Child discipline the original nations' way

Child discipline the original nations’ way in Montana. July 1975. 

A thunderstorm was brooding over the Wolf Mountains off to the southwest that July evening of 1975. It was my first summer after a year of teaching children of the Testsestahse, the Cheyenne nation in Montana at Busby School. I had arrived at a field south of Lame Deer where lots of cars were parked around an open arbor with a pole in the center.

Ke’éehe (grandmother) of one of my students had invited me to a sun dance. I agreed to go with heavy questions on my mind. There were crises I barely weathered through my first year teaching in this formerly Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) boarding school. So many children in my elementary, middle school and even high school classes were undisciplined, wild, and uncontrollable through that year. I could not see a way through the new requirement that we teachers stop using consequences, not post rules, stop marching drills, and no longer make students recite “I will…”  to motivate them to learn or behave. This was the new policy of the new local school board. To my consternation, the administration supported it. The parents had cited years of abuse and mistreatment by BIA teachers and was determined to find a better direction grounded in their own way of child upbringing and discipline.

This was before the UN charter on the “rights of indigenous peoples.” But many of the Cheyenne nation, led by my friend Ted Risingsun, were tired of sovereignty loss over child upbringing, and successfully voted in a local school board. BIA teachers and administrators left. The loss of BIA oversight meant the loss of discipline for learning, as I and many colleagues saw it. I had no experience then of indigenous discipline training, nor could perceive any problem with the European caste expressions in Montana connected with race and color, blinding me then to see a better way to learn discipline.

One expression was that Cheyenne children were raised with latent immaturity.  I mistakenly agreed they just lacked parenting skills. Sometimes I heard words deprecating Cheyenne culture as the reason. Evidence I saw was that parents did not train children to obey. Even worse, as I saw it, children came to school with a nonchalant disability to obey a teacher's authority, learned at home. They grew up rebelling against many of the dominant culture’s ways. This was the cause, in my frame of mind, of the abominable rate of incarceration and alcoholism. It did set up frequent conflicts in my classroom, especially in middle school grades.

It took decades for me to see how wrong I was. And it remains a frontier of opportunity for re-inventing schooling among American first people’s families. Montana still lags in this awareness.

The sun dance “Ke’éehe” (grandmother) was seated on a folding chair in the light of the fire, near the dance arbor, as I approached.  She was already speaking slowly in Cheyenne. Her voice had a clarity and strength that amazed me, easily unencumbered by occasional low rumblings of thunder over the southwest hills.  I had no idea she had this voice. There were no microphones. There were many more children and adults together than I could image being quiet and actually listening, knowing the lack of discipline to listen demonstrated in school. Smaller children were seated in the grass, with elders on lawn chairs right behind them, and much of the crowd was gathered standing quietly behind this circle. How could young children remain quiet through these increasing flashes of lightening and louder thunder? Could I learn and practice some of this discipline in my classes and summer’s end?

My discomfort rose with the storm bearing down. Subconsciously I took a cue from the quiet confidence in the entire gathering that everyone and everything remained OK. There was already in my heart a sense of spiritual confidence at this time and place impinging on our reality there.
Mostly it was the discipline of the children to stay put, quiet, and attentive in apparent danger I sensed from the coming storm. Transfixed, I couldn’t move.

During that half hour or more she continued speaking, she did not raise her voice above the thunder.  Toward the end, with louder thunder claps she just stopped, patiently waiting until it was quiet again. Her rising and falling slow, careful speech in Cheyenne language drifted up and over into the darkening of the cloud and the descent of the sun. As a gentle breeze began moving, the dim outline of the arbor and pole brightened in pink light.  I turned around to look opposite the storm. The setting sun was lighting a spot of rising clouds ablaze in the sky above the east ridge. Those clouds built, and the first lightning and thunder began on the other side of our gathering. The light dimmed and went out. Thunder intensified. A few drops disturbed the dust under my feet, and immediately stopped. The storm regrouped and moved off farther east. Only then she announced "hinne ha'ena"  (that's it; completed). Immediately her learning circle dissipated and the dancers and drummers began the after-sunset ceremonies. The afterglow from the sunset broke through the remaining clouds in the west, and lit my path to my car. 

 

In Crow Agency School Public School 2004, many years later, I fell in love with teaching music with kids K through 5. It happened because I invited Evelyn Old Elk, and later her daughter Dora and friend Joy Brien, to come into my music classroom. Along with Ted Risingsun many years before, they taught what remains largely missing to this day in teacher education and inservice classes: the heritage way of child discipline among the Apsáalooke and Cheyenne. I was very slow to learn their respect for children’s learning, and how to invite their respect. 

 

Some parents and providers are joining in an online class, meeting once a week and with mentors through the week, with Lifeways North America. This is beginning March 3 to April 3 this spring. Most of the cost will be covered by a scholarship for people who are caring for or teaching Native American children in our area of Southern Montana. Look up Lifeways North America, and contact 406 665-5714 or graberdb@gmail.com


David Graber, January 15, 2021

"...one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

 

Every school morning beginning in the late 40’s until my retirement, I spoke these words in class. They still ring true to our vision as a nation, despite increasing division over the past few years. With the violent attack on our representative democracy by our own citizens on January 6, 2021, we need our leaders to ring them out again with us. But that’s not all we need from our elected leaders in Montana.

 

I heard the dirty yellow Plymouth drive up and honk. I walked over from my Bible school class with kids we hauled from North Gulfport to our church grounds. I still remember the driver’s angry gaze breaking through the early morning heat that Mississippi summer of 1965. He mumbled curses about human beings of color I prefer not to remember. I remember the words “pedophile ring” and “miscegenation going on here with our n…s.”  I told him “You must have driven in here by mistake.  I have no idea what you are talking about.”    “But you got N---s here!” I heard the shout as he drove off, spraying my legs with gravel.  Later we had another a bomb scare, also not unexpected, but still stressful in the political tension of the 60’s. I do remember thinking how powerful lies are when even a few people proliferate the outrage lies can generate.

