In this Issue:

Convention 2006

Alaska's Bishop Mc Donald, keynotes 2006 Convention

Nominees for Diocesan Offices

Resolution Alert! Due in Diocesan Office by February 3

Other Stories

Ministry of Hospitality: St. Paul's Newport

Listening: King's message spans Americas, Panama's bishop declares

Haitian institute director killed in Port-au-Prince

Trinity Institute explores 'The anatomy of reconciliation' Jan. 30-Feb. 1

Commentaries

From the Bishop: Daddy, Why can't I go to Fun Town?

Reflection: Riding a bumpy camel

X-ercizing: Advent Lessons

Meeting God in Pascagoula, Mississippi

Diocesan Calendar

Past Issues

From the Bishop: Daddy, Why Can't I Go to Fun Town?

When I was very young, in the early 1960s, my grandmother used to take me to Fun Town. I suppose you would describe Fun Town as a distant ancestor of a theme park. It was the only place of its kind in Atlanta in those days. Going to Fun Town was, without doubt, my favorite thing to do. Someone once told me as a child that what heaven would be is everyone’s favorite thing all the time. I thought heaven for me would be like Fun Town.

In those days when my grandmother would take me to Fun Town, I now know that there was another child in Atlanta that wanted to go to Fun Town as much as I did. She and I had a lot in common. Her father and my father were born in Atlanta the same year, 1929. Her father and mine grew up near each other in Southwest Atlanta. They did not go to school together. My father went to Brown High School, which was named for the Civil War Governor of Georgia. I don’t know where her father went, but I’m sure it was close by. Her father had gone on to be better educated than my father, but they both faced obstacles to getting the education they had and they were both making their way in their hometown. She and I were about the same age.

There were differences, too. One was gender, but there was another. The color of her skin was black. Her last name was King, and her father was the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. His name was Martin. The Kings lived not very far from us. In those days, it is not surprising that our families had no contact.

This little girl can’t talk about what a happy memory going to Fun Town is for her. She never got to go. She could have afforded to go, and I suspect she had a grandmother who would have taken her. For that matter, I suspect her parents would have taken her, as mine would have. It is just that grandparents are a softer touch. The problem was, of course, that this little girl, who was so like me in so many ways, wasn’t allowed to go to Fun Town because of the color of her skin. It was the law.

I only read about this little girl’s desire to go to Fun Town years later in a sermon her father preached about having to answer her question, “Daddy, why can’t I go to Fun Town?” Suddenly, racial exclusion had a personal connection for me. The injustice of it was easy to understand. My conscience was convicted and my mind converted, in no small part due to that sermon that Martin Luther King Jr. preached about Fun Town.

But getting something in your head and getting something in your heart are two different things. It was easy enough to understand in my head what it would be like to have to tell a child of mine that he or she couldn’t do something because of something of which they were completely innocent, just the way they were born. Knowing what it felt like was something else.

Years later, though, I found out. Because I am white, and a white male at that, I will never know what it might have been like not to be able to go to Fun Town myself. But I have had the experience of having to explain to my children, who are not white, why they couldn’t do something simply because of the color of their skin. It would have been much easier if it had been me involved.

My experience of having to deal with the question of “Daddy, why can’t I go to Fun Town?” involved the Cub Scout group sponsored by the church down the street from the one of which I was the rector. It turned out, when I tried to enroll my son, that that particular group was for white children only (yes, I’m talking about the 1990s and not the 1950s), although of course it wasn’t exactly advertised that way. Still, that was the way it was, and until my family came along and I had a son who wanted to be a Cub Scout in our neighborhood, it seems no one had ever questioned that reality.

All the details of that experience need not be repeated, but there are a number of things I hope my boys learned. I hope they learned not to tolerate injustice, whether directed against them or others. I hope they learned to deal with injustice creatively (in the case of the Cub Scouts, my church started a racially and socially diverse group). And I hope they learned something about the ultimate power of reconciliation.

The reconciliation comes in the way the story ends. When my son’s peers got old enough to reach the highest level of Cub Scouting, the number of boys that age in the racially segregated group had declined so that they no longer had enough to be viable. So, as God would have it, their leader called me. “You’re probably going to think this is funny,” she said, “but could our older boys join your group?” Of course, they could. Reconciliation always triumphs in the end, simply because it is God’s will that it does.

The world will change when we have an equal passion for reconciliation and for justice. It is the power of God’s work in the world. It is the power entrusted to God’s Church. It just not ought to be that any child can’t go to Fun Town, but Fun Town now seems more about justice and reconciliation to me than it does about roller coasters and cotton candy. And, oh, my grandmother’s affection.

Agape,

Advocate Online Staff:

© 2005 The Episcopal Diocese of Lexington

The Advocate is mailed free to all Episcopalians in the Diocese of Lexington. The Advocate is published 10 times a year (monthly Sept.-Mid-Summer, bi-monthly Mid-Summer-June, July-Aug.) by the Diocese of Lexington, a non-profit organization.

Additional subscriptions: $10 per year and address changes should be sent to: The Advocate, P.O. Box 610, Lexington, Ky. 40588-0610.
The deadline for submitting articles, photographs, announcements, and letters is the last Friday of the month prior to publication. These should be sent to:
The Advocate, Kay Collier McLaughlin, Ph.D., Editor, P.O. Box 610, Lexington, Ky.
40588-0610 (Kcollierm@diolex.org).

Member: Episcopal Communicators; Associated Church Press Office: The Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Lexington, Mission House, 203 East Fourth Street, Lexington, Ky. 40508-1515. For information call (859) 252-6527.

All rights reserved. The Advocate reserves the right to refuse publication and to edit all contributions. Permission required for reprinting.