Lent: The things we 'give up' willingly, and those we don't (or, that car was stolen, and 'lent')

 Eastern Orthodox Christians take Lent seriously.

"Boy howdy," as a childhood friend from central Washington's wheat and ranching region would exclaim, do they take Lent seriously.

Six weeks of vegan diet is just the beginning of this time of repentance, reflection, and learning about -- albeit by faltering baby steps -- that (especially for us spoiled, fat Americans) undiscovered country of humility. 

Most outsiders to this most ancient, predenominational of Christian faiths (2,000 years and counting) focus on the food part of all this. But there's so much more to it.

Fasting from the distractions of the world is a commitment just as big, indeed probably more needful these days. Cut back on the TV, popular/secular music, social media, etc., if not try to just do without it period -- replace that with quiet moments, prayer, reading spiritual works, and uplifting, thoughtful literature in the broader sense.

Then there's the concept of almsgiving. That's not just giving a buck to a beggar, but being open to the plethora of ways we can purposely be charitable and loving to our fellow humans. What you save on skipping that steak dinner could be donated to a food bank or shelter, for example. Or, anonymously picking up the tab at a restaurant for an elderly couple or young family; pay for the Starbucks coffee ordered by the person in the drive up line behind you.

Offer a smile to a passer-by, a greeting. You know, random acts of kindness can have value beyond one's understanding, whether you are Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, or none of the above. To a believer, it can be liberating, a grasp at the essence of God's love.

Even if you do not believe that way, you probably do suspect there is a sort of Law of Reciprocity that reveals itself just as observably as those of long-undisputed laws of gravity, magnetic fields, physics, etc.

A the very least, and in ways ultimately still beyond our comprehension, such acts make others feel better. And they make you feel better, too.

But, after that metaphysical if not cosmic detour of thought, I'm taking this blog back to Lent, Orthodox Christian style.

Last weekend I prepared to enter this Lenten season (my fourth) ready to do better, at least incrementally. I was prepared, as I say: meat and dairy replaced by fruit, nuts, and veggies, and striving to acquire a taste for (or at least grudging tolerance for) black coffee. My reading materials were chosen (spiritual and secular alike), I had familiarized myself with the church service schedules, and brushed up on my Lenten prayer rule.

Then, someone stole my car Saturday night. Sunday, they found it trashed in a vacant industrial park in South Salt Lake. Police and insurance reports (the latter worthless, as the policy covered nothing but liability), trying to decide when/if to replace the car . . . and all while wondering why, with a row of new or late-model vehicles to choose from parked in front of our condo complex, a thief would pick my 23-year-old, 137,000-mile, reclaimed-at-auction beater to jack.

My parish priest, hearing my (I thought) rather good excuse for being absent, was suitably consoling. But what he said at the end of our conversation made me consider what had happened in a new, or at least more revealing (?) light.

"Yes, horrible. . . But what can you say? It must be Lent!"

No, God didn't send a probationary angel to shimmy open my locked Honda and rip the steering column apart to jam a screwdriver into the ignition. Life happens. But how we react to Life, well, that's kind of the point, right?

So, here's me with an unexpected opportunity to stretch, to focus on what really matters in life. And what really matters in life is Life. There's love, and hardship, unheralded victories of spirit and charity, and tasting the air we breathe, seeing beyond both time and space, hearing the conversation of the natural world around us, and seeing both the Eternal, and the universe within the eyes of a loved one.

And later today, I'll be looking at a 2012 Ford sub-compact. Manual transmission. A less-attractive model, I'm told, to thieves who have Hondas (however old) and Toyotas at the top of their "to-steal" lists.

Have your own, blessed Lent!

 

Soul Searching: On Confusing the Duties of Faith with the Lure of Political Power

    Hopefully, this will truly be a time of soul searching for Evangelical Christians (as for us all) over confusing faith with political power, and thus a bitter harvest -- often borne of willful ignorance of moral compromise in leadership.