 

But now, under the spell of digital media gone wild, we have a virtual flood of lies generating outrage between political enemies, inspired by enemy nations, motivating a rising militancy against our principles of law and order built on truth and our court system. We are losing and demeaning a judicial system among the best in the world. It’s vital importance is because in our nation, truth is not to be decided by a mob, by social media, or in the court of public opinion. Lies are to be confronted, and liars prosecuted to find truth. Without this tyranny looms.

 

Truth—legally speaking for our nation—is determined in a court of law. An allegation is brought forward. It must be supported by solid evidence, meeting legal requirements of validity. A judge examines the allegation and the evidence. If there is legally valid evidence to support an allegation, then the allegation is tried in a court of law. This is to guarantee any lawsuit allowed into court has legally certified evidence enough to follow through with the judicial process to determine truth.

 

Knowing that justice in the hands of humans inevitably will be imperfect sometime, our founding fathers created a process of appeals. This is because we all know that power corrupts, and we must always strive to protect citizens from an abusive government acting under the corruption of power.  When our President lost the election, he had every right to file lawsuits in state courts wherever his attorneys sensed rigging, errors, or outright fraud.  They did so, in 62 courts. None of the lawsuits, even in those states where Trump’s popularity was high, found adequate evidence to justify court action. The lawsuits were refused because factual evidence was missing. The president cannot legally overturn his loss in the election.

Joseph Goebbels, Nazi advisor to Hitler, is quoted as saying, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

 

Christians believe in a truth that stands outside of personal preference. That’s why our pledge includes the word “under God.” Satan, leader of the opposing spiritual realm, is the father of lies. Majority beliefs do not get us there. The false prophets of Israel outnumbered God’s prophet Elijah 450 to one, but Elijah was proven true in 1 Kings 18. To be under God means to seek truth, even when it’s costly

 

On January 6, thousands of protestors gathered in Washington D.C., fueled by a narrative that our national elections were rigged against the president. The lie was compounded by conspiracy theories fed on digital media. They invented lies of malicious dark powers, steeped in evils like pedophilia. They still are claiming this is at the helm of our Democratic party, falsely attacking real patriots for turning our nation into a socialist communist tyranny. Our powerful digital media, unhampered by normal human conversation, generated their toxic soundbites picked to be transmitted by Christian pastors, online preachers, pundits and TV commentators.  It has paved an unconceivable way in our nation to reject what “The People have spoken” last November. It has generated millions of dollars in profit from contributions to the Republican party, and to President Trump personally. And it defies and discredits the states’ power to elect our president, and to conduct a reasonable investigation when evidence of fraud warrants it.

 

Moments after the President declared falsely a landslide victory had been stolen, and told the crowd they can do something about it, they marched towards the Capitol. As citizens watched in horror, a group of extremists rose to the crest of the wave and broke violently into the center of our representative democracy, our capitol building, leaving death and destruction, the fruit of lies.

 

Defying the independent judiciary of the courts at our state capitols attacks the core of our democracy.  It’s astounding that most of our top elected Montana politicians continue such defiance. Senator Daines was asked about the President’s outrageous words encouraging the crowd on the way to the Capitol. He diverted to claim the upcoming 2^nd impeachment is the real source of outrage, and should be stopped. That bothers me, because truth is hidden and a lie remains in power.

 

What bothered me in Mississippi a half century ago bothers me now. Our Republican government officials refuse to acknowledge the current lie about our election. It’s the same refusal that allowed many in our congress to deny the constitutional authority of the states to affirm the election. The character assassination of our Bible School staff was totally false, and had a political agenda to say Black lives do not matter in our nation. Truth is truth. Our president’s 62 lawsuits examined in state courts settled it over and over.  Our American system of government of the people, by the people, and for the people is proven solid again. We the people can govern. But we need our Montana leaders to apply what patriotism they have, and uphold our American values of arriving at truth for this election. Our "Pledge of Allegiance" requires it.

Looking back to go forward

Controlling our Outrage

Again.   

Revised December 14, 2020

Not long ago we had in place more controls over the passionate emotion of outrage. We can return to these controls to resolve our polarity now.

The Creator blessed us humans with the shared emotion of outrage. Throughout our past, we used it to collectively to unite around real threats to ourselves and others of our kind. The emotion blessed us. Misused, it has cursed us. Jesus himself encountered it from before his birth, and charted his way, recorded in the Gospels of the Bible, to defeat threats of uncontrolled outrage and thrive together. It’s an easily missed part of the first Christmas story.

 

We are again in a time of uncontrolled outrage. We have been watching trusted people collecting power to eliminate others of our own kind. These are no longer dangers of a rogue bear or tiger bent on human flesh. It’s time to direct our attention against uncontrolled outrage against our own flesh and blood (see NPR’s podcast “The Hidden Brain,” from last week).

 

Following is a story from an acquaintance of mine. I first heard him tell this story decades ago. Last week I requested and he sent me his own words of this story.*

 

When I was a young boy, my grandfather, father, and I travelled some distance from our home community to go fishing at a spot ‘known only to my grandfather.’ Having driven as far as roads would take us, we got out of my grandfather’s old beater, and gathering our gear, set out on the trail toward this favourite fishing spot. We soon found ourselves in the middle of a deep, dark woods making our way along a narrow trail where, with each passing step, the way ahead and behind became less and less perceptible. On more than a few occasions I expressed my concern to my grandfather; each time he sought to reassure me.

