Sunday, July 12, 2015

Waiting

Waiting
“It is difficult to accept that politics, like history itself,
Is a never-ending process in which nothing is ever definitely over.”
Václav Havel
Paris, October 27, 1992
                                                                                                                  

At one end of the great wide spectrum
Some waited for Godot,
As their saving welcome
To freedom from bondage, at minimum a furlough.

This kind of continual waiting
In bondage one learns to cope.
But the idea of Godot is baiting
A falsehood killing hope.

The opposite end of the spectrum
Lives a waiting of another kind.
It is a longing and vocation that beckons
The practice of patience in the heart and mind.

Certain types of waiting have no meaning,
Those of hopelessness and personal inaction
Plant nothing but false leaning,
Wishing for some reversing traction.

The breadth of life requires understanding,
World, Being, and History move on their own.
Impatience makes no mark on their processes,
Patient waiting slowly tarries, sometimes with a groan.

Rational plans move forward
Envision Utopia, a well-documented plan.
Enlightenment thought notwithstanding,
Incapable of controlling and to fully understand.

The art of patient waiting is something to be learned,
Like sowing a seed and watering the land.
There is nothing that impatience could turn
Life’s processes rapidly around and as grand.

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

1958 School Desegregation in Norfolk City Schools

In an earlier post today I wrote about the passing of Andrew Heidelberg, I wish now to place more detail about the context of that period of history.

Over the years many of my fellow 1962 graduates of Norview High School have kept in touch. Thanks to emails, the Internet and such, communication among us has been fairly easy. Due to this technology those fellow graduates who remained in the Tidewater area throughout their adult lives planned our 50th class reunion. That reunion was well-attended.

Andrew was unable to attend. He was missed and so were many others. In all there were 17 African Americans who entered previously all-white schools in 1958: the three high schools (Granby, Norview, and Maury) and several junior high schools.

From one perspective, the 17 were social test cases. From another point of view, the white students, teachers, and parents were test cases. It was painful for everyone, but for the 17 it was also dangerous. Few knew what might happen, and bad things did happen. Some of the seventeen dropped out and returned to their original schools. Andrew Heidelberg was one of those who stayed.

Though Andrew may have trembled in silent fear, his outward appearance was strong: not defiant, but strong and confident. Quickly he became friends with many. Likewise, many did not hold him in any high regard. These were some of the signs of that era. Many of us 14-year-olds at that time wanted to make good of an unwanted and potentially violent situation.

In 1959 when the closed schools were re-opened by a federal court order, the Norview campus was crowded not only with students but with the press. I, among others, was interviewed by some reporter.Pictures of that day can be viewed on Google Images.

Andrew wrote about his high school experience in a book (see link below). He pursued a successful career as a banker and late in life he began a masters degree program at Old Dominion University. In his book he told of his walk to school and his thoughts while approach the campus in February, He also wrote of his football friends especially on a football game trip to play EC Glass in Lynchburg. His football buddies ate with him in the kitchen of a restaurant because Andrew was not allowed to eat in the public dining area.

History was made that February and Andrew went on to be the engaging personality eliciting the best hopes from his white fellow students. Finally in his senior year he was allowed to play football and became a hero. He was fast. After graduation he played for Norfolk State.

I joined the United States Marine Corps just days after high school graduation. In my final year in the USMC I was stationed at Quantico, Virginia. I was a military musician in the band at Quantico. One day in 1966 there was a college sporting event on base. After playing the national anthem the band marched off the field returning to our barracks. On the march - I was on the left column when I spotted Andrew walking to the athletic field with his NSC teammates. I yelled out his name. He looked into the ranks of the band but could not find his caller.

In 2012 when talking to Andrew on the telephone I asked him if he remembered. A couple of years earlier I had emailed him about the same. He did. I wrote about that moment in my first book (see below).

Andrew Heidelberg, in my opinion, was the face of the history-making Norfolk 17.




Remembering Andrew Heidelberg


Remembering Andrew Heidelberg

Life was quite different in the year 1958,
Not a century since the end of the war.
‘Separate but equal’ had been law of the land,
The 1954 court declared its 1896 decision lore.

Suddenly change became rapid and real,
And certain states declined to accept.
The Old Dominion was one such commonwealth
Closing certain schools reacting to the ruling dealt.

Instead of us entering Norview High
As a freshman with the world’s promises ahead,
The governor shut down all those selected schools,
The start of that school year appeared dead.

Seven African American students
Assigned to the school,
Were thrust into political spotlight,
Though probably necessary, an awful and unwanted tool.

Andrew, the six, and all others near
Were denied their schooling rights that fall.
But the 1958 school year
Did not stop, but came to a crawl.

Pad locks and door blocks
On the school were fixed,
Because of a certain way of thinking,
That races could not mix.