    And of course it is not just Evangelicals who detoured into this dead end path; still this uniquely American Protestant community seemed to fall hardest for a false secular gospel that clothed itself in fear -- and ultimately looked little different than the violence and hate that likewise betrayed and usurped other, initially peaceful protests over legitimate racial and justice concerns this past year.

   My friend, and a mentor in my Eastern Orthodox Christian faith, Fr. Steven Clark, put it this way in a comment:

"The evil one showed the world and said: 'This I will give you, if you bow down and worship me.'

And. . . well.. . . . you know."

Please read, and consider: 89.3 KPCC | 'How Did We Get Here?' A Call For An Evangelical Reckoning On Trump (scpr.org)

So, what is the opposite of the Midas Touch?

What would be the opposite of the "Midas Touch" of Greek mythology?

Given the devolution of modern public education, it is unlikely the current generation, and probably not the former generation either, knows about the story. So, a refresher courtesy Encyclopedia Britannia:

"Midas found the wandering Silenus, the satyr and companion of the god Dionysus. For his kind treatment of Silenus Midas was rewarded by Dionysus with a wish. The king wished that all he touched might turn to gold, but when his food became gold and he nearly starved to death as a result, he realized his error. Dionysus then granted him release by having him bathe in the Pactolus River (near Sardis in modern Turkey), an action to which the presence of alluvial gold in that stream is attributed."

Well, I've not met a satyr in my past journalistic wanderings, but I did know a decidedly randy alternative press editor in my early days . . . but that, and his reputation with the ladies, is another story -- and on consideration, not mine to share.

Hey, I am not a member of the White House staff, after all, all primed to spill secrets at the drop of a hat, or bribe, or political hubris. A confidence is a secret wrapped inside a . . . forget it, you'd never believe the story, anyway.

I digress. What I'm saying is if Midas' touch turned the mundane into gold, these past few days I seem to have to developed the ability to transform the ordinary items and tasks into something decidedly more brown in color, and disgustingly fetid.

Crap, in other words.

Go to New Year's Eve Vespers service, park the car right out front, and come out to be greeted by a $38 ticket for what amounted to an hour parked on an all-but-empty downtown Salt Lake City street. Thirty-eight bucks? Really?

Bake a loaf of bread, usually an easy task (I mean, we have a breadmaking machine, after all). Follow the instructions and ingredient measures to the letter, and when the nifty little automated oven gizmo beeps its "done" notes, I approach the smell of fresh, hot bread in anticipation . . . only to find a mound of steaming, mushy wheat flour with a bubble in its innards.

Oddly enough, that reminds me of Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth."

In other words, there's a whole (hole) world under the surface of the crust. Well, not really. Just a yeasty cavity. Slicing this bread was educational, though . . . I suspect I know now how the "Egg in a hole" breakfast recipe may have been discovered.

But we were out of eggs, so just a sorry looking hunk of bread. Like I said, the opposite of the Midas Touch.

Ah, well. An apple, then. Is there such a thing as fruit lividity? You know, like on the TV crime scene people who point out the bruising on a corpse due to where the blood settled due to gravity? 

Whatever. The apple, a glowing red on the top, disintegrates as my fingers go knuckles deep into its unseen bottom half of grayish pulp.

Perhaps the Fecal Touch, then? Because that seems apropos to what comes next. 

Take a walk outdoors, I say to myself, cold crisp air, get the blood pumping, that's what I need. Shoes rustling through the wet leaves, freezing weather but still sunny, a raw sort of beauty to it all . . . then the right heel slips on a partially covered coil of what had to be Great Dane spore.

For Midas, the cure was to swim in a river. He lost his touch, and the river ended up chock full of gold.

But the only river nearby me is the Jordan River. And as we all know, it is already liberally laced with sewage from the overflow pipes of water treatment plants downstream.

Sigh.