 

Finally, unable to hold in my anxiety, fearful about what lay ahead of us, even more anxious that the way back would never again be found, I tugged frantically on my Grandfather’s arm. “Grandfather, Grandfather,” I cried out, “We’ll be lost! We’ll be lost!” Sensing the rising fear in me, my Grandfather knelt down, and after reassuring me more fully, taught me a lesson, one that has guided my thinking and actions from that day to this. In the mixture of languages that was his habit of speech, he told me that each new trail we take could seem like it leads along an uncertain path; the way back can seem unclear, obscured by the landscape. “But,” he said, “When you set out on a new trail, if you spend twice as much of your time looking over your shoulder at where you have come from as you do where you are going; if you fix the landmarks behind you in your mind the way they will appear to you when you turn to take the trail back, you will never become lost – you will always be able to find your way home.” 

 

That day my grandfather gave me the ability to find my way to and from all of the various destinations in life that would lie before me; all of which, as I set out on each new trail, were initially unknown. Contemporary societies – not just North American – are no longer used to looking at where they have come from. They are far more fixated on an as yet unknown and unknowable future – on what comes next. Rather than use the past to help determine where they are on the trail of life in relation to where they started, they plunge ahead, frequently blindly, expecting that the future will correct any mistakes they make in navigation.

 

How can we recover the good use of outrage, as felt by this child? Might this be a late night topic this holiday season? Join the conversation on my blog:

Greenwoodback40@blogspot.com

 

 

* Terry LeBlanc, a Mi’kmaq-Acadian, is founder and Director of NAIITS, An Indigenous Learning Community as well as adjunct professor at several Canadian and American seminaries. He holds a PhD in Theology and Anthropology from Asbury seminary. Terry has worked in a variety of roles equipping Indigenous people for leadership in their homes, communities and places of faith. Working with Elijah Harper at the Sacred Assembly in ’95 Terry co-authored the event’s “Reconciliation and Principles” documents. He is an award-winning author, speaker and professor, teaching about Indigenous peoples, cultures in context, anthropology, missions, and the church.  

 

Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2016 1

 

 

The following additional paragraphs have possible discussion points:

 

1.     We are peaking a centuries long trajectory of tyrants increasingly gaining power over other people. They have been building outrage against other human beings to the point of extermination. It’s a dangerous emotion even for a child as portrayed here. It was undermining his confidence in the most trusted adults in his life. The emotion blocked his normal ability to see evidence his father and grandfather were trustworthy. 

 

2.     Why didn’t they present his confused distrust with the facts? They knew he couldn’t see it by being corrected. That’s where we are now as a nation, with a sizable portion of our population unable to see evidence, unable to receive correction. And a sizeable portion of us believe this outrage-generated falsehood: “All we need to do is force the truth as a weapon against those who refuse to believe it, and our power over them will get them to believe truth again.” 

 

3.     Fortunately, we Americans have the world’s best judicial system­—the father and grandfather in the story—with a possible process to arrive at evidence-based truth. It allows acting on the truth more than trying to attack the lies. But it is a new for us, old for indigenous culture, way forward. 

 

4.     What steps can help us navigate away from the no-evidence outrage endangering our nation from both sides of our polarity? 

 

5.     What can help us past the outrage fanned by President Trump’s continued aggression against even victims in his own party? 

 

6.     How can we support the discredited professional Republicans who have found the courage to stay on the evidence track for the good of all of us? Are these not our real heroes: our police, teachers, healthcare providers, election workers and attorneys who help us access responsible, caring ways to grasp us lovingly, turn us around, and point us to truth that frees us from consequences of unregulated outrage? 

 

7.     How can we answer words of outrage with love, like Jesus did, and ignore the evidence-missing outrage still emanating from too much of our political, news, religious, and entertainment media.

 

 

A Thanksgiving Parallel

 

Wampanoag still fighting for their land and water 

written November 25, 2020

Disinformation and outright lies flooding our media have darkened our vision. Getting past Thanksgiving invites us through our fears directly into this darkness. We best can’t go around it, we gotta go through it. Just maybe, more of these leaders with courage can help us throught the darkness false fears many of us have taken for granted. It’s possible the branding of religious, racial, gender, economics, birthplace and ethnicity groups of real people as enemy can now be removed. The Bible can show us truth through these falsehoods by “whatever is true, whatever is honorable..” (read on, Philippians 4_8). Now is a good time, after Thanksgiving, for truth to take us through the darkness of our lies about pandemics and politics, guided by the light Jesus gave us.

 

The Wampanoag nation’s elders and the documents of that history offer us  a historical example of this truth. This is the nation who first hosted the pilgrims (look up Patriot Pledge 2020/11/25/ National Day Mourning). After they disembarked bad things happened. There was a brief sharing of food and celebration. It will not be obscured for us by finding the evidence in the darkness. It’s true a small nation of some 40,000 citizens mostly perished from a combination of a pandemic and bloodshed from gunfire. But there were hundreds of survivors, unlike the report in some of our children’s history books that this nation went extinct (See Time Magazine “Wampanoag First Thanksgiving”).

 

Historical revisionism was almost inevitable as settlers arrived on our shores. Yes they were fleeing slavery and mass extermination. There were real reasons for fleeing to the New World. President Roosevelt did want to honor and update this national holiday in 1941, celebrating the welcome by those who hosted the Pilgrims as honored guests. But the tragic truth of what happened, the words actually spoken and written down as well as documents from the time, are now supported more by teachers in our schools and elders in our families. These good people know a right time to give children access to this real evidence, when they are ready. And the process is healing.  

