The Eye Doesn’t Lie
I am sad this week, the week of the trial for the so-called police officer who murdered George Floyd in front of God and everybody, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. And my heart hurts for those blind souls who perceive the situation through their privilege and politics and pristine lives and conclude something other than what we all saw with our own eyes last summer. How twisted is their pointing of gnarled fingers at the man who was pinned between the curb and the street, how vacant their hearts.
A web of connections anchors me to the geography and spirit of the place of George Floyd’s death. Seventy years ago, my mother lived a block away from the crime scene in a church parsonage with her family. Around the same time, my grandfather was a deputy sheriff for Hennepin County. His son, my father, spent the final years of his career as an F.B.I agent in the Minneapolis office after having spent the bulk of his career in the racist environs of Mississippi and East Texas. I grew up in that world but didn’t learn of its underbelly until I was old enough to do my own investigating. Until his passing in 2017, Daddy lived less than a mile from the site of another tragic event, the 2016 killing of Philando Castile. Activists my parents were not, but they were good people. I have to believe they would have seen what we all saw that horrifying day, May 25, 2020.
During this week that many call Holy, what will be believed? A form of policing that allows a struggling man to be asphyxiated by the knee of law enforcement? Or a form of justice that invests in relationships and communities of trust and that asks what can be changed so that this never happens again?
These options are not new ones but are as old as the ages. One compassionate onlooker provided a clue long ago to His preference. Love your neighbor, He said, as yourself.
May it be so.
