Two months since I have blogged.  Been a very manic time at our house...or the house that we have sold, I guess I should say.  I will send more about that later.

Or not. Why should anyone have to read about our house selling, etc.???

Anyway, just hasn't been much time to sit at the computer but I made time tonight.

Here is why.  

I watched the TODAY show as I readied this morning for my Echocardiogram. I saw an interview with  Rachel Dolezal who just resigned as President of the Spokane NAACP Chapter. She is a woman who is Caucasian but identifies as African-American. 

Oookaaay.

She has been called Trans-Racial.

Oookaaay?

As I drove home, I heard on NPR an African American man who said it was possible that she felt to be able to really be accepted as a NAACP leader, she would need to BE black.

Okay!?!

Although I feel troubled by what I sense is a troubled woman's choices, I blog because I  'get' that point.

Here is why.

When I began as director of an inner city ministry, I did all I could to connect at a grassroots level as well as to work in partnership with the community.  Most of the community that I was in 'ministry WITH' (not 'TO') was African-American.

At one of the very first sessions I had with other leaders, an African-American man and an Hispanic woman challenged me.  They said that I should not work with these kids and families because I was not Black.

It shook me.  

They were right.  I was not...and still am not...Black.

I said as much at the meeting,  I said I was a middle-aged WHITE woman.  I did not think I had any more to offer the folk I would be working with then they had to offer me.  It just seemed like coming together MIGHT lift us all. 

If it did not work because I was white...or old...or ineffective....or whatever...I would quit.

I almost quit before I started....because I felt...and still do...that they DID have a point.

I was simply a humbled but willing passionate-about-what- this-world-is-meant-to-look-like middle aged white woman. 

I knew that it was likely that a middle aged African-American MAN would have been more effective...

...but, I was the one there so I decided to take the journey.

I did not pretend to BE what I was NOT anymore than I pretend to be widowed or gay or dying of cancer or ANYTHING that so many people I love have experienced.

As with all those with whom I journey, I simply tried to inform myself THROUGH them and walk alongside...or, often, stumble alongside... as a fellow child of God....and, boy, did I feel like a child!

That decade was one of the most challenging, inspirational, growing, BLESSED years of my life.

I will forever thank the kids, families and GOD for those years.

I HONESTLY do understand that someone whose experience mirrored theirs could have been a more apt fit but, I was what I was...pretending otherwise (whatever the reason) seems to me to be too slippery of a slope.

TRUTH RISES.

Period.

Rachel Dolezal is experiencing that now as have so many for so many reasons before her.

I am sad that we humans feel the need to deceive to be accepted into each others' corner of the world.

For so many reasons.

And, when it comes to the color of our skin, I am really sad.

That Echocardigram today?  The technician said I could watch my heart.

I did.

It was the EXACT same color as all human hearts.

The same color as my great grandson's heart.

I am his beyond middle-aged Caucasian Great-Granny and I could not love him more whatever the color of OUR skin.

And, when it comes to who loves him, I am just one of a RAINBOW of folk!