 

The 400-year-old story is long, and difficult. The present story of our pandemic and increasing violence could now repeat the original Thanksgiving history of pandemic and war. We can grow in strength nationally from the pain of the truth of the first Thanksgiving. Will there be a similar truth behind our nation’s covid19, and its continuation into the next months or years? The greatest benefit would come as we discipline ourselves to the pain of truth-telling and hearing, and change our behavior accordingly as we are able.

 

The Wampanoag people believed a logical lie. The sound of gunfire had to be the cause of their deaths. The closer they were, the more immediate and bloody their death.  With no projectile visible, people died when close, and much later when far. No wonder it took generations.

 

Their pandemic spread, along with the gunfire, and 80% and more of the nation’s towns and villages had been wiped out already by the first Thanksgiving (see Wikipedia, or the Times article on Day of Mourning Thanksgiving) It appeared to many that the whole nation perished as the Indian wars, guns against spears and arrows, raged on. But hundreds had fled, and survived to keep their nation alive. These are the remnant tragically threatened again by our pandemic and by land seizure by our politicians.

 

After 400 years the Wampanoag are still fighting for their land and lives. In late March, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced proposed termination of 321 acres of tribal land in Mashpee and Taunton, Mass., to lose reservation status because the tribe supposedly didn’t meet the definition of Indian. In June, a federal judge described this decision “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and contrary to law,” and the matter is not resolved. The tribe awaits Interior’s new decision, and is hoping for permanent protection through an act of Congress.

 

A parallel history of hidden truth is becoming accessible to our Montana students and their teachers, and to the Wampanoag in Massachusetts.  This is now:

1)    Covid19 is in fact extremely dangerous.  We can learn from our epidemics in the past if we stop the blaming and get to work.

2)    Wear a mask. The fabric of even the best filters cannot prevent virus transmission when we must mix with those outside our family circle. But a mask properly worn, with proper ambient ventilation, drastically reduces the catching of each other’s breath! It’s in the air we share.

3)    Base our kids’ learning upon our families, not on our factory culture curriculum. Our schooling loss and our covid transmission can be stopped simultaneously. But it takes a huge change to recover trust for our 5,000 year-old outcomes-based learning unit: the family pod, its circle of security, the learning circle it encloses, with cross-generation engagement in real life needs. See The  Atlantic article, “School Wasn’t So Great Before Covid,” November 2020.

4)    And prayer changes things. There’s real evidence. Mostly God changes our own hearts. Let’s welcome some change, it’s part of living life.  Christmas is coming.

 

 

Parting our Covid Cloud

 

Written November 18, 2020

Our human need is relationship. All of us agree on this

 

But do we agree it's key to our covid cloud needing parting?  Covid clouds our capacity to know and respond successfully to each other. It’s a job to build the courage to care and respond around the constrictions, mandates, and yes, legitimate fears.

 

What can we do when we must have a mask? We still have our eyes. They talk too. And we still have our voice. Many young children not easily heard need help realizing they can actually be heard through a mask. Our eyes, our hands and our voice can reach past a mask. Physical distancing makes it harder to hear and touch, but when the attempt is seen it counts too.  Most of us don’t like stopping our voices in fear our larynx might slew out a virus cloud against a loved one.  Most of us can be asymptomatic super-spreaders like this. It all assumes physical presence.

 

Enter the digital age. Can this be a gift to part our covid cloud? We need to thank our caregivers who often focus on our shared technology to connect with loved ones in case of exposure or a positive test. It is not a diversion from health care. It’s at the heart of our loved ones’ capacity to survive an infection.

 

All of us can prepare for the possibility of isolation. We can be sure phone numbers are updated and working. We can practice active face video so we know how to see and respond with faces unmasked.  We can ask hospital caregivers to help our family elders make our digital connections work–and thank God we have this option.  

 

What’s not widely known is that loss of human responsive relationships almost certainly will damage human health, mentally and physically, and interfere with recovery. Medical schools now train integrating physical medicine with the spiritual and relational, a practice deeply centered in the heritages of indigenous people here in Montana. All of us have a generations-old heritage of valuing mutually responsive relationship with children. We now have an urgent need to understand how.

 

The Adverse Childhood Experiences study helps.  In 2014, retired, I responded to an ad to attend a conference in Billings with Center for Disease Control epidemiologist Dr. Rob Anda. I signed up and took two additional training sessions with his training group in Montana the next two years, and was certified a master trainer. This is where I learned the often ignored importance of responsive relationship in children’s development.  I thought it was enought to get children's responses to me. I had no idea this needs balance with response to them. Now I know this extends to elders as well, and to all family members. And after this past week of funerals, visits, and phone calls with best friends and family members ill with covid, I thought of this training. It changed my mind, and charts a way forward with covid.

 

I always knew the fun of mutually responsive interaction.  I enjoyed my kids; building and crashing block towers, peekaboo, playing catch, learning to dance or drum with our adopted family–when I had time. Now I know that learning and doing things back an forth, exchanging giving and recieving responses, is really fun work. In younger children it is essential to develop the executive function of the human mind.  Skills needed to do things, skills being with family to cooperate, care and share, all help children grow strong, and builds capacity their capacity to heal and grow through life.

 

But most important is the science-based fact that we need mutually responsive physical interaction through life. We all were born in an experience of trauma. We reached for and found human response beginning with our mother. Now when older, more vulnerable to covid, when connections like these are clouded, we need the same deliverance we found at our birth. Again we all need games, even the World Series, and being face-to-face in real time even if it must be digital screens.  It’s not “just for fun.” It’s where the Divine is present in the human realm. It’s why our religious practices are so important. We know God responds to us, and we know it best when humans do too.  In joining in religious practices together, even online, we are parting the confusion of the covid cloud.  God gifts us to see and cherish our human relationships as He did in the story of Jesus. Let’s join more in parting the covid cloud here.

