Jena, Looooziana

I wasn't planning to post on this issue, but I am already livid over what Senator Dodd did (see below), that I must say something. If you're not aware of the "Jena 6" I refer you to Roland S Martin a multi-media journalist who is a special consultant to CNN.

Where is the Church in Jena? According to Mr. Martin, the white preachers refused to meet with the black preachers to talk about reconciliation!

How does any person claim to be "Christ like" aka "Christian" and then not follow His Commandments, of which there are only two: To love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Why is that so hard if the neighbor has a different skin tone?

A long time ago, my parents changed Churches. At the time I was young and was not given any explanation. We just stopped going to one Lutheran Church and started attending another. It was only a few years ago that I found out why. As it happened, another Lutheran Church a few blocks away had burned down. My Dad attended a Board meeting and asked the Board to extend to that congregation an invitation to attend services with us at our Church. (His thinking was: Why are there two Lutheran Churches so close together duplicating services?) The Board denied the request. The reason? I don't know what's in the minutes, but the other Church was made up of blacks. When the Board voted against having the black Lutheran Church worship with us, they unknowingly lost the support of my parents and we never attended that Lutheran Church again.

I was raised to accept people as people. Color never mattered.

Another true story. A number of years ago my Doctor sent me to Gwinnett Medical Center to have a mammogram. I kept the appointment and exchanged my top for the hospital gown (opening to the front), took off my jewelry, and walked into the room. The Radiologist/Nurse told me to place my breast on the little tray, which I did. She then did the absolute strangest thing I've ever had happen to me. She asked if she could touch me to place my breast properly. I looked at her like "Why Are You Asking Me This?" So I said, "Sure, but why did you ask?" She said that sometimes women wouldn't allow her to touch them, "because, you know . . . I'm black."

I looked at her and blurted out "You are a nurse, right?" She said "Yes." I said "So what does your being black have to do with your making my mammogram?" She said that she didn't want to make me feel uncomfortable. I told her that her skin color was the last thing that would make me feel uncomfortable, but if she wasn't really qualified to make the mammogram, I would feel uncomfortable. She assured me she was qualified and we completed the mammogram.

I have never forgotten that incident. It happened probably 12 or 13 years ago. I still laugh when I think about it. What does color have to do with anything? Who the heck cares about the color of someone's skin? I'm more concerned with "are you qualified to perform this procedure/job/activity?"

Unfortunately not everyone was blessed to have parents like mine and to be raised "color-blind." I'm a snob when it comes to education and grades, but I don't care what color your skin is and I don't see how skin color is relevant to much of anything. Who cares?

Apparently a LOT of people care. How distressing to know that there are small minded people after all this time. How sad for the people in Jena, LA, who never learned to "love others as they love themselves." Pity the poverty in the hearts and souls of their preachers that they failed Christ Jesus for so many years.

Saint Matthew 22: 35 And one of them, a doctor of the law, asking him, tempting him: 36 Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law? 37 Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. 38 This is the greatest and the first commandment. 39 And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 40 On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets.

Saint Matthew 7:21 Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. 22 Many will say to me in that day: Lord, Lord, have not we prophesied in thy name, and cast out devils in thy name, and done many miracles in thy name? 23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity. 24 Every one therefore that heareth these my words, and doth them, shall be likened to a wise man that built his house upon a rock, 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded on a rock.

26 And every one that heareth these my words, and doth them not, shall be like a foolish man that built his house upon the sand, 27 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall thereof.