On what is the eve of the opening of the Owens Valley Reception Center, i.e., Manzanar, my heart is heavy thinking about our nation's internment of Japanese Americans and the impact upon them, and us, as a result of their internment.

Photo from Wikipedia by Dorothea Lange

   Indeed, a lot has been weighing on me this month. In addition to our own messy moments, there's been our study of Sudan in our middle school book group. We read and discussed A Long Walk to Water trying to understand the crisis that has taken place in Sudan, even as it continues to put millions in a state of conflict. And I dare say, it's humbling to talk to eleven and twelve year old girls about a crisis that began when you were an eleven year old girl and you are just now really checking in about it. No words for that.

   And realizing that your boy child could just as easily have been a Lost Boy should he have been born on another continent is saddening and sickening. No child should have to endure war, the loss of their families, villages, and communities.

   On the eve of Japanese internment camp round ups, and the orders that created such places as Manzanar, there are still white lies that surround and control us.

    Touring the Pearl District of Portland recently was both enthralling and a bit unsettling. I couldn't put my finger on what seemed to be rattling my soul. But there's been a lot of noise lately about the gentrification of Portland, and signs are pointing to the fact that there's more than one way to push diversity out of your city, and push people out: Be a gentleman, and simply raise the rent.

    The Pearl now, is an area we never would have ventured into then. When I was a child, the area east of Burnside was a land you didn't wander into. The Pearl now is home to million dollar airy apartments, gentlemen, and persons who kid themselves that they know and understand the concept of diversity. To know, foster, and understand diversity you must first be diverse. The Pearl is many things, but it's not diverse, Eloise. Ironically, the Pearl has gone from being not accessible to accessible to not accessible once more, and it's just one area of Portland.

   I cannot, and will not, attempt to write deeply about issues I'm still coming to understand. I'm not trying to preach here, but sit up, learn, and hear what my soul is saying. We seek to know and understand these stains on the history of our world and the peoples of our world for the sake of all children. Their future is at stake.

These issues rattle me. They make noise in my life.

In 1859, Oregon did not want African Americans.

We can change that, and we must.

     We cannot and we must not seek to make America an exclusively white nation.  Make no other gods before me. An exclusively white America is a dangerous America.  It's an America where violence makes right because fear calls everyone who doesn't look like us wrong. Remember. Manzanar.

   How about we talk immigration for a second?  Do we know what it's like anymore to welcome the foreigner? Let go of our preconceived notions? McFarland. See it. Even Paddington is trying to tell us something about welcoming the foreigner. See it.

Immigrants. People. Families. Workers.


We are they. 
They are us. 
We are them.

Remember! 
Manzanar, Gila River, Granada, Heart Mountain, Jerome, Minidoka, Poston, Rohwer, Topaz, and Tule Lake!
These camps are the legacy of our shame and little white lies.

    Before 1942, Japanese farmers owned 1/5th the arable land in the three west coast states. It was taken. It was confiscated. If they owned it today, the farming practices of the Pacific Coast might be, could be, and would be vastly different. Vastly more sustainable. Diverse.

If America is exclusively white,
when we look at the enemy,
we are looking at us.

   If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly,  if you do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm,  then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors for ever and ever. ~ Jeremiah 7:5-7

   Let us recognize we reside here by grace. We were born here by grace not to be great, but to be gracious. We are commanded, instructed, and told. It's made crystal clear: Don't oppress a sojourner. Don't oppress the foreigner. Welcome the immigrant, for you too, were once a stranger. Let us embrace diversity when all the world is aflame. One day a new king and kingdom will be ushered in. God's kingdom is diverse. Remember, "red, yellow, black, and white, they are precious in His sight?"  We also know the first shall be last, and the last shall be first. This is not easy for me, for us, to swallow, but who am I to begrudge God's generosity?  I need it every day. Indeed, I hope for God's generosity every day.

   Therefore, I'd best get to work fostering His kind of community now, that I might join it then.

 Even those I will bring to My holy mountain 
And make them joyful in My house of prayer. 
Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on My altar;
 For My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples. 
~ Isaiah 56:7