Walk With me on Our Journey: The Visitation meets the Lynching Tree! A Time to Mourn and Lament and Be in Solidarity with Mothers who Mourn!

Good Evening Dear Ones!

Another rough hewn day. Today I found myself going back and forth with what lessons I was going to use for tonight's blog. It wasn't until I realized that the lessons would be from today's feast of the
THE VISITATION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY (31 MAY). This is when Mary our Lord's mother visited her cousin Elizabeth who was the mother of John The Baptist. These mothers had extraordinary sons and births.They were also mothers whose sons were lynched by differing aspects of the state. Yes, lynched. The cross was in the words of Dr. James H. Cone a "Lynching Tree". So what does that mean with today's protests? Quite a bit. Mary and Elizabeth knew what it was like to have their son's executed by the police in their day. How many of today's lynching victims' mothers are feeling deep grief, deep anger, and deep rage at what has happened to their children. It is time to remember the mothers today. Let us remember Mary and Elizabeth for their courage during the darkest hours of their lives when their sons were killed. So today we meditate on the word lynching and pray for all the mothers and fathers who are mourning the loss of their children who have become victims of lynching.

"Our country's national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob." ~ Ida B. Wells

"To sing about freedom and to pray for its coming is not enough. Freedom must be actualized in history by oppressed peoples who accept the intellectual challenge to analyze the world for the purpose of changing it." ~ James H. Cone

"Lynching is an important aspect of racial history and racial inequality in America, because it was visible, it was so public, it was so dramatic, and it was so violent." ~ Bryan Stevenson

"Any theology that is indifferent to the theme of liberation is not Christian theology." ~ James H. Cone

"Brave men do not gather by thousands to torture and murder a single individual, so gagged and bound he cannot make even feeble resistance or defense." ~ Ida B. Wells

"The nineteenth century lynching mob cuts off ears, toes, and fingers, strips off flesh, and distributes portions of the body as souvenirs among the crowd." ~ Ida B. Wells

"The government can't make people love me, but it can keep them from lynching me." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"One can lynch a person without a rope or tree." ~ James H. Cone

"As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching." ~ Carter G. Woodson

"The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become." ~ Heraclitus

“In the “lynching era,” between 1880 to 1940, white Christians lynched nearly five thousand black men and women in a manner with obvious echoes of the Roman crucifixion of Jesus. Yet these “Christians” did not see the irony or contradiction in their actions.”
― James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree

"This crusade is much more important than the anti- lynching movement, because there would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom." ~ Carter G. Woodson

“The cross can heal and hurt; it can be empowering and liberating but also enslaving and oppressive. There is no one way in which the cross can be interpreted. I offer my reflections because I believe that the cross placed alongside the lynching tree can help us to see Jesus in America in a new light, and thereby empower people who claim to follow him to take a stand against white supremacy and every kind of injustice.”
― James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree

"I think there is a contempt for the human dignity of people who were enslaved. You couldn't see them as fully human and so you didn't respect their desire to be connected to a family and a place. That was the only way you could tolerate and make sense of lynching and the terror that lynching represented." ~ Bryan Stevenson

“The conspicuous absence of the lynching tree in American theological discourse and preaching is profoundly revealing, especially since the crucifixion was clearly a first-century lynching.”
― James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree

"It's impossible to separate our contemporary practice of the death penalty from our history around race and slavery, and specifically, lynching. Where lynchings were happening 100 years ago is where executions are happening today. And that's a haunting and eerie thing." ~ Shane Claiborne

"I thought about Emmett Till, and I could not go back. My legs and feet were not hurting, that is a stereotype. I paid the same fare as others, and I felt violated. I was not going back." ~ Rosa Parks

"Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at least, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization." ~ W. E. B. Du Bois

"The choices we make are ultimately our responsibility." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"As a southerner born after the epic events of the civil rights movement, I've always wondered how on earth people of good will could have conceivably lived with Jim Crow - with the daily degradations, the lynchings in plain sight, and, as the movement gathered force, with the fire hoses and the police dogs and the billy clubs." ~ Jon Meacham

