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legacy

August 2004

General George Thomas, who fought famously well for the Union Army during the Civil War, grew up in the same neck of the woods, and in the same time as Nat Tuner�s insurrection. This event occurred in August of 1831 and was long referred to by locals as �the August madness.� George Thomas was a teenager back then, and his intimate knowledge of that event, may help to explain why this native son refused to fight for the Confederacy and defend old �Dixie� down there in his own land of cotton. Maybe it had something to do with �the August madness.� It was in that same region, around Courtland, that one of my distant ancestors, Hark Joyner, literally �jumped the gun� on a quite momentous occasion. He was with a hastily gathered group of farmers-turned-militiamen the day after Nat Turner�s rebellion, which had left about 60 white folks slaughtered in their sleep along the desolate dirt roads of that deep country area. Hark Joyner, so the story goes, was with this small, mounted group, prepared to pounce upon Nat Turner�s little rag tag army right across the field, when, all of sudden, his horse recognized it�s colt over with the slaves and lunged forward, causing Hark�s gun to go off prematurely and aborting the attack. � Bill Joyner

To understand is to stand under which is to look up to which is a good way to understand. �Corita Kent

Every individual must be consulted in such a way � that he himself becomes a part of the process of authority. � John Dewey

SUNDAY

MONDAY

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

The mind always returns

to the scene of the crime;

Returns because of wounds

too terrible

and too beautiful to forget;

Returns irresistibly

over the torturous trail

of unerased memories.

�

It was one hundred years after

Nat Turner�s insurrection,

but the memories lingered on.

...

Malice and bigotry

Grew wild those days

�like tangled grass in the peanut vines.

William T. Joyner, WHEELS IN THE AIR, Pilgrim Press, l968

You call me the �Bomb.� But if you look closely you will find that I am only the cross in its most recent manifestation. And like the cross, God took me, an instrument of your cruelty and hate, and began to speak through me to a lost world. You dreaded my coming, but it was long overdue and quite predictable. You might have concluded long before that inhuman violence would eventually produce a weapon of ultimate horror. Yes, I am the ultimate weapon, perhaps God�s ultimate prophet, forcing you to decide between self-destruction and human reconciliation. � (Excerpt from a 1962 sermon, �The Message of the Bomb.�) � BJ

So, then I bid you despair, and never more will your frivolity cause you to wander like an unquiet spirit, like a ghost, amid the ruins of a world, which to you is lost. �A certain persistence in despair finally gives birth to joy. � Soren Kierkegaard

A place where questions are scattered like seeds, an atmosphere where answers for a season grow and blossom � it is the school the garden of our life is. � Corita Kent

The major challenge for each human being is to master and control hate and to integrate it with loving feelings lest the hate destroy the loving connection to others. � Israel Charney

Global warming is an imminent threat to us all, but we avoid thinking about it because (1) we know we�re complicit in the tragedy and (2) because there seems little or nothing we can do about it. Our theology of ecology is not very well developed either, many people opting out of any responsibility by leaving it all up to God � when the All Being of One Kind may very well be leaving it all up to us. After all, are we not created as free agents whose gift it is to be active partners with God in the work of creation? What an act of faith that is � by God, in us! We ourselves are both the problem and the solution. �All power pollutes. Turn it off.� �BJ

P. O. Box 3411 / Sarasota, Florida 34230

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2004 AUGUST AOUT AUGUSTOOT 2004