 

Grace in the Time of Covid: On a cold winter's morning, a lesson from Michael

 It was a bone-chilling cold, pre-dawn Tuesday morning. The 5 a.m. alarm on my phone sounded, and for several minutes -- nestled in my warm bed -- and debated with just turning it off and drifting back to sleep.

But I got up, with a moan. It was the day for early-morning liturgy and communion at Sts. Peter & Paul Orthodox Church in downtown Salt Lake City. I knew I needed it, and needed to be there. 

After the service, the guys would meet for coffee and scriptural study with Fr. Paul downstairs -- a time that has become especially precious to me during this season of prolonged Covid-19 related isolation.

Showered and dressed, I donned a heavy coat, scarf and gloves and bundled myself into the car, first scraping a sheet of ice from the windshield. My decades-old Honda Civic coughed to life, I turned on the heater full blast, and drove down the road.

It's a 15-minute trip to the church, and to my usual morning prayers and added not a few laments about life as we have come to know it in the age of pandemic. Finally, as I drove on near-empty, slippery streets, I passed the homeless camps of shopping carts draped with makeshift tents that regularly pop up along the curbs of the Salt Lake County-City Government Complex.

Deseret News photo

But I was so self-absorbed, irritated that the old Honda's heater was just beginning to warm the car's interior, that I hardly noticed the desperation and poverty of wrecked lives that have become part of the urban landscape.

Pulling into a dark side street and then the small parking lot behind my parish church, I sat for a time behind the wheel, relishing a belated moment of warmth. Then with a grunt I got out, put on my mask, shivered, and began walking down the alley to the entrance of Sts. Peter & Paul.

The homeless, I'm ashamed to say, have too often become the faceless, nameless backdrops of our lives today. If not ignored, then they only elicit a brief thought or an occasional a few bucks quickly handed over to appease the inconvenience of guilt.

But there is one denizen of the street many in the parish have come to know, and some befriend.

"Michael," also the name of his patron saint, adorns the sleeves of his arms and coat with iconic images of saints and angels, secured with transparent plastic and duct tape. Slight and gaunt, his beard and graying hair often seeming as wild and surreal as his thoughts, Michael has good days and bad.

Some days, he holds forth on the warfare of angels and demons in the skies above, where clouds may swirl, punctuated by thunder and lightning. "See? There they are, fighting over the souls of the dead? Right there," he once told me on a summer day, pointing and nodding.

On other days, he seems to have the simple clarity of a saint. That is the case on this particular frigid December morning, as he steps out from behind a plastic tarp draped over his nest of blankets and sleeping bags near a building's steam vent.

He won't do the shelters. He has horror stories of sickness, bed bug-infested cots, drug use and violence inside them. He's often been robbed of his few possessions. Over the years, our priest and parish have tried to arrange other housing and psychiatric care, without success.

So, one does what one can, meeting this brother where he is, and with what he needs -- warm clothing, food, a few dollars for coffee or a snack, and friendship, to the extent this gentle and enigmatic man allows that.

So, on this morning, I just want to get inside to the warmth, comfort and spiritual refuge of the church. Michael recognizes my voice, this time, and hurries to my side. I'm grumpy; he is ebullient, and our pace toward the open iron gates of the entrance slows.

"It's a good day," he rasped. "It's a cold day," I grumbled back.

He either didn't hear me, or ignored my reply. "God is so great! He provides what you need. Even a hot shower!" Michael pointed to the steam coming out of a head-high pipe. "They shut down the showers where I was going," he explained, vaguely waving toward an undefined downtown Salt Lake City location, "But then God provided this!"

He went on to list a few other things he attributed to Providence. A place to fill his water jug. People cared enough to check on him, feed him, take him to the free clinic, even just talk for a few moments.

Then, Michael grinned, pointed at the church where he, like me, received baptism a few years back, and said, "And we get to go inside His house and have communion! Hey, it's the Breakfast of Champions!"

