Monday, March 31, 2008

Some thoughts...

So here’s a few thoughts/ ideas of mine from our trip. It includes a few personal opinions/beliefs of mine, but to tell my story of this trip, this was a necessary thing. Anyways these are only a few unorganized ramblings, but if anyone has any comments or input, or if these ideas have spurred them in any way, feel free to comment! Thanks for the time if you choose to read this!

First off, in during our time in Little Rock, me and Kristina were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to meet Governor Beebe. While waiting to meet him we had a wonderful time talking with his secretary, a lady named Jenny. One of the subjects that we talked about with her was the race issues in the south. Talking to Jenny, I said that as someone who tries to live the example that Jesus called the world to live, I cannot believe that anyone would profess to follow Jesus, and still be filled with hate and the desire for segregation that scores of Americans had, perhaps best exemplified out of the individuals we learned about by Bull Connor, police officer in Birmingham and Alabama Governor George Wallace. Jesus said told the world that the two greatest commandments, are love the Lord your God, and to Love your neighbor as yourself. It hurts me that people did, and still in many situations the world over continue to misrepresent Jesus in such a horrible way. Apart from this, it hurts me terribly that humans of any belief would willingly cause hurt, humiliation and suffering in others. The end of Dr. King’s beautiful “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” speaks of these issues, and his conclusions speaks of the hope that he and his fellow civil rights activists had:

“Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.”

So looking back on my experiences, one thought was hanging over me: But does it all matter? So yea, we saw some stuff, learned about our troubled and unthinkable past as a country. Maybe we were moved in ways we didn’t expect coming into this. But does it all matter? Are we going to be the change we want to see? Unless we take our experiences on this trip and use them to be that change, whatever it might be, then really there wasn’t much of a point to this. To get educated, perhaps. However, education without action is useless. I don’t know what that change could mean. There is still wrong in this world, and there are still problems in our country. These men and women, and children that we have learned about on our pilgrimage have accomplished extraordinary things which are beyond anything I could see myself doing. To honor them, we must find the injustices in our world that we are moved by, and act. A few nights after we got back in Eau Claire, while sitting in my dorm room, I was listening to a song called Flight of Kings by The Classic Crime, and the lyrics just seemed to encompass a whole lot of what is rattling around my brain:

I was brought up through the ashes
Like a phoenix birthing wings
And I will fight for my disasters
I will take the flight of kings
And if your life is ever torched
Or if you know the pain I sing
Then will you sing with me this chorus
And we will cut through people's hearts and free them

Do you know this song's for you?
My heart goes out to hurt you feel inside
Do you know this song's for you?
My heart goes out to hurt you feel

These words evoke to me the spirit, courage and faith that those brave people had in achieving the most simple of dreams, to be equal in a land they were taught as children was build on equality.

Just because you’re from Nowhere, Wisconsin doesn’t mean you can’t change the world, or at least change one person’s world. Barrack Obama says there are no such things as false hopes-- hope comes from the bottom up, when ordinary people, begin to do extraordinary things. The civil rights workers we have learned about believed in the same genesis for hope, hope sprung from individuals in the masses, to work together to achieve change in their world. This is a message that we all should remember as we continue on our lives. So I wish us to remember these heroes and what they stood for, and if we see a need for change, that we follow their example, and proceed to see that change. If we have a hope in us, we need to honor our past heroes, from the civil rights movement, from our nation’s independence, or from any situation where people acted out against the odds because of the hope they had.

I hope I don’t lose what I’ve learned on this trip, and that I would act out on the knowledge I have acquired, to make some sort of difference in this world.

These are just some thoughts I had on our trip, and how I feel I’ve grown, or at least how I wish I would grow.

2 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for writing that. I totally agree, that if we leave what we learned in that space called spring break that it isn't worth that much. I feel like that isn't going to happen. That is sparked in all of us a feeling that is going to be with us in many of the things that we do in the future. Let me know if you have any ideas you want me to help you out with!

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  2. Thank you so much for writing that. I totally agree, that if we leave what we learned in that space called spring break that it isn't worth that much. I feel like that isn't going to happen. That is sparked in all of us a feeling that is going to be with us in many of the things that we do in the future. Let me know if you have any ideas you want me to help you out with!

    ReplyDelete