Written by Bishop Andrew Gentry   

Beloved Friends,

This past weekend I along with my friend and soul mate of over 24 years John Yelton attended the rally in Asheville to show solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Wisconsin. It was a good rally and one that the churches of Asheville and the surrounding area should have supported overwhelmingly but sadly overwhelmingly did not. No surprise there! The First Congregational Church of Asheville was represented and for this I commend them most heartedly! All Saints and Sorts was also represented and I am sure there were other folke from other faith communities that were present but and it is a big but the mainline well established churches of the city and area simply were not visible including ones that claim a liberal and inclusive character! There seems to be far more goats than sheep when it comes to matters ecclesiastical!

One of the most interesting speakers was the grandson of a Union organizer from the 1920s who tried to bring the blessings of a union to the "cotton mills" as they were called then. He lived in Asheville and was dispatched by his union to represent the workers in the mill in Marion down the mountain from Asheville who were murdered by the sheriff's deputies for protesting the inhumane working conditions of the mill. Four of them were shot in the back by the deputies who were never prosecuted! I remember the old "cotton mills" that were later renamed "textile plants" and even in my adolescence the inside conditions were truly horrible. People who worked in the mills were called "lent heads" and that was not a title of endearment! They worked in hot and cotton fiber filled atmosphere which gave many of the people brown lung disease. The only money that could be made above subsistence wages was in the production of the cloth. If a weaver could "top the board" as it was called she would receive production pay which was better than the hourly wage. My mother was a weaver then and she had as many as 60 looms or more that she had to keep running in order to top the board. I can remember seeing her walking constantly for 8 hours not even stopping for supper. She would leave her bag of sandwiches along with her thermos of coffee along a two by four that ran the length of the weave room. Sometimes she would be holding a sandwich with one hand and her weaver's knot with the other while all the time walking up and down the "alley"! My father who was a "loom fixer" would be working on looms that had shut down for 8 hours a day. He had to repair them as soon as possible so that the weavers like my Mom would not lose production wage. His was heavy and backbreaking work. I will freely admit he was a better man than I and that my Mom did more work than any two people! I could not have kept up with her even if I had tried! One of my memories of those days was hearing that a vice president of Cone Mills had told a meeting of supervisors who were originally called "Secondhands" who had voiced their concerns over the work load being increased to a dangerous level on each weaver and loom fixer that he "did not give a damn"if it killed them as long as they didn't die in the mill! This beloved friend is the America the Tea Party Republicans want again and the Church is being a prostitute if she does not flatly and without compromise condemn this!

I was fortunate to go home this Sunday Sabbath to see my Mom. We had Sunday dinner (that is the noon day meal in the South I grew up in) and later we went for a little "spin" as Mom calls a drive about. As we drove around the countryside that is very familiar to my Mom she would tell me stories of her childhood. One that I loved was how when she was a little girl her parents took her on the train from Rutherfordton to Asheville in a Pullman car to go on a picnic! What a thrill it was for her and even after all these years the excitement remained! At times as I looked at land that I knew as a child and listened to my Mom's voice I felt as if I was "time traveling" and could literally smell and feel the memories that took me to their dimension where there was such a sense of peace I cannot describe it. God is in our memories for there is no past or future to Him only Presence. What a Reality!

Each day as I grow older I find myself doing a lot of "time travel" and for me it is a blessing without measure. I saw last night where researchers are attempting to develop drugs that can literally rob a person of selected memories. The researchers said they are doing this for people who suffer from horrific memories such a combat soldier. Such research scares me profoundly for it can literally be a demagogue's dream and humanity's nightmare!

So what is your time travel? Go on a visit to where you have been before.

Peace
Bishop Andrew Gentry
The Church of All Saints and Sorts
A Congregational Catholic Church an Intentional Eucharistic Community