& creation groans
I am so angry and so troubled and so grieved by the darkness of the racist-infected groundwater that seeps into every corner of our damn country.
For someone who usually has a lot of words, language has become inadequate and too frail to describe how shaken my soul (and that of collective America) feels.
I wonder how, even at a neurological/physiological level, it is possible to be simultaneously so overwhelmed with trembling anger and so numb with mourning.
I wrote a whole essay after the events in Charlottesville, but I did not post it at the time. I wish I had.
It was brimming with raw lament, angry cries, and slivers of hope found in the pages of the Scripture.
But then Charlottesville turned into Chapel Hill; “there” turned into “home,” and I don’t feel quite the same way anymore. No longer do I recognize the girl who wallowed in peaceful grief with “the ‘doing’ side of me feeling lost,” as I wrote ten days ago.
Ten days ago, after Charlottesville, I angrily questioned, “Where are you, Chapel Hill?” Other cities were taking immediate action to remove their Confederate statues. Meanwhile, the silence from our university was deafening.
Ten days ago, after Charlottesville, I was sick with the thought of returning to campus — which is a campus I love, but a campus nonetheless soaked with the blood of slaves and which everywhere echoes with the voices of the Confederacy.
Ten days ago, after Charlottesville, I was so consumed by the energy of those remote events that I thought that I doubtless would have been one of the protestors; I convinced myself that UNC wouldn’t take action with Silent Sam, but if Chapel Hill stood up, I would, too.
Ten days ago, after Charlottesville, I didn’t realize how scary it is when you are at that protest. I didn’t know how heavy your lips feel when you try to scream,
“Take it down!”
“Hey hey, ho ho, that racist statue’s got to go!”
“No Trump, No KKK, No racist USA!”
but it comes out a whisper.
If you’re unfamiliar with UNC’s campus, let me orient you: the first thing you see upon entering from Franklin Street is a large statue of a Confederate soldier, dubbed “Silent Sam.”
Just two blocks away is one of the nation’s most prestigious library and museum collections for southern history, yet this statue remains on the foreground of the quad facing the University’s entrance, escaping proper historical context and alienating students of color on a daily basis.
August 22, 2017 was not the first time Silent Sam’s presence has been contested. Dedicated in 1913 by the Daughters of the Confederacy, Silent Sam has haunted Chapel Hill as a racist symbol for over a century. It was vandalized for the first time after Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death and a handful of times since. The University was previously in a legal pickle regarding its removal, but following the rumors of violent protests and counter-protests planned for Tuesday, Governor Roy Cooper gave the University’s administration permission to remove the statue if its presence posed “imminent threat” to students.
-The University chose not to remove the statue.
-What started as a relatively unknown protest turned viral when the Chancellor emailed the entire student body urging us not to attend.
-And in lieu of a removal crew, the University barricaded the area surrounding Silent Sam with metal fences and stationed copious police officers. In recent history, there have also been four video cameras installed to protect the monument.
So, there was a protest around Silent Sam, and I went. Rumors flew beforehand. “You know I’m not usually like this,” one of my more politically active friends told me earlier in the day, “but I just can’t bring myself to go. That level of violence…”
Skeptical, and unable to hush my burning spirit, I went anyway with a friend. It was peaceful. Mostly, we listened. We clapped some and chanted some, and we heard once again the nauseating history of the primary and most prominent monument on our campus.
In his dedication speech of Silent Sam in 1913, Julian Carr bellowed:
The present generation, I am persuaded, scarcely takes note of what the Confederate soldier meant to the welfare of the Anglo Saxon race during the four years immediately succeeding the war, when the facts are, that their courage and steadfastness saved the very life of the Anglo Saxon race in the South — When “the bottom rail was on top” all over the Southern states, and to-day, as a consequence the purest strain of the Anglo Saxon is to be found in the 13 Southern States — Praise God.
