In and out

In the middle of World War II Fred and Mavis Brown, my parents, delivered me, their first-born, to the altar of First Methodist Church, Corpus Christi, TX. As I was passed through baptismal waters, they promised to raise me to live a life that becomes the Gospel. The current ritual includes these words by which parents promise to raise their children: “Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?”

In the 1940’s world in which fascist authoritarianism sought to bend the whole world to its will, my parents promised to lead me into a life of compassion, a life of caring connection with others, a life of willing the other’s good, a life of neighbor love and justice. Theirs was an audacious undertaking, an act of public and defiant resistance to the prevailing political realities of those times.

Over my lifetime I have learned that there is no one who is not my neighbor. In recent years I have realized that it is impossible to retire from one’s baptism. And in these Act-III years of my life, I am haunted by the brevity of life. We are quickly in and out. 

And so in today’s times that mimic my baptismal year, I ponder how I might practice neighbor love and justice in my remaining years. This is the clarity that is unfolding…I am meant to be a whistleblower, blowing the whistle on evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.