June 19th

June 19th is amongst us, so I’m going to tell a racial story today. I have to admit that I’ve witnessed some pretty odd things in my lifetime. I recall brutal stories from the past. I recall reading about the racial hurdles that still seem very high. Sadly, I don’t know where we’re headed, but I do remember Pastor Royalty. I met him in my first marriage, he was my Pastor for quite sometime, great person, a white man who gave his time to everyone. Every Sunday, there he was preaching the good news. I mean every week the world had to be coming to an end and there he was talking about God. Watching his daughter suffer through a bad marriage and the sad truth that racism still haunts both ethnicities the guy kept preaching. I would visit him often, and he would always let me in. I would donate to his church and even got to know his kids. Mixed church, white pastor. I learned a lot from this experience. People even started persecuting me under the radar for becoming a member. I attended this church every Sunday for two years faithfully. I had white friends and black friends, all the while comprehending the suppressed thoughts of a brutal past that people held inside. When I got divorced I kept attending, but it wasn’t the same, I had taken the biggest gut punch of my life. I’d found myself alone in my own mind left with no wife, no friends, and little family. Pastor Royalty called me his friend and when I moved on from village to village I began to comprehend the reality of a country rooted in an ideology that is just too hard to let go. Waking up in the ghettos of America I’ve learned a lot about life and once I found a library I learned even more. The beauty of it all is that I’ve learned, and the past has shown me a world filled with lost people, some sitting on high mountains, some brutally beaten, some whipped and chained, some being sold by their own country, and some even feeling superior to others, but there is nothing more eye opening than watching a person die, never getting to undo the harm that they unleashed upon innocent people. This June 19th, I think that just like anything in life’s experiences that it may be wise to comprehend that the world is filled with knowledge and cultures, I’ll learn from my own decisions and read a book about history so that what ever happened before doesn’t happen again. Slavery is a condition that we all suffer from because in the end, after the work is done and 400 or more years have passed, the stain of blood is very hard to wash away. That could be why a lot of us can’t let go. Standing on the edge of freedom, I’ve come to learn that because of miracles it’s better to not jump because a miracle proves one thing exists and that one thing is, “HOPE!”