And we did that. We climbed the steps inside to the candle-lit darkness, venerate the icons of the saints and stood for the ancient prayers of the liturgy, culminating with the Eucharist.

I watched Michael approach the chalice, a look of awe on his smudged face as he received the mystical Body and Blood of Christ.

As he made his cross and silently walked away, I sighed, ashamed at first, then humbled, and then grateful for the lesson.

For Michael.

Lord have mercy, indeed.

 

Well, assuming Trump's lawsuits and recounts don't provide what would truly be a dramatic shift . . . I muse, as a History grad, on one truth that seems to be understated (at the least):

Never before in American history has a president presiding over what had been a booming economy, record employment, and some rather impressive diplomatic and trade successes (pre-Covid, albeit) -- LOST a second term.

Other than the virus, what is the one factor that might have made the difference Tuesday? While the GOP platform's n pro-life and economic policies, secure borders, etc., likely found resonance with most or at least many Americans, Trump's character -- so crudely displayed, even while being the epitome of narcissistic (if inarticulate "bigly" as Donald would say) hyperbole and outright lies -- ultimately made HIM, not his administration's policies and accomplishments, the primary issue for too many Americans.

I realize that's a rather harsh assessment to some of my friends on the right, and not harsh enough to acquaintances on the left. Of course, we certainly saw widespread corruption, dishonesty, and cynical (tacit and intentional) use of the to-often-destructive mobs usurped by the extreme left over the summer.

But in the end, no one individual -- in particular not Joe Biden and Kamala Harris -- could fit into the spotlight of disgust Trump largely, if not completely, earned.

Was there unfair, biased reporting about the campaign, even unfettered open support by the news media for one party over another? Oh, yes. Was there voting fraud? Certainly, there always is, but was 2020's fraud any more widespread than that in past elections? That remains to be seen, and recounts and litigation may yet show the truth of that, or put the fears largely to rest.

But in the end, Trump's character, IMHO, will be seen as the tipping point. Historians likely will someday conclude that a vote for Biden and Harris in 2020 was, perhaps more often than not, a vote against Trump's public persona.

And be sure that persona was built at least as much by Trump's own actions/Tweets as a news media that, undoubtedly, lost its collective mind and shredded what was left of its journalistic integrity.

A 16th-century Irish proverb warns that it is, "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know." The idea is that as bad as it might be with the present person or situation, what comes along to replace him, or it, might be even worse.

We'll see.

Book review: “Healing Your Wounded Soul: Growing from Pain to Peace"

 

    In his new book, “Healing Your Wounded Soul: Growing from Pain to Peace,” Fr. Joshua Makoul masterfully blends Eastern Orthodox Christianity’s ancient ascetical wisdom with complementary insights from modern psychotherapy to offer hope to those emotionally – and spiritually -- crippled by painful memories of abuse, rejection, and shame.

      It is a mission for which Makoul, dean of the St. George Cathedral in Pittsburgh and veteran certified counselor with academic degrees in Psychology, is well-qualified. His straightforward, crisp, and thought-provoking writing style builds a solid foundation of understanding such therapeutic concepts such as “relationship trauma,” “transference” of past pain to present experiences, and “projection” of our own faults onto others.

     None of those psychological frameworks are left to stand alone, however. Fr. Makoul consistently illuminates them with the light of faith. Introspection, for example – so stressed by secular therapists as key to unearthing the origins of debilitating behaviors – has been key to the Eastern Orthodox path to theosis (the eternal goal of the faithful “to become by grace what God is by nature,” as Fr. Makoul explains).

     This holy introspection, a core teaching of the Desert Fathers’ “science of the soul,” is the key to spiritual—and arguably emotional – healing echoed in the teachings of the saints for millennia. As St. Isaac of Syria – one of numerous Desert Fathers mined by Fr. Makoul – put it, “Enter eagerly into the treasure house that is within you, and you will see things that are in heaven – for there is but one single entry to them both. The ladder that leads to the Kingdom is hidden within your soul.”

