The Equality Riders have made their visit to ACU and are now on their way to A&M. While I wasn't allowed to attend any of yesterday's sessions, I did get to have breakfast with Rebecca and a few others.
Within the next week, I'm hoping to have guest posts from a few Equality Riders, evaluating their visit. I'd also like to have posts from some of you ACU folks, so if you were there in the thick of the discussion, please volunteer.
Finally, a few visitors have commented on the earlier Equality Ride posts, and those are kind of buried now, so I'm going to pull their posts up here so that you can read them. (By the way, frenchpress, it's fabulous to hear from you. I'll be perusing your constellation of links as soon as I get the chance.)
frenchpress said...
according to this initial release seems it was a positive experience. i hope so.
thanks for all the info!
~t
anonymous said...
Soulforce has come and gone. And from my perspective both "sides" were blessed in an unexpected way. During a session called "Letters to Mel," students talked about what they'd learned from the visit. The Soulforce riders focused on the goodness/kindness of the people they'd met. They'd discussions with people who disagreed with them on a fundamental issue affecting their lives; yet, the discussions were conducted in a such a way that they felt affirmed as people. "I've made new friends." was one riders comment. "I didn't think that could happen here." On the ACU side, for those who cared enough to listen, they learned just how much pain has been piled on these young men and women. And for some of them, it's a lot of emotional pain. As I listened, I thought of Jeremiah and wondered, do our hearts break? Do we grieve for the struggles and sins of others? Are we content to watch from a cynical, safe distance in a critique of another's struggle - - never noticing that our own struggles will overwhelm us. Sorry, that really was preachy.
5 comments:
I think the SoulForce visit was a great success! I posted some things in my blog that I learned from the discussions with some of the SoulForce people, the presentation they did on violence, reading of handouts from both ACU and Soulforce, and other reading of blogs that I have done prior to and since the visit.
I would also like to say that Matt's discussion on the topic in his blog is very consistent with all the handouts. I felt good reading different arguments having already heard them before from this blog. This whole process has caused me to look deeper into the issue and become more loving and understanding of homosexuals.
yea! the update from their site looks really good.
http://www.equalityride.com/article.php?article_id=218
"Abilene Christian welcomed us with open arms and permitted us to have these discussions with students. We sat together at the table of brother- and sisterhood, acknowledging both our disagreements and our shared humanity. No other school has given us such a welcome, and for this we applaud the administration of ACU."
I don't know if you have already seen this or not, or if you have an video iPod or not, but even if you don't, if you download iTunes, you can watch it on there (even though the screen is really small), but the ACU Optimist News has posted a short video segment that is free to download on iTunes and it is over the Soulforce Equality Ride visit. It is a decent little video.
Also, my friend found this video online that a student has apparently made. I found it really passionate and I really enjoyed it, so I thought I would share it also...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or0uIprC_o8&search=homosexual
It is a tough video to watch at the beginning, but it has a really good point.
The current issue of The Optimist has lots of coverage of the equality ride visit. I haven't read it all yet, but you can find The Optimist here:
http://www.acuoptimist.com/
I have a lot of stuff about the ride in my blog. Feel free to check it out.
www.chrisfield.blogspot.com
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