Baltimore and Back...and Charlottesville

Almost 7 hours down on Thursday and over 6 hours back on Saturday. We've often made the the 288 miles in 4 and a half hours. But August beach traffic in Delaware and Maryland and New Jersey to some extent, made the trip a nightmare. But the good dream was to see Josh and Cathy and Morgan/Emma/Tegan and be with them in their house in the Mount Washington neighborhood of Baltimore. Baltimore, more than any other city I've been in besides Sienna, Italy, have really strict and distinct 'neighborhood' identity. In Sienna the 11 (I think...or 12) neighborhoods each sponsor a horse in a city wide annual horse race and each neighborhood has colors and costumes that are distinct. In Baltimore, neighborhoods don't have horse races, but they matter in many ways. Mount Washington is, it seems, the highest part of Baltimore and looks a lot like Connecticut. Very leafy and lovely. Worth 13 hours of driving.....

I never meant to be an Episcopal priest. I meant to go to the University of Virginia and get a PhD.in American Literature and teach in some small college in the mid-Atlantic states and write the 'Great American Novel' along the way. But I was nominated by two of my college professors for a Rockefeller Foundation Trial Year in Seminary. I kept telling them I didn't want to go to seminary and told the Rockefeller people that and I got it and went to Harvard Divinity School on Rockefeller guilt money. UVA had delayed my admittance for a year but after one year in Cambridge and getting married I decided it was stupid to go to Harvard and not get a degree. I was so poor I got a full ride from Harvard for my second year and a Master of Theological Studies degree. That and a cup of coffee makes you a highly educated Sunday School teacher!

The reason I bring this up is that the University of Virginia is in Charlottesville, where, I'm sure you know a neo-Nazi/white supremacist/KKK rally ended in violence and death.

And our President has yet to call out by name those groups and their domestic terrorism.

I longed to live in Charlottesville. It is a beautiful and sophisticated city. It deserves better.

But in trying to tell the truth about it's racial past (Thomas Jefferson owned and bedded slaves there) and to take down confederate symbols it became the locus of White supremacist hatred.

And a young woman died.

And the President has yet to call out those groups and denounce them by name.

Shame on him. Shame, shame, shame.

And I feel so bad for Charlottesville, a city trying to do what is right and true and noble, to be victim of such hatred and violence.

Pray for Charlottesville and pray our President will come to his senses and denounce the hate of those terrorists.

Pray hard, beloved. We need hard prayer....