     What Fr. Makoul’s book is not, is a self-help tome with specific quick fixes for those memories and errant coping habits that may cripple the reader’s present. Rather, it helps the reader acquire clearer perspective and understanding of self-destructive and self-defeating behaviors – and with those insights, to be ready for true healing.

     Start with a visit to your parish priest and/or spiritual father; he may, in addition to his grounding in the Faith, have also been trained in counseling – or be able to refer you to a network of “faith-friendly” therapists.

     For anyone struggling with painful memories, and the negative behaviors spawned by them that can damage present relationships with God and others – or those who have loved ones suffering such emotional injuries and their aftermath – I strongly recommend  “Healing Your Wounded Soul: Growing from Pain to Peace.”

"Big In Heaven" review: At St. Alexander the Whirling Dervish Orthodox Church, saints have dirty faces

 

Growing up poor in a Protestant Evangelical Pentecostal preacher's family, I learned at an early age the meaning of "hypocrisy" long before I knew how to spell the word itself. 

 I found it in the hard eyes of those self-styled super spiritual guides populating the church board, who would weekly dissect the doctrinal nuances of Dad's sermons, and Dad himself if they could, even as they insisted his paltry salary should be enough to live on. 

 That he drove a school bus part-time while Mom worked as a waitress or in sales at J.C. Penney was a scandal! After all, the drafty old parsonage with a coal furnace that tended to cough up black smoke through the vents in the heart of winter may not be perfect, but it was free. 

 The nerve! After all, with a crippled and retarded daughter in his family, the pastor was indeed blessed to get the pulpit in any church teaching faith healing! Girl's not healed, after all. Pastor's faith must be lacking.

 So, I was surprised to find some painful, yet oddly inspiring similarities in the short stories penned by Fr. Stephen Sinari in his book "Big In Heaven." The tales of Fr. Naum and the all-too-human, sometimes saintly diamonds in the rough who comprise St. Alexander the Whirling Dervish Orthodox Church and the ethnic Philadelphia neighborhood it serves, are fictional. They are also true.

 In the four years since I was baptized into the Eastern Orthodox faith, I've learned our Truth is not limited to history and dogma but shines forth in parables, allegories and the stylized stories that buoy the holiness and sacrifices of our those saints and martyrs populating our icon walls and temples. The same is true for the characters Fr. Stephen shares.

 Still, I suspect that much in "Big In Heaven" borders on the autobiographical. After all, the author is an OCA priest whose nearly 40 years of ministry have spanned inner-city parish pastoral callings as well as extensive work on the streets serving the homeless, and at-risk and trafficked teens.

 "Big In Heaven" makes anyone with faith, and particularly those raised in or converted into Orthodoxy, consider anew the unfathomable depths of God's mercy and grace to his soiled children, staggering toward personal Golgothas and the hope of salvation and theosis.

 It was early in the book, where Fr. Stephen introduces Curtis, "an altar server who new the Liturgy in a way not even [Fr.] Naum could understand." Curtis "knew when to have the censer ready, how to cut the bread for the nafora, when to light the candles, how to ready the boys for the processions, when to boil the water for the chalice, even the best way to hold the cloth at Communion time."

 Curtis, Naum's bishop had once remarked, was the best server he had ever seen. This same Curtis, a 35-year-old born with Down syndrome deemed unworthy of believer's baptism at a local Protestant church due to his handicaps, but welcomed into Orthodoxy.

 Fr. Stephen's writes of a parishioner, seeing Curtis donning a hand-me-down cassock to enter the altar and serve, declaring: "Curtis is a genius over there, in heaven."

 That declaration brought tears to my eyes, and I remembered the childlike, halting voice of my now 70-year-old sister, rocking and holding a doll while singing "Jesus loves me, this I know . . . ."

