Another story you don’t want to read–an innocent child abused to death by drug addicts but the court vacates a legitimate sentence of murder because they do not see sufficient intentionality?
Are they crazy?
Nope.
In fact, they are being highly pragmatic. They are reflecting the value of a single child’s life in our culture. How much is Jada’s suffering and death and the lies told to cover her murder worth to you?
Make some noise. Justice for Jada.
My father was a southerner of the same generation as Ms. Deen. He did not speak directly to the question of the “n” word and his culture. As a child I knew these stories:
His father owned a hardware store. He was taught to call people “sir” and “ma’am” and so he did so until his father told him these terms did not apply to the African American customers who came to the store.
Why? My father wondered. He never, as long as I knew him, treated anyone with partiality. He was not convinced by prejudice and racism. Always fair at all things except cards–in which case the man played to win.
Or the stories of the black women who raised him. They loved him, put up with him, nurtured him, and gave him his taste for butter on rice and pinto beans. A taste that is sewn into who we are and what we call home.
And then there was Tav–Octavia, the subject of the most explosive argument I remember between my father and his parents.
They objected to loans she got from the government to renovate her shack. She was their employee. If they had paid her a living wage then she could have afforded her own linoleum and shingles.
Hardly luxuries.
But this last story is mine: I was 4 or 5 at most and a relative repeated a familiar rhyme that often has the word “tiger” in it. Only she used the n word. I did not know at first what it meant.
My parents (Paula Deen’s age and no angels) explained that it was a derogatory term we did not use.
If you can teach a 5 year old that some words are painfully off-limits, well…you can teach just about anyone.
Trick is to get’em to understand God sees us all the same–His beautiful children.
From the beginning her name was spelled wrong–Charish, Peri- and Perri all were thrown into the horrifying chronology of a little girl taken and murdered.
I first saw “Charish Periwinkle” and have not changed it on my original post. I have not edited that post for several reasons–it reflects the tumult of hours in which there was a report, an Amber alert, a traffic stop, an arrest, a missing child, and then a confirmed tragedy.
If you go back a bit you might say the tragedy started May 31, the day Donald Smith was released from jail–seemingly without restrictions. Or more than a year before, when a court of law sentenced him very lightly for yet another egregious felony after over 30 years of dangerous aggressions toward young children.
The story says nothing about how the state or the country expected this predatory man to avoid his dark actions.
No one but his neighbors and his victims really cared about that.
And yet now we know what should have been addressed before–he was always capable of monstrous harm.
And now we have just a name–Cherish means to greatly love, prize, or esteem and yet she was not cherished by the man who treated her like a cast-off rag doll.
And I still maintain–if we cherish our children we will do something to ensure that every child is safe–at a dollar store, a Walmart, a McDonalds–each symbols of our drive-by, fast-food culture.
Now symbols of everything that can go wrong in the life of a dear little girl named after love and flowers.
The story is unbearable. You want to look away. Not read it. Unthink it. Yell to the hapless mother–if he fricking wants to buy the kid a snack he can bring it to her in a to-go bag!!!!
You want to just write the story off–idiot mother!
I say this because I was the idiot mother. Now I am the nearly-friendless mother. I don’t have a social life because too often I have told the story of how I trusted an honor roll high schooler with my kids and it cost us.
I want to make a bet with you–
If you have kids you trust them around someone you shouldn’t. Whether you want to face it or not: we all know pedophiles.
They don’t all resort to murder, but they all kill. They kill innocence and communities and faith.
Whatcha gonna do about it? Go get a snow cone? Read about North West?
How about not calming down? How about making some noise? If the flipping NSA can troll the net for terrorists shouldn’t they throw a few tax dollars at keeping a 9 year old safe from the bad guys they already know about?
When Lee Harvey Oswald was 14 he read a pamphlet denouncing the Rosenbergs’ execution. He reported later that it was this pamphlet that stirred his interest in communism.
You could argue that the Rosenberg execution was responsible for the murder of JFK.
I used to have a theory that there is always someone who stands in the path of evil. I called this theory “Joseph Stalin’s Sunday school teacher” because I had read that he had been exposed to Christian education when he was young.
I thought–what if one of his teachers had been able to show him Jesus? What if the love of God had changed his life when he was still young?
Yes. I know. It did not play out that way. And yet I believe still in the dangerous power of interventionist love.
And the even more dangerous power of fear. Love is nothing if not courageous.
The floor lay beneath Berber carpet for years–maybe fifteen, maybe twenty. I am sure it was pretty when it was new.
When the carpet came up the floor was exposed, rough with bits of carpet underlay and glue. I sanded off the glue and bits of carpet. We all pried up staples.
Other jobs intervened–xeriscape, painting, and my husband’s amazing carpentry.
I spent this weekend scraping the floor, staining it, and then applying the first layer of polyurethane.
It felt like archeology–the floor went from bare wood to rich beauty. It is now my favorite floor in the house–every detail, every sign of age has taken on a rich patina of grace.
Real. It is real and because it is real it is lovely. You can imitate real, you can buy it for a price, but when it is a transformation you are allowed to participate in, the picture stays with you–a beautiful history.
In the months before I lost Veronica I refrained from listening to ordinary love songs. I remember those months too well–waiting in hope and fear.
I had so much faith. I knew–knew He would bring her back. It has been 14 years. 3 to go…
I have felt that fear so many times since–the fear of loss and grief and love.
Perfect love casts out all fear.
Imperfect love clings to the scarred feet of Perfect Love, praying for flat out miracles.
Imagine you thought you could change the world. No. Not the whole frickin’ thing, just bits and pieces…
Imagine you thought you could do it by taking care of troubled children–oh, sure, it wouldn’t be fun…
There would be the loss, for instance.
People would treat you like you had the plague.
Your family would say you must be doing something wrong.
But you would plough through. Deeply imperfect but there. And, yes, better than the alternative.
You would do it because you believed. You believed in nurture. You believed in God.
Imagine if you did all that and then, well, it seemed like the little tikes turned out to be losers. Yep. Remarkably similar to their genetic roots. Real bonafide knuckleheads.
Well…
If you got discouraged I would tell you what I tell myself.
We are all losers without Jesus.
And…it ain’t over till it’s over, girl.
Can’t drown love. They tried once. He just rose again. My kind of Loser.
He tells me in shocked terms that he has lost all his money. More to the point–his family has taken it. Fast. Five or six thousand dollars in under two months.
His mother has lied to him and taken his money. Ugh.
I have ambivalent feelings about what he tells me–I don’t believe anyone should let him babysit. I want to believe he can change. I tell him I will always be your mother, you will always be my kid.. But I still want to tell the people around him–watch out, he can do devastating things.
A judge
A state
A juvenile system
A bunch of elected officials
And two complete communities, two complete families…well, dozens, really, have told me shut up.
But the children…who will protect these children?
Our conversation and my mother’s role in supporting him unequivocally raises issues of intense grief for me.
He is a convicted pedophile and she has given him support and encouragement.
I am her daughter and she has rejected me since I was a young child. It is hard to face the comparison and it is painful to acknowledge the way she sees me.
I run to God.
I run to this Parent who will not leave me. And because He refuses to abandon me, I know He sticks with all of us–our misshapen, sin-harmed souls so far from home, so close to the Cross that saves us.
You draw love
As you drink
Like a bored housewife beside her
Rotary phone
Judicious sips
When you should
Gulp…
Deep well, girl
This is a deep well
Look down into history
Up, into the face of God
But you are right
About cliches–
playing with fire…
Springs eternal
In the end only He will draw love
With his right hand
And we will hold ours out in supplication
For living water
Carrying Light 