You Gotta Keep Walkin’

“We all feel embattled. Progressives worry about attacks on the democracy and diversity programs, and conservatives worry about attacks on the family ethic. No matter how high the stakes are during an election or in regard to a cultural issue, we can never be enslaved to the moment. The circumstances don’t dictate our standards or our spiritual disposition.”

Justin E Giboney, Don’t let Nobody Turn You Around

The above quote came from a book I just finished reading. I don’t often suggest “big kid books” for a number of reasons, but this one I highly recommend.

If you have been on this writing road with me for a while, then you know I have a love for true stories, history, and pretty much getting to know culture, heritage, and just about everything that goes along with it. One of my deep, deep longings for knowledge has been for more understanding of the black church. The gospel music has always captivated my heart and soul. The raw and honest spirituals have helped me through some really hard places. And with my adoption decision, process, and education, this longing became more of a fire burning within me.

Mahalia Jackson is a voice that when she comes on my shuffled songs, I must stop and just soak in her words and voice. There is hurt and struggle, but oh so much hope. In the book mentioned above, teaches the “story of the Black Church’s civil rights generation, a generation whose Christian faith and social action prowess provided us with perhaps the greatest illustration of moral imagination in America’s history.” He gives many examples, but with excellence refers to this generation as “Mahalia and Willie Faye’s.” They both had similar stories, but Willie Faye is his grandmother, so throughout this whole book, I am imagining a little boy processing this history and heritage on his grandmother’s lap.

We quickly tag this generation as the “silent generation.” And there is a lot of truth to this, for many reasons. They have seen, experienced, and been taught to not talk about it. But more and more I am hearing stories come to be told – ones that need to be heard and told, and told widely. I think of the stories my grandparents told, many I wish I would have recorded or written down. I had a great uncle that was very into politics and loved to debate politics, but he also had many stories of being in the military. An interviews I discovered after he had passed away was he spoke about when he discovered who and what the job of Tuskegee airmen was, he was appreciative, but broken by how these men were treated and used. I see this in many of the interviews now with the very few living veterans of that era. His two brothers also served during the same time. So my great grandparents had three sons in service and my grandmother was still at home. This is almost unheard of now- it leaves me breathless when I think about it.

I have found myself pondering this question lately: how would 18 year olds and younger define “military service” and what it means to “serve your country?”

Here’s why: I will be 39 this year, and I grew up with an uncle, great uncles, grandfather who served and all were deployed at least once. My grandfather especially wouldn’t let any of the Pearl Harbor dates pass by without reminding us- which I remember them to this day, and I am honored to. When I was in 8th grade 9/11 occurred and all the events after. Many of my brother’s friends and then my friends joined different military branches right out of high school. The “kids” that are all grown up now that I kept all grew up knowing just enough about 9/11 and some even joined the military after high school. However, in the past few years we have seen our military deployed domestically like I never read about or seen before. We can blame that on 24/7 news or social media, but let me just point out some of the ways our military is being used. Subway security, ICE agents, Drug boat regulators, Foreign leader capturers, and the list goes on. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for security – and we are having lots of big, sometimes extravagantly unnecessary, events that need extra security. But these men and women are not to be set up like a bag of miniature army figurines, they are humans that signed up for a duty to serve and protect, not to check off a to do list to make an administration look good without lifting a finger.

So really, they are saying they may reinstate the draft, but do the ones who would be drafted even know what that means?

What is the most intriguing thing about who we call the “silent generation” and what they were up against is this: protests. If we want to see some effective social movements – look to the civil rights protests. Sit ins, taking seat on a bus, walking across a bridge. The arrests came when the boundaries that were being questioned and pushed threatened the opposing party, who at the time had the not-God-given right to arrest. They may have sang a little, but if you go back and study the majority of these protests, they were in fact, exactly as they state, civil. And many of the ones protesting knew a key truth- justice doesn’t come this side of eternity.

“Dr. Gardner C. Taylor once explained that to say God can’t change a situation is ‘to impeach the authority of God’ and who would dare ‘stand in the presence of the Eternal and cast a pall of doubt over what he can do.'” (pg.159)

This is what draws me to the teachings of the Black Church. This book opened my eyes to what I haven’t been able to put into words – until now. Their focus was always on the eternal hope. The other choice was so grim. They knew the freedom of life with Christ even when life of freedom as living humans who should absolutely have equal rights was no where in sight. They still cling to this hope like there is no tomorrow! “You gotta keep on walkin’! You gotta keep on talkin’!”

There is always stirrings of anti-____ (fill in the blank) in the US, we seem to struggle to “Love our neighbors as ourselves.” But the underreporting of the Patriot Front, emerging for a march in DC on July 4th, is quite inexcusable to me. And is exactly what I will not be silent about, but also will not give more words to, other than this: this is disgusting, appalling, and the dismissiveness of our leaders is truly repulsive. So I will expose the truth with these two articles:

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/who-are-the-masked-men-who-marched-in-dc-with-confederate-flags/4126668

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/04/neo-fascist-patriot-front-washington-dc

In summary, we cannot be enslaved to the moment or a movement. We must be focused on the hope and authority of God. We must be thinking and acting beyond ourselves. Our lives must be telling the story of hope, life, and true freedom.

Life Book of the Week: Mahalia: A Life in Gospel Music, by Roxanne Orgill

Fun story about today’s picture: In my “education” on texture and care of hair, I had learned Lucy would most likely need a good quality swim cap, since we at the time had a lake house. Since she would be little this first year, I decided to try a couple different brands before she really needed it. When I put this one on, she seemed to love it because she didn’t take it off right away- we laughed and said “are we going to church little Miss Lucy?” Wonderful Memories with my little girl!