Life according to Gordon

I've been thinking just a little bit about the purpose of this blog. When I get back I plan to do a bit of spring cleaning. I'll either be drastically editing down or just outright deleting a number of posts that I feel are no longer in line with my thinking. At the same time I think I'm going to be switching away from using WordPress and start using some custom-made blogging software instead in order to afford some more granular control. I think there is a potential with this blog to do some good, and so far (with the exception of perhaps the last two posts) I don't think I've really been utilizing that. So expect to see changes within a few weeks to both the content and layout.

But until then, I thought I'd share with you all two absolutely wonderful examples of the power of Love to resolve all conflicts. The first is taken from a book called Return from Tomorrow by Dr. George Ritchie. This particular excerpt is about his encounter with a man who was a prisoner of a concentration camp, and his unconditional love and forgiveness is just absolutely incredible. The second is a video clip of a television interview, to which I've also included a transcript, of a former KKK member, his interactions with a black minister, and the result. This ex-KKK member later completely reformed all his ways and became a Christian minister himself, but what is really important to pay attention to is the loving response that the black minister offered to even the most frightening forms of hatred. His absolute refusal to take offense with this man despite his horrifying errors in judgment (that may seem obvious to you and me), and his ability to rightly discern who this man really was despite his poor actions, are nothing short of wonderful. I hope that both stories will help to light a flame of inspiration in your hearts to love more unconditionally and to forgive those who have hurt you, for both your own benefit and their's.

When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, the 123rd Evacuation entered Germany with the occupying troops. I was part of a group assigned to a concentration camp near Wuppertal [...] And that's how I came to know Wild Bill Cody. That wasn't his real name. His real name was seven unpronounceable syllables in Polish, but he had a long drooping handlebar mustache like pictures of the old western hero, so the American soldiers called him Wild Bill. He was one of the inmates of the concentration camp, but obviously he hadn't been there long: his posture was erect, his eyes bright, his energy indefatigable. Since he was fluent in English, French, German and Russian, as well as Polish, he became a kind of unofficial camp translator.

We came to him with all sorts of problems; the paper work alone was staggering in attempting to relocate people whose families, even whole hometowns, might have disappeared. But though Wild Bill worked fifteen and sixteen hours a day, he showed no signs of weariness. While the rest of us were drooping with fatigue, he seemed to gain strength. "We have time for this old fellow," he would say. "He's been waiting to see us all day." His compassion for his fellow prisoners glowed on his face, and it was to this glow that I came when my own spirits were low.

So I was astonished to learn when Wild Bill's own papers came before us one day that he had been in Wuppertal since 1939! For six years he had lived on the same starvation diet, slept in the same airless and disease-ridden barracks as everyone else, but without the least physical or mental deterioration.

Perhaps even more amazing, every group in the camp looked on him as a friend. He was the one to whom quarrels between inmates were brought for arbitration. Only after I'd been at Wuppertal a number of weeks did I realize what a rarity this was in a compound where the different nationalities of prisoners hated each other almost as much as they did the Germans.

As for Germans, feelings against them ran so high that in some camps liberated earlier former prisoners had seized guns, run into the nearest village and simply shot the first Germans they saw. Part of our instructions were to prevent this kind of thing and again, Wild Bill was our greatest asset, reasoning with the different groups, counseling forgiveness.

"It's not easy for some of them to forgive," I commented to him one day as we sat over mugs of tea in the processing center. "So many of them have lost members of their families."

Wild Bill leaned back in the upright chair and sipped at his drink. "We lived in the Jewish section of Warsaw," he began slowly, the first words I had heard him speak about himself, "my wife, our two daughters, and our three little boys. When the Germans reached our street they lined everyone against a wall and opened up with machine guns. I begged to be allowed to die with my family, but because I spoke German they put me in a work group." He paused, perhaps seeing again his wife and five children. "I had to decide right then," he continued, "whether to let myself hate the soldiers who had done this. It was an easy decision, really. I was a lawyer. In my practice I had seen too often what hate could do to people's minds and bodies. Hate had just killed the six people who mattered most to me in the world. I decided then that I would spend the rest of my life--whether it was a few days or many years--loving each person I came in contact with."

