As soon as Rosita and I got off the train in DC I was smiling. Like not just my usual, positivity in my my top five on strengths finder smiling, like smiling to the point where it hurt. Like, where it required concentrated effort to stop smiling.
We were in DC!
You see these buildings on TV, or in text books, or even in movies your entire life, and then you come out of a train station and there they are, in front of you. WOW!
You hear about people making policy and making speeches, and there's the actual, physical capitol building. So cool. It sounds super cheezy, but I feel like I have a better sense of Politicians as actual people doing actual jobs after being there, and I have a better sense of our ability to communicate and contact and influence those actual people after being there.
The first thing that we did in DC was a trip to the Holocaust Museum. Because Rosita is a federal employee, we were able to enter the exhibit right away. (Tip, you should always travel with federal employees and students, lots of deals).
The Holocaut Museum was beautiful, educational, and so sad. I was struck by a couple of different things.
- The Nazi's didn't start out with much power, but once they got some power they took more. I'm not sure what the implications are for us today, but it seems that we ought to be very careful about allowing people who have a platform of hate to take any degree of power.
- The United States, and other countries had many chances to take Jewish refugees, they even held a conference in Evian France about what to do with the refugees. A conference which ended with all of the nations saying basically, "wow, this Jewish thing in Germany and Austria and Poland is really bad, someone should do something about it, but we can't" There's one tragic story of a ship leaving Europe with the promise of being able to settle in Cuba, but by the time they got to Cuba they were denied entry, they then sailed to Florida, where they were again denied entry, only to sail back to Europe. Again, I don't know what the right lesson is for us today, but it seems that history will judge those who don't take action and don't welcome those who are suffering injustice and I think that our immigration and refugee policies probably could use a little work to make them more just.
- Most of the churches became, or maybe already were tools to indoctrinate people in anti-semitism, but those Christians and churches that courageously criticized Hitler, or sheltered Jewish children and families are remembered well. Andre and Magda Trocme in France, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the confessing church in Germany. Once more, I'm not sure what courageous action we are called to take, but I believe that courage and resistance gives the world a more accurate picture of Jesus' heart than quiet acceptance of what is going on around us.
- I was there on Friday, June 5, I was back in Minneapolis on June 10 when Officer Johns was shot, but it shook me up a little bit. Between the murder of George Tiller and the shooting at the Holocaust museum, I worry that this may be the summer of hate crimes. Let's pray that it's not. Let's speak up when we hear hateful speech, let's make sure that our own language is "rooted and established in love."
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