Friday, September 26, 2008

Living your Language: A Lost Art?


"Maurice McCrackin (1905-1997) was an American civil rights and peace activist, tax resister and Presbyterian minister. McCrackin started a community church in Cincinnati after gaining notoriety for refusing to pay federal taxes. Many of his former parishioners followed him to the small building on Dayton Street in Cincinnati where he preached, ran services, baptized babies, and performed weddings and funerals. He was a principled pacifist all of his life. He was active in the struggle for racial equality and an end to militarism in the United States. McCrackin was well known to the state's attorneys office as he was arrested over and over again in protests. Rev. McCrackin was also active in the fight for prisoner's rights and spent much time visiting convicts. Once, he was abducted by a man that he had visited in jail and rather than see him incarcerated again, refused to testify against him. The district attorney in Cincinnati jailed McCrackin for weeks because of this incident."

Is there anyone like this anymore???. Please share.

I heard somewhere in Cincinnati today: "So let it out and let it in, hey jude, begin, ...Youre waiting for someone to perform with. ...And don't you know that its just you, hey jude, you'll do, ...The movement you need is on your shoulder."

2 comments:

inverted banana dancer said...

Sensemaking, are you in support of Mac's ideals, or principles, or tactics, or passions? What do I have to fight for? What do you have to fight for? What do I have to lose? You? What's your language? Good question, where are the Mac's in 2008? Perhaps we aren't looking in the right places. Good post.

Michael Joseph Sharp said...

Ban:

I support ideals, whether I agree with them or not. Mac did not wait for others support his own in order to act, ...which makes him better than me today. His tactics, etc., followed his heart. He was what he said.

Fear still has hold in my world, and so I fail often.

As for your journey, ...what you have to fight for, ...that is not a question for me to answer. But you are asking the right question.

As for what you have to lose, it's the same that you have to gain: Everything/all of It. Same here.

My language is attempting toward building, brick by brick.

Mac is here, radically.