Guest AuthorIs anyone else in a state of amazement over the turn of public discourse after the horrific murders in the halls of innocence in Charleston?
How quickly did we move from the unsettling image of such unexpected violence in a church to long rambling posts and talking-head rants about a symbol of the human commerce ended in our country 150 years ago, and whether that symbol should be freely sold by private business via the Internet or your local Sip-n-go?
Politicians race to out-do one another with indignant outrage about a symbol they’ve ignored their whole lives. States that resurrected the same symbol in the ‘50s and ‘60s have long hidden behind “history” and “tradition,” and until this week very few politicians voiced their angst over the deep offense of that symbol. Yet now they cannot posture enough to show the depths of damage to their sensibilities.
Let’s be clear. Slavery was a horrible wrong committed by people who knew better. Since the dawn of one tribe conquering another, groups capable of gaining free labor through enslavement have shackled humans and forced others to labor for free, without hope of freedom. Racism, then and now, has been wrong, too. There always have been pathways for hearts of darkness to take otherwise civil societies into places no one civil has ever gone. Yet another darkness, like rust, never sleeps as it corrodes the good and pure, filled with hope and potential.
Yes, we allow ourselves to be distracted by issues of important but lesser consequence when far greater challenges should dominate our thoughts, our acts and our discourse.
When I saw pictures today of the most Rev. Clementa Pinckney lying in state my thoughts did not wander to offensive symbols or the origins of state flags, nor did I dwell on the horror of slavery across human history. My heart ached for nine lives lost to the hand of evil. It ached for their families, for their friends, for those who attended church with them, and for those who feel a loss of innocence and sanctuary. It ached for freedom and the hope that modernity might have lifted us past racism, hatred, suspicion and suffering.
In the end, though, it isn’t our old, renewed or new symbols that shackle us to our past as much as our willingness to focus away from faith, love, openness, and caring and charitable hearts. I didn’t know Pinckney, nor the eight other departed souls he had joined in prayer. There was a 10th soul in the room who has refined what a Judas means. For an hour a group who knew each other well embraced a stranger and through that left us with an example offered very long ago by people who well knew the sting of hatred and slavery. As Hebrews 13:1-2 instructs: “Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unaware.”
Roof betrayed their faith in others. He was beset by evil and there are many just as evil in the world. But to prosper we must find paths to let brotherly love continue and not lose faith that there are far more angels than demons surrounding us.
That needs to be our conversation now and moving forward. Sure, we need to put away tokens of our sordid past, not to forget them but rather to not have them among us. Lest we forget they should be placed in museums so others might be reminded. Those conversations are worthy but in our 24/7 news age we teed them up far too quickly at the expense of topics more needed.
I am reminded we have far more churches, synagogues, and mosques than we have jails. Our young learn by the examples we set. When we anger they absorb, when we instruct they expand, but how we act, especially in the darkest of times, leaves the most indelible impressions.
Roof absorbed evil. The Reverend Pinckney didn’t. I hope we learn the right lessons from this and discontinue abusing ourselves moving forward.
Ed H. Moore resides in Tallahassee where he is perpetually awaiting a rebirth of wonder. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
