Pick-Up Sticks

When we were children, before television and hand-held devices, we played a very challenging game – Pick-Up Sticks. For the purposes of dealing with the tragedies playing out across our America, the game of Pick-Up Sticks is a metaphor. I am using the game only as a visual with which most of us have a familiarity. Later in life as I began to deal with societal issues it always seemed the challenges we were addressing had an uncanny resemblance to Pick-Up Sticks.

The flow of action from beginning to solution is never a straight line. Often the best thought through moves end in failure. Other moves produce a negative response far from the primary point of action. We seem to often face the negative consequences of good intentions.

Sadly, as a result of George Floyd’s now charged murder we are faced with multiple games of Pick-Up Sticks. Each city is a separate game, each state is a separate game and at the federal level one finds the ultimate championship. Unfortunately, these opportunities have presented themselves to us before and we were not victorious. The reason for failure is a failure to grasp that every release of the Pick-Up Sticks results in a different configuration, similar perhaps, but always different and thus requiring different strategies and actions to reach a viable solution.

It is difficult to get the image of Mr. Floyd flattened out on the asphalt out of my mind. My heart goes out to his parents, his family, his friends, his community and all the folks of Minneapolis. I am struck by several things: his face turned toward the camera being ground into the street; his side forced against a parked vehicle; a policeman’s uniformed knee pressing against his neck; the policeman’s hand casually resting on his thigh; the policeman calmly looking toward his right as if waiting for the cession of breath and a trickle of urine running toward the gutter.

That vision is a stark reminder that we are not playing a childhood game. However, on May 25^th in the year 2020, on a non-descript street in Minneapolis as Officer Derek Chauvin lifted his knee from the now lifeless body of George Floyd a ‘handful of sticks’ cascaded into a jumble of intertwined sticks across America.

Most importantly, may the Holy Spirit bring Her love, Her peace and Her comfort to the family of George Floyd and may he rest in peace. To the remainder of our American family may the Holy Spirit bring us Her love and Her wisdom.

To be continued …

Love, Hank