During the Ferguson disturbances, near St. Louis, MO, a young Black Orthodox man told me that he would like to be involved in the Black Lives Matter movement, to which I replied, “By all means, do it right away, but you must take my direction in this matter. I want you and your friends to carry banners with Jesus Pantocrator and the Mother of God of Kazan and one of St. Moses the Black. You must also carry beeswax candles and burn frankincense as you march, while singing, “The Cross is the Guardian of the whole world. The Cross is the might of kings, the Cross angels glory, and wound to demons.” To which he replied – that would be out of character with the energy of the movement, and I said – we don’t take our cues from this world. Instead, we inform them as to what is proper.

Black lives have always mattered to me. I remember suffering as a young man under the yoke of the godless authority (police) in Jefferson City, MO, who bound me in handcuffs and threw me in the back of the squad car and told me, “we’re going to take you over to Cedar City and let the wolves eat  you.” If it wasn’t for a fair minded officer, Don Klein, who intervened, Heaven knows what would have become of me. My crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, nothing more. And also disobeying my grandma Dorothy, who said, “if you keep running around with these white folks, you’re going to end up with your ass in a sling.”

It’s about time that we, as men and women of good will, address the ills of our society and not on its terms, but on the terms of otherworldly Christianity, which will always be in opposition to the wisdom of this world.