What goes around comes around

Last night I spent time in the past, and as I did, it informed the present and cast some of a vision for the future.

Let me explain.

My dear one, Mary, was working, so left to my own devices (which is another of those sayings I have no definition for or understanding of), I watched PBS. I do not watch PBS as a rule, but when one of those marathons are on, I watch sometimes when left to my own devices. 

The marathon was accompanied by a couple of surviving members of Peter, Paul and Mary, whom I had not thought of in quite some time.

I was transported back to my childhood, and for a couple hours I remembered what I had forgotten about the world, back to Where Have All The Flowers Gone and Blowin in the Wind, singing loudly and proudly as my cousin played songs on the piano. Back... to the future.

Here's the wisdom reminded.

My parents were, as were most if not all in my home state, believers -- without thinking much of it -- in the supremacy of the white race. Being a native Mississippian, it sort of came with the territory. Not excusing it in any way, shape or form. Simply saying it. It is a part of my past. Like Paula Deen without the ability to cook except for hot dogs and cornbread dressing, I said the N-word as a child because that's what I knew. Horrific as it seems now, it still made me who and what I am. My strange point here  is that my parents were racist, and they were very much Democrats. Again, strange as it seems, my parents and as far as I know my parents parents were Democrats or that strange hybrid known as Dixiecrats.

I heard Peter, Paul and Mary at an early age. In fact, I have their first album in my possession and have had for as long as I can remember. They performed at Dr. King's march on Washington rally, at Selma, Ala., in peace marches and in other advocacy settings. They were as liberal as it gets, and I sang their songs with great relish. The first song I learned on the guitar years and years ago was 500 miles. 

When I was in junior college, a Republican -- Gil Carmichael -- ran against a Democrat Senator in the great state of Mississippi, Jim Eastland, and I did everything in my power to help get him elected because he was different and Eastland was a segregationist. Get that? The Republican was the progressive, and I, being against the war in Vietnam for as long as I could remember and being against racism and being against, well anything my father was for, worked hard for Gil. I spoke in public for the first time really at a rally. Just happened to be for the Richard Nixon candidacy because I was vice president of the Young Republicans club and the president spoke for Gil. 

Oh, I just happened to be wrong about that, too.

The point here is this: We are in a state of disagreement on darn near everything right now in this country. But it doesn't have to stay this way.

Somewhere along the way the South stopped being a Crat and became became Red. Somewhere along the line it became fashionable to be either Progressive or Conservative. Somewhere along the line everything changed.

Somehow I became right of center, when I used to be left of center. I respect those who disagree with me on everything,  and if not for laws on abortion I would probably lean toward the left more. I'm conservative in my Biblical reading, but contemporary leaning in all things worship. I'm a quilt or many fabrics and many colors. I've been informed by every step and every year and every circumstance of my life. All of that has made me what I am.

Those poor in the community have been informed in the same way. Those black, in the same way. Those rich, in the same way. And each and everyone of us must come to grips with two facts of life: 1) You do not have to stay the way you are, by God's grace. 2) God can turn all things (all things) to the good of those who love him.

None of those things are, though, who we can be and none of those things are who we are. My profession didn't make me who I am. My beliefs do not make me who I am. My sins, my mistakes, my choices, my successes and all those things do no make me who I am.

No. We don't have to be this way. Things change. Times change. Circumstances change. But it sure helps if we give them a goose.

We're going to have to discuss race, and sexuality and hate and war and the poor and violence and you name it. Again. And again. And again.

When will they (we) ever learn? When will they ever learn?

What goes around comes around (and that expression I actually understand).