 I highly recommend this book with one minor caveat: In future reprintings, how about some additiional parenthetical or by footnote definitions or context for the "inside Orthodoxy" and liturgical terms used from Greek or Slavonic languages?

Black Lives Matter. Absolutely. But the BLM Foundation may have far deeper agenda

"Black Lives Matter?" Absolutely.

The phrase and its intent to draw focus to the plague of racism, is not debatable. It's even honorable.

But BlackLivesMatter Foundation, the organization, goes way beyond that. It's stated foundational and core values embrace a whole lot more than laudatory racial justice.

I wept when he was martyred. His message of peace endures

Indeed, it is not too much to argue that its online mission statement, on display in the organization's "About" section (https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/) seems to suggest abandoning the traditional family unit in favor of some sort of "village/utopian nursery; a sort of "woke" bigotry when it comes to law enforcement, the justice and economic systems; and a communal mindset that reminds this student of history (and child of the Sixties) of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution.

And, as recent statements from BLM leadership has indicated, there is no room for orthodox Christianity in this new global village, unless it is a faith devoid of moral pillars in areas of abortion, marriage, family, and by extension, sacramental standards. (https://www.gotquestions.org/black-lives-matter.html)

It is part of a trend, a social and cultural devolution that has accelerated over the past decade as materialism, situational ethics, and other "progressive" tenets have captured and enslaved the Western souls of many.

It is no longer a matter of loving individuals, even as you do not sign on to their choices in matters of political, religious, or sexual attraction. Now, you must, to be on the "right side of history," ignore the millennia of human history and culture that has preceded us on what was generally known to be Natural Law and Nature's God.

You no longer are allowed to "agree to disagree." Differences of opinion are "hate speech," and what defines "free speech" has become an Orwellian conundrum. Biology? Na. It is not your genitalia that determine your sexual identity, in the biological sense . . . that, despite our living in an age of "scientific truth," is an exception.

You are what you feel.

You may smile, shrug, and say you while you don't share that illusion, you still value such individuals as friends and co-workers. Not good enough today. No room for disagreement, that's "hate speech". You are bullied online, and occasionally in the physical world, too, to buy into altered reality, or you are a "transphobic" bigot, and should be "canceled."

Perhaps one day, that term will come to have a darker, deadly meaning. After all, the Nazis spoke of "resettlement" and meant death camps. Soviet, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese Communism spoke of "re-education" and killed millions of dissidents in prison camps.

If you prefer to persist with the idea of marriage being between a male and a female, and two-parent families as the preferred norm -- previously a no-brainer for all of recorded history? It's no longer allowed to respectfully disagree; you must now promote and endorse the opposite of your convictions . . . or you are a "homophobic" fascist.

Those too young to remember -- or in the case of a new generation of American youth, those who were never taught about history's dark lessons by those ironically designated "free thinkers" who educated them -- seem doomed to repeat the errors of the past, to unearth failed social schemes from the dust bin of history.

So, back to Black Lives. Who can argue with the pure meaning of the phrase? As a grandfather of four bi-racial grandkids, for whom I would willingly give my own life, of course! I hate the climate where my son-in-law has been repeatedly stopped for jogging or driving "while being black," by police who first seen skin color -- not his U.S. Army Captain's bars, or his advanced medical degrees.

I don't want my grandkids to grow up in a world where they, too, will be judged first by the color of their skin before an authority figure learns of the content of their character.

So, yes, peacefully protest injustice. But if you are thinking of donating to BLM, make sure ALL is stands for -- beyond the phrase itself -- is clear to you. Be informed.

Your choice, of course.

As for myself, I will not give to BLM, the organization. Rather, I will seek out local and specifically focused programs not polluted by a potpourri of socially destructive and anti-democratic, and yes bigoted causes trying to hop aboard.

Remembering Mom: an end to mourning, a bitter-sweet celebration of mercy

Hard to believe it has been a year since my mother, Katherine, passed away.

