While I was in Memphis, we went to the National Civil Rights Museum. The museum is located at the Lorraine Hotel where Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot. It was a haunting experience because the treatment of African-Americans in this country is a stain upon the church, a stain upon the nation that has billed itself to be a land of freedom from the start.

You cannot help but see people violently torn from their homes and stacked on slave ships to hear stories of their abuse to see white mobs violently tear non-violent protesters from lunch counters and think, “My God, what have we done? What are we still doing?” While there have been some improvements, it feels like prejudice has just evolved so it can stay alive. It’s taken different forms and scurried into different corners of our nation to survive.

The story of the museum mostly ends with the assassination of Dr. King and maybe that’s the point. Because that tragedy is not a crowning achievement. It’s this ugly truth that stares us in the fact that struggle for civil rights is still going on. April 4 in Memphis was not a triumphant period to that story but a lingering ellipses. What will happen next. What horror or progress will fill the next chapter?

The first thing that struck me was the disconnect between myself and the music. And I mean that it literally struck me. The bass drum was like a defibrillator. Even in the back, I felt its sound wave kick my heart. But I didn’t know the songs. And when you are in a room where it seems like everyone else knows every word deep in the marrow of their bones, but you don’t then it creates this immediate sense of alienation.

I don’t really know how people who lead worship week in and week out handle that. Because the last thing you want when someone comes into a place of worship is for them to feel like a stranger. That is going to happen but you want to minimize that foreignness. Perhaps it can’t be handled in that one week. There are songs at our church that I didn’t know when I first got here, but I have come to know and love them with time and connections to a community.

But that’s not where we were in that giant convention hall. That disconnect was there and it was not aided by the lead singer imploring us to “shout it out to God” no matter how good-natured his intent was. Sing it with all my heart? Dude, this is the first time I have ever heard this song. One of the things that I love about music is the way that it often pulls me closer to God in ways that words cannot do in as adequate a manner. Yet I think that because it can connect in such a deep way that music is even more frustrating when it doesn’t connect. When you feel like you’re repeatedly running into a brick wall.

Several years ago when my grandparents were about to go on a trip to the Mediterranean, my Grandma asked me if I wanted anything specific from the region. I knew the answer immediately. I wanted an icon. I spent five weeks in Greece and Italy on foreign study in college and always regretted not taking home one of these beautiful works of religious art. Is there a specific icon you want? she asked me. I thought for a moment. I wanted an icon where Jesus was teaching.

Sitting on the floor of my office (it's been a really, really long week even though it's only Wednesday), I see that icon my grandparents brought home from Greece hanging across the room. Jesus sits in a tree with a book of scripture open in his lap. His hands are open at his side, gesturing in conversation with the twelve disciples sitting around him. They listen rapt in attention, confused, awed, grasping at something that they don't quite understand.

I like Reformation Day. Probably more than a person should like Reformation Day. I've written Reformation Day carols. I used a Martin Luther bobblehead to talk in this past Sunday's communion meditation. At our youth Halloween party, I dressed up as the Wittenberg by way of Asgard Avenger Martin Lu-Thor. Yes, I like Reformation Day quite a bit.

It doesn't really have to do with fanboying over Luther. By all accounts, he was a highly unpleasant person to put it mildly. Most of my zeal comes from being a massive church history nerd and then running that through my slightly off-kilter way of looking at things. 

I really want to scream and swear at the top of my lungs because mass shootings are becoming routine in this country. We're horrified. We offer our thoughts and prayers. We go about our business. Then we do the same song and dance when the next tragedy occurs.

Horror, thoughts, and prayers are all appropriate responses to such madness. I don't question the sincerity to those reactions. And yet each time there is this narrative of "This has to stop!" But expressing horror, sending thoughts, and offering prayers are doing little to stand in the way of this swelling tide of death. 

Prayers are wonderful. Our church is having a prayer service on Wednesday and I am so thankful that is taking place. But prayers must be something that compel us to do something in this world

Introductory Note: I am presently residing on Writer's Block Island. The last couple of weeks have left me a bit emotionally and creatively spent. But I have been wanting publish something on this site for several days. Earlier I was going through an external hard drive that contains the soul of a since-deceased computer and found archives from my first years of blogging. And I noticed this one from 12 years ago today: September 21, 2005. I had not even been blogging for a month. So it is with great trepidation--and the reminder that this was 12 years ago--that I present this blog version of a #tbt. Please be kind.

I am sitting down to watch the season premiere of "Lost"--a recap of last season is currently on. I mentioned in an earlier post that this is my favorite show. Let me tell you a little about it:

Eight days ago, I woke up to a message that my Grandma had two brain aneurysms in the middle of the night. The next day I drove home to South Carolina and kept vigil in a hospital waiting room with my parents, Granddad, aunts, uncles, and other relatives as we hoped she would wake up. I returned to Nashville on Friday and Grandma passed away the next day. Tomorrow we will celebrate the life of Sharon Williams.

For days I have been trying to formulate the words that capture what losing her feels like and I can never grasp them. Emotionally I have been all over the map. I have cried. I have been okay. I have felt numb. And then I go through them all again. I don't know what to write about a woman who has always been there. I don't know this world without her and it feels sometimes like her absence will be akin to someone removing the color red from the world. I can imagine it, but it seems wrong.

Grandma was one of the most incredible, wonderful people I have ever known.

The three of us were rushing to the car in the rain. We were leaving the church later than I would have liked. EA was working late so I was staring down the barrel of getting the two of them to bed solo and they were wired. Then I heard the sound. A wailing siren. "Ugh," I said under my breath, but apparently loud enough for Jim to hear me. "Why did you say, 'Arrrrrrruuuuugggggghhhhh'?"

I probably should have thought a second before I answered. Jim can get a little skittish sometimes, but after work my mind wasn't in top gear. "You hear that noise? It's a tornado siren." Mild concern. "What does that mean?" Didn't think again. "It means someone has seen a tornado." More concern. "HERE?!" Crap, not one of my finer parenting moments. "No...probably some place further away, but it does mean we need to get home as quick as we can." This response was semi-satisfying, but Jim obviously had more questions.