 

Fanning the Tiny Flame of Truth

 

 

–Against incendiary disinformation, conspiracy theories, and character assassination.

 

The most dangerous of the growing American disinformation business tells us not to trust our elections. We could be on the road to losing our democracy, and moving into repeating the chaos and destruction of the race riots of the 60’s.

 

I was there then, immersed in our civil rights revolution voter rights drives in the south. I was too young a college student to grasp the impact of the death and destruction I saw then.

 

I met pastors in tears sorting through the ashes of burned church buildings, in Black and Choctaw communities. I saw the gaping hole in a pond dam along a lonely piney woods road between Philadelphia and Meridian, Mississippi. That’s where three bodies were excavated a week earlier, when I passed by in 1965.

 

Shortly before that, I was with a young man at his college dorm over spring break, the first black student allowed at Mississippi State University. He was still grieved with the loss of his brother, one of three demonstrators tortured, murdered and buried by a bulldozer in that dam.

 

One early December morning before then, in Canton, Mississippi, I parked my ’51 Studebaker convertible in front of the only open eatery I could find after driving all night. I ordered my egg sandwich at the bar and was going to eat it there. The only other patrons were three middle age men at a table in the Northeast corner.

 

I didn’t know why they glared at me.  Much later I realized they likely saw my Iowa plates.  “What the h--- are you doing here, Yankee boy?” The fat grey-haired one got my attention.  

 

“I’m hungry, looks like the only place open.” 

 

“Where do you think you goin?” 

 

“Visit my girlfriend’s family for Christmas, at Gulfport.”

 

“We don’t want Yankee n____ lovers helping Martin Lucifer Coon stir up our n____s  here. You wouldn’t happen to know him?”  

 

“No, I never heard the name.”

 

“Some folks call him ‘Dr. Martin Luther King.”

 

“O yeah, he does demonstrations, right?” I answered, and then he responded with a volley of anti-Communist  and anti-demonstrator rants unwritable. 

 

I grunted a thanks for the education, wrapped my sandwich in a paper napkin, paid my bill, grabbed my coffee in a paper cup to go, and headed for the door. Their last words were scant comfort, 

 

“You’ll be OK if you don’t git mixed up with our n___’s, …and stay away from that ‘coon fella! Have a good trip.”

 

I tried not to run to my car, closed the door and headed out, With one hand on the wheel and the other with my sandwich and coffee, I kept looking for that white rusty pickup I parked beside, the only vehicle there when I arrived. My coffee spilled. Gradually, I quit looking in my rear view mirror and finished my egg sandwich, and tried to think clearly.

 

Hours later, arriving in Gulfport, I was fortunate to have time for reflection with my family-to-be there.

 

I still remember pondering this with them, after my first serious white supremacy encounter. They had decades of experience with this. How could human beings come to believe any group of human beings is any less than fully human, any less worthy of respect by others? 

 

Start toward the answer: they didn’t choose that belief. It comes from kings, and the way kings get their subjects' loyalty, and willingness to shed blood to defend their king.

 

Our nation’s founders did not want a king. They choose the ballot over the bullet, a spiritual war over a war of flesh and blood. The result has been elections for a president, and more recently a presidential term limit. We now have safeguards to make sure our president does not aspire to kingly power. Until recently, the whole world looked up to our election system with its protections against abuse and fraud. Here’s some facts:

 

1.     Most nations of the world have shown their respect for our tradition by quickly endorsing Biden’s election.

2.     Our current lame-duck president, using language I heard from white supremacists in the 60’s opposing black voter rights, repeated offensive language with claims our election for Joe Biden was “rigged, fake and wrong.”

3.     Last week our free press, another long-time credible institution of our nation, reported that 60% of all Republicans believe our lame-duck president: the election was falsely won by Joe Biden, and should be overturned.

4.     Even the mismatched signature controversy in black majority counties in Georgia, leading to talk of throwing out an entire black-majority county's ballots–voter suppression itself, can come nowhere near overturning the strong results currently electing Joe Biden as our president.

 

We need a caution: Our lame-duck president is not alone a major threat to our democracy and strength as a nation. Nor are our many friends who in fear of law and order breakdown are arming themselves to protect their families. The most danger comes from leaders who have gained enormous trust of one side, and hatred of the other. We are in danger because almost none of our national leaders are respected by both sides.  It’s almost impossible to find them on TV or internet. 

 

But they are with us, yes! They are here in our own towns and countryside. These are the ones who, with skillful listening to both sides, use respectful language to probe into a better understanding of the root of our prevailing fears.  Our popular pundits, politicians, and preachers on the media do not hear them. They have the power here in our towns and countryside because they have respect across our crazy polarity. We need their words now, to help unmask the beautiful truth under horrific portrayals cast against our American armed militia members, American Muslims, American white supremacists, racists, Chinese, Black activists, etc. etc. These leaders are the ones with power to empower troubled people with words respectful of real people on both sides of this irrational polarity. 

 

In this process lies the true strength of our nation. This is our truly American culture of democratic and Christian strength. Grasp it to listen and understand the other side, and build respect. This is the core defense against the current lurch toward civil unrest, disrespect, or even widespread breakdown of law and order.

 

It happened in the 60’s death, destruction, and breakdown of law and order. We as a nation just didn’t keep on keeping on then. Eighty years later we again have a beautiful challenge: pursue our God-given destiny as members of the human race, “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.”