It gets worse, actually, as Carr goes on to brag:
One hundred yards from where we stand, less than ninety days perhaps after my return from Appomattox, I horse-whipped a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds, because upon the streets of this quiet village she had publicly insulted and maligned a Southern lady, and then rushed for protection to these University buildings where was stationed a garrison of 100 Federal soldiers. I performed the pleasing duty in the immediate presence of the entire garrison, and for thirty nights afterwards slept with a double-barrel shot gun under my head.
And they say it isn’t about slavery.
We left.
An hour and fifteen minutes in, the protest (which, incredibly, had no central organizer) had gained momentum and started moving off campus. With a queasy gut feeling that things might turn ugly, my friend and I walked the other direction.
I don’t know if that was the right decision. Yeah, we’re safe. I’m writing this post from my cozy bed. All things considered though, we probably would have been safe anyway. We say safety is not our priority in life…but then again, we left.
When I heard that hours later, the few hundred remaining protestors were peacefully sitting around the monument and planning to stake out overnight (if not longer) in protest, I felt guilty. Images of sit-ins from the Civil Rights Era flashed through my mind. I should be out on my own quad just a mile away.
But instead, I finally sat down at my computer …and was greeted with the oh so pleasant news about Phoenix.
And suddenly I’m back to where I started ten days ago, after Charlottesville: lament.
Remembering the complexity of American racism and the strength of the roots of injustice here in ‘land of the free’ feels suffocating, even for a privileged white girl like me. I know my pain does not begin to align with that of the actual oppressed. Nevertheless, I am speaking out in anguish, empathy, sensitivity, and first-hand abhorrence at my own country.
I am finding refuge in the pages of Scripture today, because I don’t know where else to turn.
I find solace in that so much of the Bible is filled with the emotions we try to shut out of our lives. I read Scripture and I read the ancient wails of the deep. The Bible is not a warm and fuzzy place. Jesus brings light and joy, but he brings those things into darkness. The Holy One comes into our grief and sorrow and rage and sits with us there.
“The Scriptures are postured from a place of famine.”
— Sho Baraka
I don’t really care what your beliefs are or are not; join me anyway in admitting the weight of how broken and trashed this world is, and then join me in letting out that heaviness in a cathartic, communal groan.
Read with me.
Psalm 94:
The Lord is a God who avenges.O God who avenges, shine forth.
2Rise up, Judge of the earth; pay back to the proud what they deserve.
3How long, Lord, will the wicked,how long will the wicked be jubilant?
4They pour out arrogant words; all the evildoers are full of boasting.
5They crush your people, Lord; they oppress your inheritance.
6They slay the widow and the foreigner; they murder the fatherless.
7They say, “The Lord does not see; the God of Jacob takes no notice.”
8Take notice, you senseless ones among the people; you fools, when will you become wise?
9Does he who fashioned the ear not hear? Does he who formed the eye not see?
10Does he who disciplines nations not punish? Does he who teaches mankind lack knowledge?
11The Lord knows all human plans; he knows that they are futile.
12Blessed is the one you discipline, Lord, the one you teach from your law;
13you grant them relief from days of trouble, till a pit is dug for the wicked.
14For the Lord will not reject his people; he will never forsake his inheritance.
15Judgment will again be founded on righteousness, and all the upright in heart will follow it.
16Who will rise up for me against the wicked? Who will take a stand for me against evildoers?
17Unless the Lord had given me help, I would soon have dwelt in the silence of death.
18When I said, “My foot is slipping,” your unfailing love, Lord, supported me.
19When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought me joy.
20Can a corrupt throne be allied with you — a throne that brings on misery by its decrees?
21The wicked band together against the righteous and condemn the innocent to death.
22But the Lord has become my fortress, and my God the rock in whom I take refuge.
23He will repay them for their sins and destroy them for their wickedness; the Lord our God will destroy them.
Society today is terrible at stopping to grieve. The Scriptures are what taught me the importance of lament:
Lamentations 3
28Let him sit alone in silence, for the LORD has laid it on him.
29Let him bury his face in the dust — there may yet be hope.
30Let him offer his cheek to one who would strike him, and let him be filled with disgrace.
In the Bible, grief seems inseparable from the cry for justice:
Isaiah 58
6'Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?’