Loving every person . . . this was the power that had kept a man well in the face of every privation.

Video Transcript:

A: In 1979, you went to a radio debate with the Reverend Wade Watts, who was the state leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, worked with Martin Luther King. When you got to this debate, he held out his hand for you to shake. Did you hesitate?

J: He caught me off guard. See, I'm expecting this black militant to come in with a great big afro and an African dashiki on with bones hanging around it and a button on that says, "I hate honkies," and "death to crackers," and all that stuff.

A: You seriously thought that?

J: Yeah, that's what I thought. And I thought he'd come in there carrying a boom box wearing out the theme from Shaft; I figured he'd say, "Black is beautiful, honkie. I'm gonna kill all you white devils!" That's what I thought I was going to see, so when the door opened up and in came Reverend Wade Watts, and he's wearing a suit and a tie and he's carrying a Bible, and he walks out and puts his hand out to me and says, "Hello there Mr. Clary. I'm Reverend Wade Watts. I just want to tell you that I love you and Jesus loves you," I'm shocked! And he puts his hand out and I'm shaking his hand without thinking because this isn't what I'm expecting.

Then I realized that I just broke a clan rule and I jerked my hand back and I start looking at my hand. He saw that, and that was met as an insult. The clan rulebook says that the physical touch of a non-white is pollution, and I thought I just shook hands with a black person, and he sees me looking at my hand and says, "don't worry Johnny, it don't come off." And I start calling him names, I say, "you no good, sorry bleep bleep, you mother this, you this you that," and he looked at me and said, "God bless you Johnny." He said, "you can't do enough to me to make me hate you; I'm going to love you and I'm going to pray for you whether you like it or not." And I didn't know how to deal with that; I had never had that happen to me before.

A: A few years later you burnt down his church, didn't you?

J: Set fire to his church. See, what happened was that we had started off going to his house, calling him names, we got no response. We threw trash all over his lawn, got no response. We showed up with our sheets and hoods and stood out there in his yard, and said, "get on out here boy, we got something for you," and he comes outside and says, "boys, Halloween is four more months away; I got no trick or treats in here for you. Come back in October," and he goes back in the house.

A: That's a brave man.

J: Yeah! And I didn't know how to deal with this. And so the clan says, "you got any more bright ideas?" I said, "I don't know!" And then I said, "I'll tell you what we'll do," so we burned a cross across the street from his house. He came outside and asked us if we needed hotdogs and marshmallows for our barbeque.

So finally I said I'm tired of messing with him, so we set fire to his church. And they put the fire out before the church was destroyed, and I remember I called him up and disguised my voice, and I said, "hey boy you better be afraid, we're coming to get you boy, you don't know who we are but we know who you are," and he says, "Hello Johnny! A man like you takes the time to call me; I'm so honored! Let me do something for you," he says, "Dear Lord, please forgive Johnny for being so stupid. He doesn't mean to be so ornery; he's a good boy trying to--" and I hung up the phone, and I said, "how dare him!"

The funniest thing that happened with him, though, is when I didn't know what to do, and I was at my rope's end, and one day we were watching him and he went into a restaurant, so we got a bunch of us together and about thirty of us went in there and surrounded him, and he had this chicken there on the table at the restaurant, and I walked up and said, "hey boy, this restaurant's for white people only; we don't want you here. So I'm going to make you a promise." I said, "I promise you we're going to do the same thing to you that you do to that chicken, so you think real hard before you touch that chicken."

So he looked at me and looked at the clan, then he picked up the chicken and he kissed it. And when he kissed the chicken, the whole restaurant acted just like ya'll did; they all start laughing. And I looked up and even the clan was laughing. You gotta admit, that was funny. I said, "everyone of you outside!" I'm outside and they're doubled over laughing, I'm saying, "you guys are going to get suspended and lose your robes for two weeks; I'm getting tired of this." And I'm hollering at them and yelling and they're laughing, and I heard a horn honk and Reverend Watts is driving by, waving, and saying, "Bye Johnny!" And that's how he chose, that's how one old black--we never bothered him again--and that's how one old black man defeated the entire Ku Klux Klan, because he used his head instead of brawn.

A: And he used his heart too, a very brave man.

J: He used his heart, yeah.