This thread seems to have developed its own rhythm. There will be a brief flurry of postings, and then it slips off the bottom of the page for three or four days.

Tonight's forecast: Scattered flurries..

Rev. Al Sharpton preached at our church today. In honesty, I was finding it hard to imagine what a sermon of his would be like. At least in this country, we get the news a bite at a time, and not necessarily a typical "bite." Out of a half hour interview, they'll pick the fifteen seconds that are most controversial that will fit between eight commercials. All the times I've seen Al Sharpton he's been railing about something. In almost instances, something railable. But, like most other people, I had a very one-dimensional
impression of him. By the time he got to church I was about seeing pink elephants swinging from the chandeliers. I sing in the Men's Chorus at the 8 o'clock service with my friends Joe and Frankie, which meant that we had to get up at 5. After the 8 o'clock service, we had and hour and forty five minutes to kill before the 11 o'clock service, when Rev. Sharpton was preaching. We knew there'd be a large crowd and we didn't wat to go for breakfast, because by the time we got back, the parking lot would be full. We didn't want to give up our precious parking space. So, we killed an hour and 45 minutes. Or at least seriously wounded it.

The service rolled along at a leisurely pace, with no sign of Rev. Sharpton. Then they delivered a message from the pulpit that he was stuck in traffic. By then, it was after twelve and Ruth and I were about halucinating from tiredness and the heat in the church. But finally, at a quartet to one, Rev. Sharpton arrived... just in time for the sermon. And what a sermon!

The Rev. is a brilliant man. Unlike his sound bites, he is very measured in his speaking. His drama comes from a well placed pause. He uses silence like a gun shot. The text that he drew from, which we all stood up and read together, is the same text that I wrote a song about, three years ago, titled Healing Waters. The story is about a man who has been crippled for 38 years, waiting by the pools of Bethesda outside the walls of Jerusalem, waiting for someone to lift him into the pool when an angel troubled the waters, so that he could be healed. Rev. Sharpton's sermon was titled "Get Up." He opened with a few comments about the continuing inequities for blacks in America and expressed his frustration that people talk as if the Civil Rights movement was something that happened in the sixties. By then, I figured that the sermon was going to focus on injustice, which Rev. Sharpton is still speaking out against. But, he spoke powerfully on the title he'd chosen: Get Up. His sermon was a call to reclaim the moral high ground and confront the young generation of blacks who think that it is cool to carry a gun and take on the rol of Gangsta's and pimps. He wasn't strident in his delivery. His tone would not be out of place here at this kitchen table. I was enormously impressed with all he had to say, and how cogently he set forth his call for people to take charge of their lives, and speak out against the malaise in the black community. His focus was not on American blacks as helkpless victims of injustice. His concern was that they've accepted it. He is a good man.