Judgment
Those of you who know me have probably heard me speak on my favorite topic, "Cooperative Diversity". The older I get, the more I love diversity, or at least I think I do. In my last blog I told you about traveling across America by car, a 6,000 mile adventure into experiencing diversity at it's zenith. On this journey we were able to stay in various communities experiencing the joy of getting to know and yet not being known. I don't mean this in a disparaging way but it was like a traveling experience to the zoo. At every stop whether in a restaurant, a hotel lobby, a white water rafting ride or on top of a mountain, there it was, DIVERSITY!!! It is such a strange thing, this diversity. Of course, diversity is only diversity to me. To the diverse I'm considering, it is their normal. To them, I'm the diverse. That is where the pain comes in. Which of us is the weaker? It reminds me of when my Dad would take me to the zoo. He would laugh and say, "today we are going to visit your cousins". Then he would take me, always, to the monkey cages. We loved to watch the monkeys. I can remember in one of my contemplative moments I thought, "who's in the zoo and who's watching whom?"(Actually, I thought, "who's watching who".)
Diversity by it's very nature speaks only of difference but says nothing about judgment. It is my own feeling of rightness that starts the wheels turning toward making a judgment. Yet, we have all been guilty of judging based on the display of mere diversity. Webster defines "to judge" as to consider a case and pass sentence. Jesus said that Father God was so against this kind of judgment that our judging would set into motion a reversal of the judgment process so that we would receive back upon our lives judgment in the same measure that we sent it out. I'm working hard on removing judgment from my daily life. It requires great love to do this. Only the love of God that was first given freely to us can lead us out of the darkness of the prideful actions of judging others. In truth, our judgment could be right as we take stock of another's diversity. It could also be as wrong as the Pharisee's view of Jesus in his own diversity.

America!


I just returned from driving 6,000 miles and crossing 15 States through America. Teresa and I left June 22 on a marathon driving adventure. We traveled from our home through Birmingham to Memphis and on to Hot Springs, Ark. From there we traveled I-70 through Kansas and the great plains to the majestic Rockies of Colorado. From Colorado we made our way to San Diego, Ca. (via Moab, Ut., a must see) where we spent our first 3 years of married life. We went there to celebrate 40 years of an ever deepening relationship! (Truth be told, over a month in a car together will either make it or break it! We survived!!!) From San Diego it was on to Redondo Beach (Los Angeles) to spend some time with my daugther, Tarah, son in law, Scott and yes, little Lucia!!! What a joy! Good news, they are moving from LA to Miami in about a month. Our prayers are answered to get them a days drive from us. After our visit we traveled home on I-40, making a stop at the National Memorial in Oklahoma City. As I wandered the grounds of the location of that horrible event, I was struck with emotion. I was moved by the response of America at the news of the bombing and the outpouring of love sent to that city. It's always unbelievable how such a crisis brings everyone together and the shared experience somehow lifts us out of our own little self-centered world and into a greater shared sphere. One of the search and rescue teams at the scene in 1995 painted on a wall of the wreckage these simple words that remain there:





"Team 5


4-19-95


We search for the truth


We seek justice


The Courts require it


The Victims cry for it


and God demands it!"





After having traveled America "from sea to shining sea" and driving through the "fields of amber waves of grain", it was so obvious to me that God has certainly, with all our struggles, "crowned us with brotherhood". I don't know of another country where life is so precious and where when crisis strikes, strangers become brothers.





Let me end today with the first words of America the Beautiful:





"Oh beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain,


For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain.


America! America!God shed His grace on thee,


And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea."