WE ARE ALL SHADES OF CLAY
- Kevyn Bashore
- Jun 22, 2020
- 7 min read
Updated: Oct 19
WE ARE ALL SINCE OUR FIRST ANCESTOR, ADAM, CREATED FROM EARTHLY CLAY AND THE BREATH OF GOD. From the basest elements of our planet and the dust of angels blown from the hallowed halls of Heaven. From mud and glory.
In searching for a way to comprehend our current national crisis of protests against racism, accompanied by violent riots and national upheaval, I pulled away from social media for two weeks and stopped posting articles from various sides of the controversy in order to gain personal peace. I've been attempting to understand my own heart in the midst of these violent times and the one thing that rose to the surface was my need to dig even deeper into my personal history to understand and inform my responses and reactions to the present.
I realize the danger of sharing my personal history of "victimhood," which can appear to shine the spotlight on myself, instead of on those who need it now. That isn't my intention. My hope is that the process of digging deeper into my past will build a bridge of greater compassion and understanding for those who suffer now. And that it will help others to do the same.
I grew up in the rural farmlands of south central Pennsylvania in the 60s and 70s. My parents were conservative Christians with a dramatic history stemming back through my father's lineage to the Protestant Huguenots in France who were slaughtered by the Catholic Reformers. Such religious wars continued straight through to my Grandpa Herman Bashore who was excommunicated as an Elder in the Church of the Brethren (a sister sect to the Amish and Mennonites) for daring to enter a Pentecostal tent meeting in the 50s as a "spiritual spy" and becoming a convert, a faithful prosthelytizer for Holy Spirit revivals until his death in the 80s.
It was already in my blood before I was born to be a sympathizer with outsiders. I identified with those who were "the least of these," members of society who were identified as unacceptable or "untouchable." I attended elementary school with an albino girl who was ostracised because of her ghostly white skin and hair, her eyes the color of ice. My heart broke for her. As an artistic boy who was sensitive physically, emotionally, and spiritually, I was labeled as a "faggot." I didn't even know what that meant, but I knew it couldn't be good, whatever it was, simply because the boys who spit the word at me did so with great disdain. I felt a kinship with the American Indians (First Nation Peoples) because they had been cast aside and marginalized for a reason I could not fathom. I wept for them and for the buffaloes that were slaughtered by their side. I mourned for the lost hopes and dreams imprisoned with them on their desolate allotments of land.
I grew up in an area where most people looked like me. But I was a loner. I wandered and explored the woods and fields in solitude where I talked with God. I didn't think about skin color until attending a middle school where the kids seemed to splinter into gangs defined by color. The outsiders, or strays, like me, were the first ones picked off, one by one. I was an equal-opportunity victim with an open-season target painted on my forehead. Every kid seeking power over others, or who was angry at what life had served them, wanted to beat me up. I was taught by my church denomination to be a pacifist and to "turn the other cheek" so my only defense was my speed. I was fast. Faster than everyone else. So I could outrun the bullies. Except for when they drove up beside me on a narrow country road and shoved me from my bicycle. Or when I was cornered in Cub Scouts by two bullies who pinned me to the ground and wouldn't let me breathe. Or when I was held "hostage" in my school bus and punched in the mouth, breaking my front tooth, for no reason seemingly other than for being privileged for being light-skinned. And somehow I made it through three years during my teens working in an orchard with teenagers and immigrant workers for ten hours a day, six days a week, during my summers and Saturdays during the school year. Something modern-day American fourteen-year-olds would never be allowed to do. Or most adults. It was grueling work. And it taught me to endure great stress and difficult challenges. And to value hard work, hard workers, and "the least of these," who never complained or got angry or hostile. I worked hard and stayed quiet amidst the macho teenage boys surrounding me who beat on me once again because I wasn't a fighter.
Eventually I realized I needed to forgive them all, everyone who had used me as their punching bag, either verbally or physically. And I prayed for them. I let go of the grudges against all my abusers. I even chose to forgive the Catholic Reformers who slaughtered my ancestors hundreds of years earlier. And I forgave the farmer who purchased my French-speaking forefather as a bond slave in the 1700s and neglected to tell him he was free after seven years. He worked fourteen years before discovering he was free. I forgave the church that excommunicated my grandfather. I forgave everyone I could think of -- up through the bullies of all skin colors who attempted to beat me to a pulp.
Anger, fear, resentment, and hate got me nowhere.
Forgiveness paved a way towards love and healing.
Years later, I grieved when a couple in my church with both light and dark skin married and were looked at askew by some -- as if they had broken an unwritten law. I grew angry when I discovered that a nearby beloved famous town had a decades-old history of attempting to keep out people of a certain shade or tone. The town was unfortunately run by people since 1945 who were willing to destroy the beauty and honorable history of the town to keep out anyone deemed as "undesirable." Thankfully, that has changed for the better during the past 5-10 years. Significantly so. And the town is now thriving in ways not witnessed since its decline 75 years ago.
I have prayed for decades to see communities and churches filled with people and cultures of every shade and tone. For at least 30 years I have bucked against the system that divides us into different "races." I wrote song lyrics in 1991 suggesting even then that there is only one race in God's eyes: the Human Race, and that each of us has the same blood that runs red. I have rallied against using such terms as Black, White, Brown, Yellow, and Red to describe and divide us all. In the mid 2000s I posted messages to friends stating, "We are all created from the earth. We are all shades of brown." In 2016 I created an official art piece with these very words displayed against a photograph I shot of a mineral-laced stone. Not one of these prints ever sold. Not even a post card.
I believe America is good at heart. If we are as bad as the worst critics say, there would be no people in positions of power or authority or fame or fortune other than those who have light skin. Our education and legal systems, sports leagues, music, and the entertainment industry, just to name a few, are five arenas that are replete with successful people of every skin color. And although I believe a majority of Americans are perplexed when we are accused of being a racist nation, and for good reason, I must admit there are remnants of racist patterns and mindsets lingering throughout our culture. And I can't begin to understand what that feels like for those who have endured it the longest. But I can try. Harder.
And now in the midst of this great upheaval, protests, and violent riots, the very words I have held on to for decades are coming forth from a deep guttural cry:
"We Are One Race: The Human Race."
I believe this is so. And I must add one caveat: those who drive us towards a one world government are attempting to also erase national borders, cultures, and ethnic diversity. I support the celebration of cultures and the beauty of various traditions. That is an important distinction, I believe, in celebrating our unity as brothers and sisters around the planet without erasing our individual and cultural uniqueness. And just as Nature reveals God's grandeur and love of beauty and diversity in the animal kingdom, so too God seems to love the beauty and diversity among His peoples, cultures, and nations.
We artists are meant to bring Heaven's mindset and ways to this earth. We are always out of sync with society. We are either ahead of the pack pulling it forward and upward -- or behind it and pushing it onward.
I have attempted to live my life loving people no matter what their ethnicity or cultural background. But even still I fail. So on my website here at Pilgrim In the Shadownlands I have chosen to write honest, raw stories that track my continuing personal struggle during my lifetime to purify my own heart and motives from anything that does not flow from love. And I hope by sharing such stories I might shed light on the deeper stories that reflect the ongoing struggles we all may face, no matter what are color, creed, or culture.
So here I stand again to simply say: there is no one truly White except for those like the albino girl I went to school with. And there's no one truly Black. The truth is: we are all somewhere in between.
We are all created from the earth. We are all shades of brown.
We are all shades of clay.
May we lift up our fellow brothers and sisters who may be ostracised, outsiders, less fortunate, hard pressed, disadvantaged, carrying the weight of years of suffering, pain, heartache, bullying, beaten down, pressed inward, cut off from flourishing, barred from favor, pinned to the ground of misfortune, imprisoned by fear, hate, poverty, violence, or injustice.
May freedom and liberty be extended to us all.
May we all turn away from violence and anger and turn our hearts towards kindness and love, seeking forgiveness and extending it to all. And may God heal our hearts, our people, and our land.
This day. And always.
So be it. Amen.
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FOR COMMENTS: Please scroll down to the lower comment box. I would love to hear your thoughts.
So excellent, Kevyn.