Thank You, Montgomery

So very grateful for this weekend with so many conversations and lessons learned and unlearned (with so much more to learn...) The New York Times said about the Legacy Museum: "There's nothing like this in this country," and I wholeheartedly agree and think everyone who can go should jump on the chance to experience this. 

Deliver us from amnesia
God of peace, God of justice, God of freedom,
We give you thanks for your cadences of peace justice and freedom, 
cadences that have surged through the lives of Martin and Ralph, Rosa and John, Fred and Bryan, Hosea and Jesse and Andy 
And all that nameless mask of risktakers who have been obedient to your promises and susceptible to your dreams .
Deliver us from amnesia concerning their courage in the face of violence, their peacemaking against hate and their hunger for you in a devouring economy.
Deliver us from amnesia, 
turn our memory into hope, turn our gratitude into energy, turn our well-being into impatience.
That these same cadences of your will may pulse even among us. Amen
-Walter Brueggemann

at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church

 (where MLK led the congregation from 1954- 1960) 

"Most gracious and all wise God, before whose face the generations rise and fall; Thou in whom we live, and move, and have our being. We thank thee [for] all of thy good and gracious gifts, for life and for health; for food and for raiment; for the beauties of nature and human nature. We come before thee painfully aware of our inadequacies and shortcomings. We realize that we stand surrounded with the mountains of love and we deliberately dwell in the valley of hate. We stand amid the forces of truth and deliberately lie. We are forever offered the high road and yet we choose to travel the low road. For these sins O God forgive. Break the spell of that which blinds our minds. Purify our hearts that we may see thee. O God in these turbulent days when fear and doubt are mounting high give us broad visions, penetrating eyes, and power of endurance. Help us to work with renewed vigor for a warless world, for a better distribution of wealth and for a brother/sisterhood that transcends race or color. In the name and spirit of Jesus we pray. Amen."  -Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Freedom Rides Museum 

(site of the violent attack on participants in the 1961 Freedom Ride during the Civil Rights Movement) 

Rosa Parks statue in Montgomery 

Court Square Fountain (formerly the central location of the Montgomery slave trade) 

hundreds of footprints painted on the crosswalk on Dexter Avenue in front of MLK's church to commemorate the Selma March to Montgomery in 1965 for voting rights that finished at the capital building 

“God does not wait for us to ‘tidy up our ideas’ or our behavior before accepting us into God’s family…. God takes us as we are along with all our partners, our biases, our blind spots, and our baggage. God works with all of it.

At the same time, Christ does not leave us as he finds us. Not only does God in Christ take people as they are but Christ also takes them in order to transform them into what He wants them to be.” -Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian

Thankful that this trip has been a way that God does not leave us as he finds us. May this continue to be a time we are all transformed and changed for the sake of the kingdom. 

Dereck McNeil (one of our trip leaders who is a good friend of Skip Li's) 

 and Bryan Stevenson on Friday when we got to hear Bryan speak