No sermon in church today...

A group of talented young people

performed a musical representation of

the Feeding of the Five Thousand, 

a story about sharing.

In the afternoon I went for another long bike ride.

As I rode around Mission Bay to Pacific Beach and Mission Beach

and then along the river to get back home again 

I thought about how different life is for these young people

from the experience of thousands of kids growing up in conditions of abject poverty.

contempt: noun

the feeling that a person or a thing is beneath consideration, worthless, or deserving scorn.

indignation: noun

strong displeasure at something considered unjust, offensive, insulting, or base; righteous anger

One of my personal failings is that I’ve reached “elder age” without having learned to tamp down the impulse to shoot from the hip, to respond to provocation, challenge or dilemma with the first thing that comes into my head, to rush to judgement and then consider questions later. Last week I was transfixed by the Television news coverage of the rampage and rampant destruction of property in Baltimore after Freddie Gray died in police custody.  I have learned that since Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, more than a dozen other young people have been killed by police officers: Trayvon Martin in Florida, Tamir Rice in Ohio, Cameron Tillman in Louisiana, VonDerrit Myers Jr in Missouri, Laquan McDonald in Illinois, Carey Smith-Viramontes in California, Jeffrey Holden in Missouri, Jeffrey Holden in Ohio, Jeffrey Holden in Georgia, Dillon McGee in Tennessee, Levi Weaver in Georgia, Karen Cifuentes in Oklahoma, Sergio Ramos in Texas, Roshad McIntosh in Illinois, Diana Showman in California, Michael Brown in Missouri. What’s going on?  Why?

Focus is now on the six police officers who took Freddie Gray into custody.  We’ve all heard/read details of his being handcuffed and shackled… left face down on the floor of the police van, not secured by anything to keep him from being tossed around in the three-quarters of an hour ride before he was discovered to have sustained fatal injuries caused either by deliberate abuse or by police officers’ negligence.  The six officers have been indicted and will be tried in court for homicide. 

Rallies and protests following Freddie Gray’s death have been marked by sharp divisions of opinions by people in Baltimore and elsewhere.  Some demonstrators carry signs insisting “BLACK LIVES MATTER,” and others wave signs countering “POLICE LIVES MATTER.”

  

My friend Ben Christensen reminded me early last week of a famous quote by philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation.” The word contempt has been stuck in my brain all week. That powerful word is not likely to get unstuck from my thinking anytime soon. I’m guessing the police officers implicated in the Freddie case failed to respond appropriately to him because they thought of him as someone beneath consideration, worthless, deserving of scorn. To them he was contemptible.  I’m guessing those officers are not basically bad people. They are probably considerate and perhaps even very good in their dealings with friends and with members of their own families.