What is in a dream?

         Every January as the nation remembers the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. the “I Have a Dream” speech is invoked.  This image I captured at the MLK Memorial two years ago at cherry blossom time reminds me of that speech and of my life as a youth in a changing South.  The Civil Rights Movement was a time of breaking out of old paradigms and boldly entering new possibilities.

                                  

            My family moved from western Pennsylvania to central Florida in 1955.  For me it was a significant change in ways beyond the dislocation from family and friends.  I literally saw a different world.

            That is not to say that Greenville, Pennsylvania was a mecca of diversity.  It may have been, but I was not aware of it.  I am now much more aware of the fact that there were probably plenty of people from Eastern Europe, especially Poland, who lived and worked in the factories and mills that supported railroading.  Because they were my own racial identity I really never gave them any thought.  I am not aware that these folks were “segregated” to one side of the town or the other.  I do not think they were.  One could not tell by European sounding names because my ancestors were all German with names that defied spelling.  And there was only one “downtown”.

            My compass was the teaching in the Sunday School and from the pulpit of Zions’ Evangelical and Reformed Church.  Those teachings plus the attitude and teachings of my parents and my grandparents defined my outlook.  The usual Bible verses had priority:   “God so loved the world….”; “Do unto others as you would….”, “But the greatest of these is love”. 

            In 1955 my family made the move to Florida in order to escape the harsh winters of northwest Pennsylvania.  I still had my parents as a moral guidepost.  I still heard the same Bible verses in the Methodist Church where we made our spiritual home. 

            Yet the visual reality of my life was startling different.  In those days, Plant City (about 25 miles east of Tampa and  about 60 miles from what is now Disney World) was very much a southern town in Jim Crow America.  Yes, we stood up to sing Dixie as well as the National Anthem at football games.  All my schools were segregated.  In fact I never knew exactly where Marshall High School was located except that it was on the other side of the tracks.  I did not know the names of the black elementary schools or their junior high.  The black community lived a parallel life beyond the railroad lines that defined the history of this town.  In 1955 that is just how it was.

            And that is largely the way I grew to think about it – that is just how it was.  At the same time I had serious misgivings about that status quo.  My most vivid memory shortly after arriving in town was going to the five and dime store (McCrory’s) and wanting to get a drink of cold water.  And there, to my amazement, were two water coolers.  One had a sign on it that said “white” and the other “colored”.  I was one confused little girl.  What was this all about?  Why would there be separate drinking fountains?

            I learned quickly the many ways “separate” was enforced.  There were two entrances to the train station.  A black man would cross the street in order not to get in the way of a white person.  There is no doubt in my mind that I was the beneficiary of better equipped schools.  We sang our praises to God in separate churches.

            That last sentence became one of the truths that caused me to listen to the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. with  new understanding and with a deepening conviction that all I had absorbed in my early years was at stake because my blinders had shielded me from the realities of people’s lives. 

                             

Among the many things Dr. King said during his work around civil rights was:  "it is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o'clock on Sunday morning."  That was a “light bulb” statement for me.

            I knew then that the church could not and should not be complacent when persons are made to feel less than human.  At that time I longed for our churches to be places were blacks and whites worshipped together.  Now our churches remain largely segregated but an appreciation of the many varied ways we all experience God and find meaning in our worship makes that less a burden on my soul.  (Unless of course any of us fall under the illusion that our style of worship is the only acceptable or valid way to pray and praise.) 

            We continue with the dynamics formed through the tyranny of Jim Crow Laws.  But we also  now have the abuse and oppression and discrimination placed on people who faith is Muslim.  We have barriers being imagined along the Mexican-American Border to separate one part of our hemispheric land mass from another and to make our sisters and brothers “Other”.  We have categorizing of people because of the color of their skin or the sound of their names.  We are on the precipice of  glorifying a separate society.  That was not healthy years ago and it is not healthy now.

            To all those Bible stories  we internalized as children (the ones mentioned earlier) I would add a verse from the very first chapter of the very first book of the Bible – the book of Genesis:

So God created humankind in his image,

            in the image of God he created them;….

God saw everything he had made, and indeed, it was very good.

            What is in a dream?  Each of us can answer that in our own ways.  For Martin Luther King, Jr., in his speech the dream included justice and equality in these United States. 

            My dream is that we can finally and at long last realize each of us (every one of us) is made in the very image of God and that God considers that to be a good thing!  My dream is that we can begin to see and appreciate our differences yet not let our differences define us.  My dream is that we can finally and at long last join our God’s image together for the good of all God’s beloved sons and daughters.

Grace and Peace

Rev. C.