 

 

Lets keep on keeping on FTFT:

 

IN OUR many wars after our revolution, we have been on an unwitting trek to understanding that humans over other humans is not only against God and the Bible, it’s against the very fabric of human love and relationship God intended from creation. The nationwide angry polarity in health and politics needs us all to quiet down and listen. Only with patience can a few of our politicians and preachers come out from behind the Bible and God and speak the truth of the lies of supremacy plaguing our nation. There is truth. It's here in our towns and countryside. Some of our religious and political leaders here are finding the courage to speak it. It’s a good time to do so. The latest loud lie is apparently (the news says so) believed by some 70% of Republicans (all over the news) came out this past weekend: “The election was rigged, and false. I am still president.”

 

Unfortunately, our supremacy cults have renewed energy, and many more adherents among our citizenry.  In spite of obscene language and aggressive threats couched in supremacy humor, these people are to be respected. That doesn’t mean we should respect the slogans and ideas of supremacy hiding as the invisible elephant in the joined rooms of our pandemic and our violent protests. We need to name the incitement of citizen against citizen, pro-lifers against abortionists, socialists vs patriot militias, as unpatriotic, unchristian, idiotic behavior. We need to remove the misuse of our Bible, our God, slogans like pro-life, anti-socialist, and family values to see the vile truth behind the propagation of these words. Those wanting a fight to the death over supremacy, using these good terms falsely with evil intent, have wreaked enough destruction on our nation’s families and homes over the past centuries. We can, as a nation, be led away from what appears to be looming as another historical fight to the death weakening our nation and our families’ ability to thrive.

 

We can agree truth can stop our drift toward polarization leading to violence gain. Of course, we Christians all believe Jesus is the Truth.  His Truth must mean that respectful words, humble acts and real evidence are also sacred. Jesus had courage to stack his disciple band with both sides. He and St. Paul both attacked their politicians’ ideas about truth being relative, and opposed the violence of both sides in the Jewish wars of the first centuries. That’s when both sides joined in his execution (See the Bible, the four Gospels).The truth of what really happened to Jesus in his polarized worlds is now impinging on us again.

 

We need pastors and leaders to direct us toward the truth Jesus taught. Our pandemic and our systemic racism can only be healed as folks with power (religious, political and business leaders), do three things:

1)    stop hiding evidence,

2)    stop pretending there is equal truth to every side of the many disinformation and conspiracy theory voices sowing hatred for real groups of human beings.

3)    Stop joining the crowds now rushing to buy guns for fear of demonstrators and/or for fear of white supremacists.

 

As in the 60’s, and farther back in the 1780’s, there were both white and black people afraid of people with guns. From the 60’s to now the polarized worlds of demonstrators and that of right wing militants are priming for an escalation in violence in America. In 1780’s it was black slaves getting guns to rebel against rape and breakup of slave families in their homes. We today forgot that the primary reason for the 2^nd amendment’s ratification was to protect white families against slave rebellion in Virginia (Carl Bogus, U.C. Davis Law Review 309 1998). That protection took the form of independent “well organized militias,” organized for the specified purpose of quelling slave rebellions. On one side, white supremacists feared abolitionist federalists, who could send the federal army into the south to disarm the militias. On the other were mothers and fathers who wanted to protect their families from kidnap, rape, and slave trafficking. Both sides got guns, and our 2^nd amendment’s ratification arguably extended the carnage of polarized separate worlds from then into the civil war a hundred years later. Will we repeat our history again? 

 

For us now, the right wing is responsible for highest spike in gun purchasing our nation has known, over a million last April. Recently the left is beginning to buy up guns and ammo too (see Politico, October 25). The new news is it’s just about as many Democrats as Republicans buying guns. How will we avoid a civil war?

 

Our religious leaders would do well to follow folks like Bonhoeffer in Germany during the holocaust. Make room by ending right wing Christian media preachers, politicians and pundits with alternative theology fanning flames of fear and hatred against Muslims, Democrats, Planned Parenthood and Black lives matter extremists.

 

People right here in our towns have the courage to speak truth instead of remaining silent. Our folks know truth: it’s patriotic to trust our election system, proven again this November to be the best in the world. We have pride rights to our American Democracy. It’s also patriotic to trust our oldest, most respected media resources and tradition of journalism, especially when not loyal to powerful politicians. We must use that trust, or we will lose it. It takes our respected truth-tellers here in Big Horn County to come out of silence.

 

It’s a dangerous time for us to forget or ignore our history. Like then, we need Jesus now. His way is that eternal flame of truth that gets tiny, even goes underground, but is always available with persistent constant respect for others of our species' rights to exist and to be free.

Jesus, Law and Order

 Jesus, law and order

 

The fake politics behind this rallying cry killed Jesus. Our politicians are again returning to this time-worn phrase, to again provoke violence, which can be met with greater violence, which can again prove the threat of political/military authority over subjects for peace and security. For us, it started with King George citing law and order against his subjects in our colonies. See “The Double Standard of the American Riot,” The Atlantic, June 2, where John Adams is quoted having told the British—“We won’t be their Negroes.” Although increasing violent responses to peaceful demonstration often brings the oppressed into violence, it's false history to say this is the only way. 

.  

Can we learn from our history? How can we step off the trajectory we are on that could lead to civil war after our elections 2020? Where is God wanting to lead us? This is a time for every religious person to pray hard, and seek God’s help to find true stories of our fellow humans finding security following Jesus’ way. Here is mine.

 

I was in Chicago during the reign of Boss Mayor Daly with Curtis Burrell, my college roommate in 1963. He had been a safe cracker for a street gang in Chicago in the late 50’s. He spent two years in the Cook County Jail, where a pastor with a prison ministry led him to accept Jesus as his Savior. The greatest miracle was finding a more powerful response to the pervading violence in his childhood. That was the peace of Christ, not accessible by guns and violence. He became allied with Christian activists for the poor in Chicago. He decided at age 24 to totally set aside his violent past for a college education. He came to the Christian college I attended.  

