Blacklivesmatter

Every Life Deserves a Lifetime

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My column for The Elgin Review 7.15.2020

Driving south on Highway 14 there’s a billboard north of Elgin’s city limits with a sweet baby on it. The sign says, “Every life deserves a lifetime.” In smaller print it says, “pro-life.”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be pro-life. Cardinal Joseph Bernardin in 1983 wrote and spoke of the consistent ethic of life, teaching that all human life is sacred and to be protected.

I wonder if it’s easier for us to agree with the Cardinal when protecting life is no real inconvenience to us? Putting up a sign, standing in a life-chain, buying a “choose life” license plate requires of us little effort and no real inconvenience. If that’s being “pro-life” it’s easy.

It’s more difficult to affirm that every life deserves a lifetime when it’s someone we love who is facing an unplanned pregnancy and is in no position to raise a child. It’s more difficult to affirm that every life deserves a lifetime when study after study proves that what actually works to diminish abortions is not changing laws, but paying to provide a social safety net and easy access to birth control and health care. When poverty decreases, abortion rates decline—but to make that happen, we have to decide that caring for the poor is a priority worthy of our tax dollars.

It’s more difficult to affirm that every life deserves a lifetime when Capital Punishment is what is being considered and the lifetime is that of one convicted of a heinous crime, or when our nation’s military is engaged in endless wars, leaving dead children and civilians who are foreigners as collateral damage. Do foreigners also deserve a full lifetime?

Being pro-life is easy when it requires nothing of us, when it’s as simple as voting for the candidate who claims to be pro-life, and putting yet another bumper sticker on the back of the van or truck.

I wonder, if we’re pro-life why is it difficult to affirm that Black Lives Matter? If we’re pro-life, why are we willing to sit quietly by while our justice system serves up death in too many instances to unarmed people of color?

And, even closer to home, I wonder, if we’re pro-life why aren’t we doing everything in our power to make sure we aren’t spreading a potentially deadly virus to our neighbors? Why aren’t we, at a minimum, wearing a mask every single time we’re out in public? Why aren’t we bending over backwards to keep our neighbors and loved ones safe? Why aren’t we foregoing the night at the bar, the baby shower for our niece, the picnic with our friends, when by not getting together we can keep each other and our community safer from a disease that is deadly to some?

If every life deserves a lifetime, maybe we need to be more willing to be a little inconvenienced, a little uncomfortable, a little bored and lonely for the foreseeable future.  Maybe we need to be willing to be taxed in one way or another.

Or maybe, it’s only a billboard and we don’t really mean what it says at all.

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Park Church is back to worshipping outdoors at 9:15 on Sunday mornings as a result of the up-tick in COVID-19 cases in Antelope County. You are welcome to join us for worship on the church grounds, or via Zoom. Those worshipping in person are wearing masks and maintaining 6 foot distances between families. I welcome your comments and questions. Beckyzmcneil@gmail.com 402.540.5615

 

The Way Things Are Done

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My Column for The Elgin Review

June 10, 2020

In 1989 we hung our baby’s cloth diapers on a clothesline in our backyard on laundry day. Without fail, when Adam’s diapers hung in the sun, our neighbors across the alley lit their trash on fire in a barrel they kept on their side of the alley. Burn barrels were against federal and state laws inside city limits by that time, but in the small, county-seat town a lot of people still used them. “We’ve always done it this way.”

We walked around the block to ring our neighbor’s doorbell to introduce ourselves. They knew who we were. (It was a small town. Everyone knew we were the preachers). Kindly, we asked if they minded not using their burn barrel while the baby’s laundry hung on the line 30 feet away. They said they minded. They burned trash whenever there was trash to burn. They’d “always done it that way.”

The only air-conditioning in our big old house was two window units on the first floor. One hot day our windows were open while Adam napped in his crib in the nursery. The smoke detector went off in his room. A gray stench and haze from the neighbor’s burn barrel filled his room.

“Could we set up a schedule?” We asked when we visited them again. “Would you burn your trash on Wednesday afternoons and evenings and on Sunday mornings when all three of us are at the church?” “No.” they said. “We’ve always burned trash whenever we want to. We’re not going to change how we do things now.”

A call to the police to ask if anything could be done was answered with, “It may be against the law, but it’s the way we’ve always done things.” Attending a city council meeting with a dozen church members who were also tired of burn barrels in town received the same response, “we’ve always done it this way.”

That’s when hang-up calls started in the middle of every night. We had to answer. We were pastors– people expected to reach us in an emergency at all hours. After two long weeks of that, the police called us at 2:30 one morning. Could I meet them at the church? Something seemed amiss. They saw a light flicker inside the building. I dressed, drove to the church, walked around the outside of the building with the officers, unlocked the doors and did a complete walk through with them. Nothing was amiss.

It turned out, one of the policemen working the night shift was our back-alley neighbor’s son. It was the way things were done.

I believe our black, brown and indigenous neighbors who tell us of abuses of power by police in their towns and cities. I believe it is the way things are done. Not everywhere and not all the time, but, when police power was mis-used against me years ago, I lost sleep. Protestors across our country and around the globe are testifying in the court of public opinion telling us that when police power is mis-used against black, brown and indigenous people, far too often, they lose their lives. Too often it is the way things are done and it needs to stop.

Scripture warns against those “who speak peace with their neighbors, while mischief is in their hearts.” (Psalm 28:3b). Those who are sworn “to protect and to serve,” must pay attention to what is in their hearts. Ours will be a better world when that’s the way things are done.

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Park Church is worshipping outdoors during the month of June. You are welcome to join us on the church lawn at 9:15 am wearing a mask. I love to hear from you. Beckyzmcneil@gmail.com and 402.540.5615.