Alternative schooling took root very fast,
Some churches acted quickly seen as their task.
The Feds and the Dominion worked on a solution,
And in February 1959 schools re-opened with no diminution.

It was rough new day for Andrew and the six,
Walking to school with some trepidation.
Their hearts beat fast
With anxiety, yet with hopeful anticipation.

Not all went smoothly
The four years of school,
But successful in the long,
Would prove the rule.

Andrew died just the other day,
After the Fourth of July
In the year 2015,
A grand old man with whom many identify.

Rest in Peace, Andrew.
 Class of 1962
Norview High School
Norfolk, Virginia




Sunday, July 5, 2015

A Prophet Without Honor and His Apostolate

A Prophet Without Honor and His Apostolate

He departed from where He was
With fishermen to His hometown.
Teaching on the Sabbath was His cause,
Unexpected amazement by the crowd to His sound.

Though He not a stranger, people overwhelmed by His skill,
How did such wisdom come from His soul?
Only a carpenter, His miracles brought chills
And offended those who thought Him too bold.

No prophet, He certainly knew, is honored at home
By neighbors and family in their unbelief.
He lay His hands on His own
People, to those sick He brings relief.

He went on to other villages and about,
Sending His fishermen out by two
With authority to rout
Impure spirits they knew.

Before their departure
Instructions He gave:
“No bread, no bag, no money,
Enter a house, stay and be brave.”

“To those who offer no welcome,
Nor listen with love,
Shake the dust off you feet,
But leave the spirit of the dove.”

To others the fishermen did preach
To new believers whose lives repent.
Out drove they the demons each,
Anointing sick people, then on to others they went.
Taken from Mark 6:1-13

Saturday, July 4, 2015

Arrogance of Supremacy

Arrogance of Supremacy


Of the branch in itself,
The five were a majority.
To render Caesar’s particular ruling,
They lacked cosmic authority.

As a delegated power
From the Creator’s own hand,
Its power intentionally limited
To stability in their land.

But usurpation of the Eternal’s
Planned breath for living,
An arrogance coded journal
Superseded Creation’s giving.

A rump court at best
With no precedence basis,
Changed world history none the less,
Hide on the high bench iconostasis.

We struggle not against flesh and blood,
But against rulers, powers, and authorities.
And so the dark world spreads like a flood,
When only five constitute a majority.


Friday, July 3, 2015

Fourth of July 2015

Purging for Purity

It’s the year twenty fifteen
On the Fourth of July,
Revelers holding in esteem
Their freedom and honorable defenders who died.

Internal detractors’
Minds distorted about history,
Giving no thought to many factors,
Create anti-monuments to be shrouded in future mystery.

There was a period
Not long ago,
When Bolsheviks deadly serious,
Forged an ugly human low.

History was banished,
A new dictionary born,
Making levels of human classes,
Minor ranks to be mourned.

In their own self-righteousness,
Those communists moved on,
Eliminating history and people
Not meeting their imposed norm.

Some in this universe continue to assert
Their disdain for Yahweh’s Chosen.
In vitriolic rhetoric they flirt
With destroying their enemy in a nuclear explosion.

“There was no holocaust” they insist.
History re-cast, they urge
The State of the Chosen to vaporize into mist.
“No remembrance, let’s purge!”

America now on the tipping point,
She could fall either way.
Her social structure forced out of joint,
Dare the chips fall where they may?

Where are America’s true thinkers, defenders, and believers?
After Virtue is gone, a disquieting suggestion:
The charlatans and deceivers
Will gather remaining pieces and lead by deception.

Wednesday, July 1, 2015

When Victory Is Not Enough

When Victory Is Not Enough

Things could have been different
Had a certain grace been in play,
When some spat on in victory
A sacerdote that day.

In exuberance of celebration
Through a mandate of a few,
They gloried a perceived new nation,
Collecting what they deemed due.

Not enough to claim victory
And move on in life,
Sticks of intellectual hickory,
On their enemy they swipe.

The sacerdote in passing
Accepted spit in his face;
Though an object of trashing,
Silently he radiated His grace.

This is not the first time
When retribution was employed.
Remember when Thaddeus and Georges,
Wanted their enemies destroyed?

Thaddeus loathed his southern cousins
During four years of strife;
Even after his victory,
He twisted more his knife.

Had compassion taken hold
Of his heart and his mind,
Perhaps something bold,
Could have converted the blind.

Georges's enmity toward
His eastern border,
Thwarted any possibility
Of a redeemed new world order.

Instead of forgiveness
He piled on the guilt,
In hope of destroying his neighbor
While grasping the hilt.

Charleston appeared a flash in reversal
Of payback, hatred and retribution.
Forgiveness and love was their constant rehearsal
Mother Emanuel’s church expressed the solution.

But haters and loathers
Took over later on,
Shouting shame to grace encroachers
With all sharp tongues they don.