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Pastor shares comments on Black Lives Matter

Paul Ashby, pastor at Richmond Beach UCC in Shoreline and member of the Justice & Witness Ministries Committee, recently wrote the following statement on “Black Lives Matter Since Adam and Eve.”

Long before the first letter of any scriptures were written, the first Adam and the first Eve gave birth to the human race under the blistering sun of sub-Saharan Africa.  Their dark skin toiled in the soil of Africa to sweat out the daily bread that sustained all human life.  Many thousands of years before human migration, they poured out their lives that we may have breath, body, skin and bone.

How can I detest the skin of my ancestors?

How can I turn my face away from the black faces of my true parents?

How can I deny the pain and injustice imposed upon those who reflect the beauty of my Eve, my Adam?

Do we not stand by the graves of our ancestors with wreaths of honor and flowers of loving memory?

Yet I have seen Eve’s children left by police to rot on the streets of Ferguson without as much as a shroud to cover them.  I have seen Adam’s sons choked to death by police on sidewalks in Baltimore and Minneapolis.  The breath stolen from them by boots designed for walking on sidewalks, misused for public execution.

Yes, I bear witness to the murder of Adam and Eve’s children shot for standing, shot for walking, shot for jogging, shot for driving and shot for parking by those hiding behind Stand Your Ground Laws and shiny jagged metal Badges.

What fears lurk in the twisted minds of gun-crazed Cains that they no longer recognized their own brothers?

What hate hides in the heart of one who drag races their muscle car over the bones, muscles and bodies in Charlottesville who cry out “Black Lives Matter!” 

What contagious disease longs to spread its virus of racism when a young man with a gun rejects a loving welcome he received at a Wednesday night Bible Study at Emmanuel AME church in Charleston?

The horrors we create when we forget the faces of our first parents.

So, let us throw together makeshift Memorials multiplying across the sidewalks of our nation…Flowers, and wreaths for Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Janet Wilson, Atatiana Jefferson, Michael Dean, Ahmand Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd…

Do not walk by these cardboard markers of faces mourned so quickly, look at the cold concrete curb and notice a pool of dripped tears – the lamentations of Adam and Eve for their murdered children.

For information, call 206-533-9620 or email paul@rbucc.org.

 

Pacific Northwest Conference United Church News © Fall 2020

 

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