There are so many stories, and versions of stories, coming out of Ferguson, MO that I just want to yell SHUT UP already! Quite frankly I am having a difficult time believing anything I hear as the stories keep changing while the days and months pile up since the tragic events of August 9, 2014. What I do know is this, a 18-year-old male, who was preparing to start classes at Vatterott College on August 11th is dead. Plain and simple a human being is no longer among the living. This is both sad and senseless. I will not try to argue whether Michael Brown was threatening Officer Darren Wilson and that Wilson was right in defending his life. How can I? I wasn’t there and didn’t see what happened. I also will not argue that Michael Brown was unarmed and gunned down by a trigger happy police officer. Again, I wasn’t there and did not see the event unfold. As the majority of the folks in the rest of this country I have received only second, third, and farther removed accounts from which to glean information and make a decision about what occurred that day so I won’t speculate. The news media and pundits have the country so stirred up that a bit of stepping back and breathing is much-needed.
What I will state, and this is what is really sad, is that this police officer, and the folks in the Ferguson community, should have been in conversation with each other. To be in conversation I mean to really get to know each other, to greet one other when they pass on the street, to seek to get to know each other better. You see with conversation comes community, with community comes trust, with trust comes understanding, and with understanding comes the reality that we all live in community with one another. All of us, regardless of the color of our skin, our religious affiliation, political party, ethnic background, size of our financial portfolio, it doesn’t matter because we all inhabit this planet called earth. In order to live in community we must seek to understand each other. When we do this, instead of mistrust, there is trust, instead of fear there is love, instead of ratcheting up of anger, which can lead to lethal means of ending life, there could be the benefit of the doubt and the will to seek a solution rather than violence and ultimate death.
This can happen when we seek to engage rather than ignore. When we seek to understand rather than prejudge. Let me give you an example from my own life. When I was attending the Air Force Chaplain Assistant School at Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, AL in 1999 this event happened. The area around Maxwell is primarily African-American and I knew this but really never thought twice about it until this day. On my way home from class I stopped in at the local public library. I love libraries and whenever I travel I like to visit them to see their collections and read the local newspapers. When I walked into the Rufus A. Lewis Branch of the Montgomery City-County Public Library to visit I was eventually made aware of many pairs of eyes looking at me. When I returned the stares I suddenly wondered if I had broken some sort of Montgomery Public Library protocol or something. I walked up to the librarian and asked her, since I was a visitor, if there was something special I needed to know. She stated, “No, it’s just that we don’t get many white folks visit us here at Rufus Lewis so I guess we are surprised to see you, is there something I can help you with, are you lost?” After I told her what I wanted to see and she directed me to the newspapers I started conversing with some of the patrons there. You see, I was an oddity, a white man visiting their library. However, after they realized that I wanted to be there to do the same thing they were doing I was no longer considered an oddity or something to be stared at. Within a short period of time I was accepted into their community. When I was on my way out the door every single person there thanked me for coming and welcomed me to return. The simple act of my visit to a library became an opportunity for conversation and me being accepted into their community.
So may I offer just a bit of advice for us all during this time of upheaval and mistrust. Sometimes it can start with one individual doing what can seem simple and not that extraordinary. It started with me wanting to visit a library in a town where I was a stranger. A stranger of a different race than the majority. It ended with me being accepted as part of that community. To the folks in Ferguson and every other small town and big city in America, may I suggest we do the same. Go visit your library, or _________________. Get to know the folks there, let them get to know you. Have a conversation with them. If we do this, maybe then love will replace distrust and hate. Give it a try, you have nothing to lose and so much more to gain. Like me, you may make some new friends. You never know until you try.
David's Den 