invest resources unless we listen and learn from young people?

Last year, we arranged for many at our seminar to do some future planning for our organization. Wow! I had never heard adults dream how we can actually make a difference in any similar way. These young visionaries believe in the God who can do exceedingly abundantly beyond what we can ask or imagine.

Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Convention helps churches extend their Christian witness to the ends of the earth. Our youth seminar is the principle event in this area. It is worth serious personal investment of the CEO.

If we really believe that some of us plant, some of us water, and God gives the increase, perhaps more of our important leaders should invest more of our personal time and talent with the next generation of Christian leaders for the world. I do not know what the young people will get out of your time, but you will be better for it.

David Emmanuel Goatley is executive secretary-treasurer of the Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Convention.

Lott Carey Youth

This calm and clear morning on campus I found young people and their leaders gathering in small groups, walking from one location to another. The 55th Annual Lott Carey Youth Seminar is in mid-stride. The theme is "Empowering Youth to Impact the World." Along with mission opportunities, good preaching, recreation and fun, and devotionals, the seminar this year has allied with the ONE Campaign, the Genocide Intervention Network, and the NAACP to help young people understand the relationship between their following Jesus and their care for the people of the world.

Although the Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention is one of the smaller Baptist conventions, it's link to Shaw and our common history is very important. Named for Lott Carey, the first African American missionary to Africa, specifically to Liberia, this convention works to engage its member churches in a global vision of the gospel. Lott Carey was a former slave from theWilliamsburg area in Virginia.

Under the leadership of Rev. Dr. David Emmanuel Goatley, this convention has expanded its work and enlarged the opportunities for ministers and laypeople to engage in mission work. Moreover, this highly intelligent and devoted leader has played an important role among Baptists of all regions and ethnicity as the President of the North American Baptist Fellowship.

As I looked at the young people and their leaders on campus today, I was encouraged to hold fast to what I have never stopped believing: there is yet much work for Shaw University to do, and there are many partners and allies who are committed to making that happen. I know that is true of the faculty with whom I have conversations. Along with the Lott Carey and leaders and youth, we can see a better future for the poor in our neighborhoods, for African peoples, for war-torn lands in need of peace, for U. S. communities in need of reconciliation, for people everywhere who have not had access to education, and for Shaw University as a part of pursuing those tasks.

NC Lacrosse Owes a Debt to Jim Kirkley

I have a fond friendship with Jim Kirkley. We were occasional conversants when he was finishing his dissertation at Duke and I was just taking courses in the late 1980s. Then when I was entering the job market, thanks to Jim a job at Shaw University found me. Going on sixteen years later, as they say, the rest is history. During the time that we both taught undergraduates, I spoke with him most every day. Over the past few years, as our teaching paths do not cross so often, we try to catch up every now and then. And through the years I have learned to admire him as a teacher, a leader, a scholar, a minister, a father, and a coach.

When Jim started coaching lacrosse in North Carolina, there was not much of an organization. A few private schools were playing, and a few public schools in the Research Triangle were getting things going. I don't know the history that well, but I do know that he became the driving force in making lacrosse become a team sport in many cities and schools across the state.

An article in the Durham Herald-Sun recognized his achievements this week (the photo here was published with the article--Jim is the tall one on the right). He is retiring from coaching after seventeen years at Riverside High School in Durham. He has won state championships, helped students get athletic scholarships, and mentored other coaches, along with serving as commissioner of the NC High School Lacrosse Association. People like Jim help you know what it means to live a good life. I wish him the best in the new pursuits he will undertake.

Justice Everywhere Now, Always

Today on the campus of Shaw University, students from at least seven North Carolina colleges rallied to join their voices for justice in the legal system. The occasion for the rally was the September 20 protest against the treatment of six black high school students accused of attempted murder and aggravated assault against a white student at Jena High School in Jena, Louisiana. Rev. William Barber of the North Carolina NAACP spoke powerfully to the crowd, and he suggested the acronym for Jena that I used for the title of this entry.

The rally was not a call for ignoring any acts of violence which have been committed. It was a call for fair treatment of blacks and whites caught up in the same legal system. Numerous web sites and newspaper articles tell the story of the events which unfolded in Jena. Whites assaulted blacks in Jena during the period of unrest which followed the racist threat of nooses hung in a tree outside the high school, but district attorney Reed Walters brought no charges in those cases. But in this case against a group of blacks who beat a white boy, leaving minor injuries which allowed him to return to a school activity the same day, the district attorney brought charges of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and aggravated assault. Setting bonds very high for these students meant that they spent weeks and months in jail. The case bursts with examples of the unequal application of the law.

It is a case which has caught the attention of black students across the country. It has touched a nerve in their world. Many have friends who have been victims of legal injustices. Others fear what might happen to themselves. Primarily, they recognize that this widespread problem affecting African Americans long after the passage of the Civil Rights Acts must be challenged. As Jesse Jackson was widely quoted to have said, there is a Jena in every state of the United States.

Apparently, blogs and social networking sites became powerful tools in organizing the large protest in Jena on September 20, as well as many local events. It was only in the last week that the brewing protest was noticed by major news organizations. Prior to that, it was only a few news sources, such as the Chicago Tribune, the BBC, and NPR, to name some, which made note of what was happening in Louisiana. I tried to get local news coverage in Durham, but had to settle for writing my own Op/Ed article. So clearly some other form of information exchange and organizing made the difference.

Some used existing organizations, churches, and just plain word-of-mouth organizing. In Durham, a father named Kevin Williams became agitated by thinking about his own teen-aged son getting caught up in an unjust legal procedure. He became a leading organizer to bring attention, and ultimately busloads of North Carolinians, to Jena.

At Shaw, Dean of the Chapel Quincy Scott and his staff deserve praise for their work to facilitate the student rally. President Clarence G. Newsome and other administrators joined their support and presence to the event. Over half of the participants were Shaw students, but large contingents came from North Carolina Central University, Livingstone College, and St. Augustine's College. Other groups of students came from Elizabeth City State University, the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, and North Carolina State University. There were also Shaw alumni and other community members who joined in the event.

Well-deserved attention is finally being brought to this case. Recent developments seem promising. The bait and switch tactic of lodging a charge of attempted murder allowed Walters to bring underaged Mychal Bell's case into an adult court. After the trial started, the charge was reduced to a charge that did not justify taking Bell out of juvenile court. Yet the case was carried through, and Bell was convicted. The appeals court threw out the verdict on the grounds that it should never have been tried outside of the juvenile court. Charges have been reduced for the other youths who have not yet stood trial. Will the legal officials of Louisiana rein in this rogue prosecutor? Will the full story be told, rather than the abbreviated version which focuses only on the one event which led to these students' arrest?

Finally, we must remember the important early publicity given to this case by a couple of ministers. Eddie Thompson of Jena spoke frankly about racism in his town, at the same time acknowledging that it is not unique to Jena. Alan Bean of Texas worked hard to get the details of the case publicized.