"I finally made up my mind that I would neither disclaim the black race nor claim the white race; but that I would change my name, raise a mustache, and let the world take me for what it would; that it was not necessary for me to go about with a label of inferiority pasted across my forehead." ~ James Weldon Johnson

“The cross and the lynching tree interpret each other. Both were public spectacles, shameful events, instruments of punishment reserved for the most despised people in society. Any genuine theology and any genuine preaching of the Christian gospel must be measured against the test of the scandal of the cross and the lynching tree. 'Jesus did not die a gentle death like Socrates, with his cup of hemlock....Rather, he died like a [lynched black victim] or a common [black] criminal in torment, on the tree of shame.' The crowd's shout 'Crucify him!' (Mk 15:14) anticipated the white mob's shout 'Lynch him!' Jesus' agonizing final cry of abandonment from the cross, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' (Mk 15:34), was similar to the lynched victim Sam Hose's awful scream as he drew his last breath, 'Oh, my God! Oh, Jesus.' In each case it was a cruel, agonizing, and contemptible death.”
― James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree

"A great wave of humiliation and shame swept over me. Shame that I belonged to a race that could be so dealt with; and shame for my country, that it, the great example of democracy to the world, should be the only civilized, if not the only state on earth, where a human being would be burned alive." ~ James Weldon Johnson

“The lynching tree—so strikingly similar to the cross on Golgotha—should have a prominent place in American images of Jesus’ death. But it does not. In fact, the lynching tree has no place in American theological reflections about Jesus’ cross or in the proclamation of Christian churches about his Passion. The conspicuous absence of the lynching tree in American theological discourse and preaching is profoundly revealing, especially since the crucifixion was clearly a first-century lynching. In the “lynching era,” between 1880 to 1940, white Christians lynched nearly five thousand black men and women in a manner with obvious echoes of the Roman crucifixion of Jesus. Yet these “Christians” did not see the irony or contradiction in their actions.”
― James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree

"In most places, when people hear about or see something that is a symbol or representation or evidence of slavery or the slave trade or lynching, the instinct is to cover it up, to get rid of it, to destroy it." ~ Bryan Stevenson

“If white Americans could look at the terror they inflicted on their own black population—slavery, segregation, and lynching—then they might be able to understand what is coming at them from others.”
― James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree

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He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in
his arms, and carry them in his bosom. Isaiah 40:11

The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting
arms. Deuteronomy 33:27

As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you. Isaiah 66:13a
When Israel was a child, I loved him.... it was I who taught
Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms…. I led them
with...bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to
their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them. Hosea 11:1a, 3, 4

For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears.... But you, O
Lord, reign for ever; your throne endures to all generations.
Lamentations 1: 16a; 5:19

Jesus said, Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them;
for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.
Matthew 19:14

For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God
will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Revelation 7:17

The Lord has lifted up the lowly and has filled the hungry with good things.

Luke 1:52–53

You Lord are in the midst of us, and we are called by your name. Leave us not.Jeremiah 14:9

You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but citizens together
with the saints and members of the household of God.
Ephesians 2:19

Light of the World Phos hilaron

Light of the world, in grace and beauty,
Mirror of God’s eternal face,
Transparent flame of love’s free duty,
You bring salvation to our race.
Now, as we see the lights of evening,
We raise our voice in hymns of praise;
Worthy are you of endless blessing,
Sun of our night, lamp of our days.

Let us engage in a time of silence. Please get out your timers and set them for 20 minutes.

After the period of 20 minutes of mindfulness and our eyes being closed let us use this format for our time of prayer and breathing:

First breathe in the Holy Spirit and let your lungs expand with love and energy.
Exhale love and feel empowered with compassion and mercy.

God let our spirits be renewed this night and that we may rest and awaken to serve and worship God on the morrow.

Inhale the Holy Spirit, exhale love!

God we pray for all those who are ill that they may be healed that they may feel God's healing and life giving spirit.