Lamentations 3
61LORD, you have heard their insults, all their plots against me — 62what my enemies whisper and mutter against me all day long.
64Pay them back what they deserve, LORD, for what their hands have done.
65Put a veil over their hearts, and may your curse be on them!
66Pursue them in anger and destroy them from under the heavens of the LORD.
Only in the word of God have I found a promise of hope that the atrocities we face every day might be vanquished:
Lamentations 3
31For no one is cast off by the Lord forever.
32Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.
33For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone.
49My eyes will flow unceasingly, without relief, 50until the LORD looks down from heaven and sees.
55I called on your name, LORD, from the depths of the pit.
56You heard my plea: ‘Do not close your ears to my cry for relief.’
57You came near when I called you and you said, ‘Do not fear.’
58You, Lord, took up my case; you redeemed my life.
Romans 8
15b And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ 16The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17Now if we are children, then we are heirs — heirs of God and coheirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. 18I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. 22We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. 26In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.
The evil we’re grappling with here is a lot bigger than a statue or a President or the KKK or even Naziism or slavery. We’re talking about the weight of the sin of the world — a weight that leaves us in a wordless condition where all we can do is cry out in groans to a Savior who knows firsthand about both death and redemption.
A typical response for white evangelicals to situations of strife is to pray. This is a good response. I believe prayer is the most powerful thing we can do; however, it is not the only thing. Action is crucial. “Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds” (James 2:18b).
But, yes — prayer. Although personally, I don’t have a lot of words to pray right now. I came back from the protest tonight numb. As my mind and body slowly shut down, my soul cried out, “Abba, Father”; my spirit groaned.
Tonight as I stood in that crowd — heated from the muggy August sun, the sweaty bodies, and the angry hearts — I scanned my neighbors’ faces. These neighbors, sadly, were not my Christian brothers and sisters; they were strangers, good Samaritans…and something groaned inside.
Church this is where society needs us: to be the manifestation of repentance and reconciliation and renewal. Let us confess our own racism, bigotry, ignorance, selfishness, and move on in the confidence of Christ towards building the Kingdom by breaking down these awful walls between people.
White church: let us been seen in solidarity with our hurting neighbors, particularly those of color. We speak against white supremacy in the name of Jesus, so let us walk against it! We renounce evil with our pulpits and with our lives in the other spaces we occupy, so let us expand our words and actions into the supportive spaces where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. urged white church leaders to occupy.
I’m young and naive and of course not addressing the totality of Christians in America at present nor the totality of the white evangelical Christians in America at present. But let me tell you what naive little me is seeing: a civil rights movement led, in great part, by church leaders in the 1950s and 1960s that stands in contrast to the human rights movements of 2017 which amplify secular and liberal voices almost without dilution.
Last week, I had the incredible opportunity to hear Christian rap artists & activists Propaganda and Sho Baraka speak on the intersections between faith, racial justice, compassion, and unity. They made the point that the church is in a unique position to respond radically to events like Charlottesville’s: while others are focused on inverting the power, we’re concerned with laying our power down. Propaganda explained that if you believe culture moves forward through power, then someone like Robert E. Lee is a hero, because power is a zero-sum game. But, he argued, that model doesn’t work for Christians, because we are to follow the example of a God who is Omnipotent yet laid his power down for the sake of our souls. Thus, we are free to lay our power — whether that is white privilege, financial leverage, or social clout — down for the sake of our suffering neighbors.
At the protest last night, there were some things I refrained from chanting. Yes, I believe Silent Sam should be removed, but that doesn’t mean I support ideas of violence or twisted power schemes.
White church, how can we affirm the dignity of people of color — their leadership, their theology, their values, their struggles?
White church, what would it mean to lay our power down?
Turns out, I did have a lot of words to use. But to be honest, all the above was just me babbling. At the end of the day, my prayers are still groans. So if you’re like me and gagging on the fallacy of human language to express the ineffable, then release your anxious search for words and participate in the groaning instead. The Holy Spirit, not the English language, is a sufficient medium for lament.
We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. — MLK Jr.