 

Curtis and I were striking opposites. I was a pale-face150 lb farm boy with almost no exposure to the urban Black culture of  Curtis’ childhood. He was over 6 feet tall, over 240 lbs, and his exceptionally dark black skin stood him apart if not his stature. I was wakened most mornings at end of his 50 pushups on, when he jumped his torso with his finger tips to clap hands between each of the last 10 pushups. I learned to accept that as his mental fitness exercise, not a reversion to his violent past.

 

Being a felon, he could not get a drivers license.  I had my Dad’s car, only for transportation to and from college. When Dr. King came to speak at a nearby college, he was despondent I had agreed with my dad not to drive that car except back home. I grudgingly got it out of mothballs, put in fresh gas and we were off.

 

The speech was loaded with lawyer jargon that connected with the useless retributive justice in the Illinois state penitentiary and the Cook County Courts, based on “law and order,”  that my roommate experienced. I reluctantly agreed to go to the stage with him afterward so he could meet Dr. King about his new ideas now known as restorative justice. It was January, 1963, and the heater in my dad’s old Studebaker gave out on the way home. We kept warm arguing and discussing the ideas.

 

Curtis graduated from college and advanced Biblical studies, and became a pastoral leader in his racially tense community of Woodlawn, the south side of downtown in Chicago. He got into housing rights initiatives there, threatening the slum lords’ income handled by the mob and Mayor Daley. That’s where I first learned the fake use of the terms “law and order.” Everyone in his circle knew “law and order” protected the rights of police to use any violence they chose against citizens advocating for fair rent prices and justice with the mayor’s mob rule threatening their family security in their homes. Yet his work, and the community organizing around hope and peace instead of fear and threat, eventually defeated the mayor and the mob in Chicago, and eventually Barak Obama was part of the move toward a more peaceful, prosperous city less divided and angry. But now we are back again...

 

Once again we have Christians divided. The chaos and caustic cacophony of obscene charges not only unsubstantiated, but designed deliberately to breed fear and anger apparently was planned. In exchange for Trump support for the conservative Christian political agenda, some major evangelical leaders agreed to support Trump’s disinformation campaign inciting the American population into fear and hatred. He was explicit. Inciting fear and hatred would guarantee his political advantage into 2020. (see “Reverend Reveals what Evangelicals Say Privately”, Youtube, June 19, or any other sources on this agreement).

 

We have many courageous people of faith in our community here in Big Horn County. It’s a good time for our religious leadership community to lead us toward Jesus’ better, stronger alternative to the lawlessness and death that so often has followed the cries for law and order in our nation’s proud history. They can help us find those stories where Jesus’ way triumphed, and can again. Those stories start in the Bible. They exist in our nation’s history. And they are relevant now. God will help us find His way in these extremely dangerous times. 

DO NOT vote for the Trump empire to lead our United States of America. Be both patriotic and Christian this November.

 

(End of article for Big Horn County News Sept. 3, 2020. The following is discarded paragraphs rescued in case of interest)

 

 President Trump should not alone be blamed. It’s his empire of loyalists that has blocked access to evidence and truth.  His loyalists now dominate every sector of our federal government except the House of Representatives. It’s a coup against our democracy. Our confidence we once had in our national institutions and federal government is possibly at an all-time low.  It’s led by the official designated responsible for bipartisan investigation of political criminality or wrong-doing. Now it is openly partisan, something that never happened in our nation. William Barr, the current Attorney General of the United States, appointed deliberately for his loyalty to the Trump empire, still refuses the hard evidence of the reliability of mail-in and absentee ballots as overseen by our seasoned county election commissioners across the state, and the nation.

 

There is a well-researched trajectory nations typically go through when regressing into civil war or genocide. It happened in Germany, Rwanda, Slovenia, Belarus, Ireland, and many other nations as vulnerable to a propaganda machine as we now seem to be.  It brings on civil unrest, violence, and tragedy. We in the United States, unbelievably, seem to be on that track. Many of us now believe truth is relative, our elections can or will be rigged, the Spanish films of violent demonstrations used in the Republican convention were really in Seattle, Hillary and Biden will bring pedophilia, homosexuality and take away our guns, democrats block Trump's medicine against covid 19 because they want more deaths on Trump’s watch.  Now that there are separate and legitimate realities for our polarizing media frenzy, is all simply false? And foreign governments hating our freedoms and constitutional rights are gloating. Their success in starting this frenzy to undermine or nation’s values of democracy and Christian pursuit of truth and righteousness has gone too far.

 

It’s time to name the deception. but the cacophony blocks hearing it. Trump officials in his defense department and the justice department leave open using selected federal troops to monitor our upcoming election, setting the stage for a military takeover in case the election is close.

 

Anyone against law and order? Or family security, or religious freedom? It’s time to be simply biased. voices now telling us truth is relative, and all these essentials of our nation are almost gone unless we become activists, stockpile military weapons, and prepare for war. We truly are stuck in separate, polarized realities watching either MSNBC,  or the other extreme, Fox News. Almost all of the news reporting takes us one direction or the other. Which one is true?