June 17, after having called aloud in delight for her own mother, she "reposed," as we Orthodox Christians say. And, a year later, I see that moment of her leaving us as a blessing -- ending the confusion and haze of final-stage Alzheimer's disease, the physical pain of one unable to speak or understand speech, walk, or care for herself in the most basic manner.

But she knew love and knew how to give love to the end of her 91 and a half years. She could still smile, and raucously laugh, and cry tears sometimes of pain, other times of joy she could not otherwise express.

As dawn turned the sky silver over the Jordan River this morning -- candles lit, a ribbon of burning incense drifting up toward a small photo of her nestled amid icons of Christ, His Mother, and an assortment of saints in my home prayer corner -- I recited the ancient Akathist to Jesus for Those Who Have Fallen Asleep.

I had offered this same prayer for 40 days following her death last year, as I had for my father when he had passed away six months before. And as I had done for my father, Robert Sr., on the one year anniversary of his repose, I prayed for Katherine.

There were, again, some tears for me. There also was peace and hope.

Hate harvests hate: the innocent get lost in the confusion and rage

My daughter's faith and core human decency makes me feel proud, and humble. A bitter irony exposed here is that racism, hatred and misunderstanding seem to plague all human beings -- white, black, brown, almond, whatever. We fear the "Other."

Hate harvests hate. Violence begets violence. The innocent get lost in the confusion and rage.

This is what she posted about an incident in Baltimore:

"My heart is grieved. The protests and violence erupting from so much oppression and evil leaves me speechless. I talk often with my husband on how to raise our children in a godly way, being kind, respectful, loving and merciful. But now it's time to pollute their innocence in explaining racism.

"God gave me a heart for diversity and empathy for marginalized communities...yet, I am scared to speak out. I want to join the protests, calling out social injustice everywhere for my black brothers, sisters and family members, my many friends with different shades of brown and yet, as a mother of 3 biracial children and a handsome and God fearing black husband, I fear that doing so may put a bullseye target on their heads.

"I went to clear my head on a walk with Lilly. As I was heading home I saw two police cars and a firetruck in the middle of the road. Some neighbors were out on the porch watching. I slowed down to look. There was a single African American man across the road going back and forth between the sidewalk and median yelling at the police.

"My first thought was l, "I hope no one is hurt and I hope the police are respecting his rights."

"As he yelled at them about someone calling the police for walking in his own neighborhood, he zeroed in on me. Pointing with a cell phone in his hand, he said something about me. He returned to the other side of the road and shouted, "I'm gonna kill you. Yeah, you with the white dog. You love that dog more than you love a human being!"

I called back, "I'm so sorry for your pain. God bless you brother." He kept screaming "Black Lives Matter!" All I could say was "yes".

"Maybe he thought I called the police, maybe I was just an easy target being the only other white person on the street besides the police and maybe there was some mental illness as well.

"Nonetheless, as I walked around the corner to enter my home the back way, I realized I was not scared nor did I feel threatened, but seeing one police car remained to observe him leaving as the other squad car and fire truck left, I was reassured. I had just lived my white privilege.

"My heart sank when I returned home. My husband, daughter and I joined hands and prayed for the man, the police and our family. I know our God is a just God but allows the testing of our faith to build perseverance. This situation is truly senseless.

"My daughter was recently called "mixed breed" by an old white woman. She has endured discrimination in school simply for being biracial. She was accused of stealing on a bus when she found a purse left behind and took it to the bus driver. The school principal didn't ask any questions, just assumed her guilt because she was angry at being falsely accused.

"My husband has told me how his father prepared him to survive by having "the talk" about staying under the radar, not jogging on the street, carrying his lab coat or Army uniform in the car and learning how to stand his ground without retaliating. As he explained that our 5 and 6 year old sons need to learn that our society will not view them as anything more than third class citizens, I cried.

"My prayer for this world is to repent, humble ourselves to God and that the Lord will return quickly."