A Little Bit of Birmy...a Little Bit of Hotlanta

So I experienced two different civil rights stories over the past 48 hours but surprisingly they kinda taught me the same thing...

Ok so to begin, yesterday we were in Birmingham and after having an awesome lunch at Zoes Kitchen (all you Greek food lovers check it out) I headed back to the 16th Street church where we were going to begin our next tour. As my group and I were crossing through Kelly Ingram Park a black man came over and started talking to us about his experience with the civil rights movement. This man lived two blocks down from 16th street Baptist Church and remembers the exact day that the klan bomb went off. He said that he also remembers the dogs and water hoses used on protesters in the park and even sang a part of one of the freedom songs he sang. He also laid out all the local businesses that used to be around the area and talked about how despite the tremulous times, what a neat experience it had been to grow up in the "Magic City". Overall it was just so touching to hear a real life account of the movement and despite his plea at the end of our conversation for some money to get him into the mission shelter down the street, which I wasn't expecting, I felt so blessed to help him out.





oh wait...an hour and a half later...he confronted our small groups and without recognizing that we were the same people he had talked to before...TOLD US THE SAME STORY AGAIN AND THEN DENIED THAT WE HAD EVER GIVEN HIM MONEY AND MADE US FEEL "GUILTY" FOR NOT WANTING TO GIVE TO A HOMELESS MAN"
---this officially made me regret my generosity earlier in the day when realizing that he obviously used this little sympathy story all the time...but then again...I did enable him to buy a massive bag of bbq pork rinds which he clearly enjoyed




Now the second story is a little more legit: when going through the first part of the King Center today I came across an interesting story about Dr. King. It was a small little enclave in the museum and was actually pretty easy to pass by, but what it showed me was so touching. One night Dr. King received a phone call threatening him that he and his family would soon regret moving to Birmingham, now I'm sure Dr. King was used to phone calls like this and other forms of threats; however, this night he became very frightened. He talked about how all these doubts and fears just overwhelmed him and for a couple minutes he almost lost sight of his purpose in the movement. It reminded me a lot of Jesus' confession to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane in which He asked God to take the cup from His hand if it be His will. Thus even Jesus and MLK got scared! But in both cases, the love for others and God given resilience proved true. Dr. King said that he immediately renounced the fear that he was feeling and began to pray earnestly that God would empower him to continue the task before him, because when we are at our weakest moments, that is when God is the strongest.


The connection I find between my homeless friend and MLK is the reality that all of the members of the civil rights movements were real people! Now, I know this seems like a ridiculous epiphany, but its their vulnerability that is so impacting. The men and women that protested were probably scared at times, they probably had doubts, they probably wanted to give up, and they maybe even hated what they had gotten themselves into...but what really makes them HEROES is not that they were supernatural but that they pushed through these thoughts and never gave up.

I am so inspired by the people I have read about this past week and truly hope that one day my life will amount to even a smidgen of the greatness they accomplishment---even if that just means living an ordinary life and pursuing the extraordinary when it flickers by.


---the inept blogger: Courtney :) (Syntyche's Group)