 

I remember my college days in the 60’s, when  the loudest advocates of law and order were the most lawless and disorderly. They wrapped themselves around our flag, our Christian faith and and patriotism.  With friends and fellow Christians concerned about the extremism of the John Birch Society, the KKK and FBI director J Edgar Hoover,  I joined with an activitist college friend from the south to inquire directly what was happening in voter registration there. It was spring break, and we did not go to Ft Lauderdale beaches. Instead we walked the streets of St. Louis and Chicago, seeing square miles of government housing horribly wrecked from rioting, looting and burning. We visited Choctaw Indian communities with bombed churches in Mississippi and Alabama. My college friend had been an exchange student at Tugalo College, the training institute for disciplined demonstrating in King’s way of non-violence.  We stopped at Ole Miss (Mississippi State University) campus. We four white boys walked the campus incognito, saying nothing so as not to betray our Yankee dialect. We eventually found James Meredith’s dorm room on spring break in 1964. He was the only black student on campus, quarantined not from a virus but because his life was threatened. He was the one who broke the wall of segregation on that campus in Mississippi in the early 60's.

 

Eli, a good friend of his from demonstrations that turned violent, called his name and he responded “Eli!  It’s You, You’re alive too!” He unbolted and unlocked the door to hugs and grateful tears. We had just sat down and gotten briefly acquainted when the shout came through the door, “Police, open up!” James said, “What’s your name and number?” It was  federal agents, on their job to protect him from the “law and order” radical right in Mississippi vowed to take any means necessary to stop integration at Ole Miss.

 

 

Returning to the loud voices of "Law and Order"...

 

 Their voices are the most dangerous, not because of the good values they proclaim, but because of their behavior. The ideas of freedom are hypocritical to the degree of their fear mongering. In fact, they are anything but committed to these national values upheld by our constitution and enshrined in our Bible.

Jesus let the chips fall, and went with the least of these, the disenfranchised, the slave class, the poor, children, the women, and the outcasts. For that he was marked and ID’d with the rebels and activists of his time, complete with elevation to a cross with the sign “King of the Jews” in case anyone mistakenly claimed his cause, the one he died on, was unpolitical.

 

Today We all agree we need to abide by our laws for order, truth, freedom and security. It’s true there is endangerment for some of our our families, our faith tradition, and our nation. What we see now in our nation is our government wrapping these words in Christian faith and patriotism while fear-mongering to promote disorder, violence, disruption, racism and murderous vigilantism. The federal executive branch promotion of extremist hate groups with a track record indulging in immoral, lawless, and disorderly attacks on our own citizens is shocking and totally unprecedented.This is increasingly happening again in the name of national security, law and order, and other easily abusive labels of communist, socialist, racist, anarchist, muslim, jewish, democrat, republican, or whatever. The most dangerous lawlessness, violence and murder is now coming again from those standing proud with the flage and wrapping themselves around our Christian faith. Their behavior is neither patriotic nor Christian. It’s time to be simply biased against this fake Christianity and patriotism.

 

We’ve been there before as a ntiona. . white people about the socialists and the communist n…’s and Martin luther King, Jr.

 

It was not that long ago. I was there

 

Trump can be blamed for his neglect. But the loyalists around him, though some are falling away, remain surprisingly faithful. And foolish.  These Republicans want every snake oil they make distribute with their belief in law and order. That’s what our federal government has undermined and damaged. When they talk “law and order,”  I remember living in Mississippi in the 60’s. That phrase remains today the same rallying cry for those who support systemic racism across the nation. And systemic racism undermines real law and order.

 

But I’m not a trained historian. I am simply an observer and participant in life on both sides of the polarized divide in our nation, state, and even families.

 

I sat in a dorm room at U of Mississippi on 1964 spring break time. Four of us radical college students did our spring break visiting black voter registration sites in the deep south. We stopped in mostly small black towns from  Louisiana to Georgia. An exception was to spend a few hours with James Merideth, the first black successfully enrolled at that university. Afraid to go home for spring break because of threats to his life, he was essentially in quarantine, stuck in his dorm room for almost two weeks. He was guilty not only of defying laws against registration of colored people at the university, he also helped of organize demonstrations that became violent. He was shot twice. His good friend and collaborator was murdered. He graduated with honors eventually at the University of Mississippi, now a very different place.

 

We also stopped in at Dr. King’s father’s church on Easter Sunday Morning, in Birmingham, Alabama. I heard Dr. King recount, with his congregation chiming in, the real truth of what advocates of “law and order” and “national security’ were doing. He spoke of beating, siccing dogs, bombings, bashing skulls and outright murder. The label our FBI then smacked on these human beings was lawbreaker, rioter, Communist, and worse.

 

This was in the 60’s. It’s escalating like it did then.  But this time, it’s not just FBI.  It’s the entire executive department of our nation, which has taken over the entire judicial branch of our nation, and successfully threatened all senate Republicans but one, to kow tow to politically correct speech with the tag “Law and Order.”

 

It seems every government spokesman and its media minders has aligned to cover up the lawlessness, disorder, endangerment, lies and citizen right-to-livelihood our government has has broken in the last four years. Real fake news originates from those with the loudest protests of “fake news!!”

 

I saw this in China fon CCTV when teaching there 20 years ago. Now it’s the Communist bosses in Hong Kong and in Western China’s Xinjian provine. It’s Putin, the head of ___? . It was Stalin, Dragomir Milošević of Sarajevo, Rewanda’s leaders, and in our country George Wallace, Andrew Jackson, Bull Conner, the list goes on. Most have been unseated, repudiated, or worse. I am gratified that few of us in Big Horn County join in advocating the mayhem portrayed as law and order by all these authoritian leaders and more. But I am aware that all of them had enormous popular support by at least a minority of their citizens.

 

Two days after King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, William Sullivan, the FBI’s director of intelligence, famously responded by writing, “We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security.”

 

.  Administrators had trouble finding someone who would room with someone not of the same race.  I didn’t mind because my father welcomed a black boy two years my younger, who walked the ten miles from town to help on our farm for nothing, except the food on the table. We took him home. So I had a case of color blindness thanks to my parents.