Editorial

Home repairs

Let us fix the things we can

Folks in trouble, seeking sanctuary, have always gravitated to the nearest church. But what are they to do when the church itself, like every other institution in American society, seems under attack and no place seems safe? Ironies abound. Police officers who are sworn to serve and protect are attacked in cities across the country, and many of the rest of us feel under attack, too--by the police.

Yet, despite it all, faith thrives. For desperation can be the birth of inspiration. Like the earliest Christians hiding out in Rome's catacombs, this church's congregants gather together to grow stronger and to strengthen one another. This church in Searcy, Ark., calls itself The Gathering Place--and the name fits. For here gather together cops and civilians, black and white and in-between. Call it a microcosm of American society itself in this Year of Our Lord 2016.

These congregants meet in what was once a department store and is now only a work in uneven progress. It's a tumble-down ruin of a place without anything to offer but faith, hope and charity. Which have always proven more than enough in any age.

Of course this church would be located on Race Street in Searcy not far from the city's center. Which is where any church belongs--right in the vortex of changing times--in order to offer its unchanging message: The church's pastor, Barak Stafford, is a former police dispatcher turned healer, evangelist and comforter in one. He looks over his bare ruined choir, poor in everything but the spirit, and notes that the church's building may be broken but God isn't finished with it yet. Any more than He is with the rest of us.

Brent Rowsey, who's both cop and congregant, puts it this way: Here he never has to ask, "Will I be welcome here?" And he adds: "When you meet somebody that's real and that's caring, they don't look at if you're a police officer or a minority. Church is like that. Come as you are. It doesn't matter. Black, white, purple, green. It doesn't matter." To put it another, older way: Judge not that ye be not judged. "You're going to get people from everywhere . . ." he says of The Gathering Place. "No one looks at you as what your economic status is. No one looks at where you came from. No one is going to judge you when you come through these doors."

Officer Rowsey's may be a contemporary way of describing what it's like to be part of Corpus Christi, the body of Christ in this broken world ever in need of repair, rejuvenation and, yes, rejoicing. For like lamentations, praise-songs have their place in the liturgy, too. And both offer a release from the feeling of helplessness that may tempt people in these times or any other to just give up and withdraw from a fallen world. Even though a sense of purpose may be just what is most needed. As well as action to back it up, for by our deeds the world will know us.

Yes, but what can folks beyond Searcy and The Gathering Place do to get past the raving, raging headlines ("Baton Rouge gunman kills 3 lawmen," "Killings put police on high alert")? And past the temptation to turn our backs on the world when we should be doing whatever we can to redeem it. In his time, Booker T. Washington had an answer to that question. He'd tell the the story of a sailing crew lost in the salty seas and dying of thirst, not realizing that their vessel had wandered into a little freshwater cove where a river emptied into the sea. Until someone on shore shouted: "Cast down your bucket where you are!"

It's good advice whether you belong to high church or low. Or to no church at all. But to a family, a civic club or sewing circle, a neighborhood, a city. Make peace in the home and it will spread out till it leads to peace in the nation and, who knows, the world. But let us begin where we are. Then hope, the thing with feathers, may be reborn.

Editorial on 07/23/2016

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