So Speak Out!

As a weekly columnist, I generally choose my topics based upon what’s going on in the life of our community or my own family circle. Recent weeks have brought significant changes to the fabric of our city (a new university president, the retirement of the long-time newspaper editor), as well as the death of my mother and the early birth of our second granddaughter, and so my last few columns have had a serious bent to them. [As an update for those who asked, Little Liza Holiday (this week’s choice of name) is still in the neonatal intensive care unit, but has made it to the five pound benchmark!]

In contrast, I was hoping to focus this week’s column on a lighter topic, such as the ubiquitous rain bonnet of my mother’s generation, or honest tea, naked juice, and dirty chips. Hopefully no one grabs those ideas before I get a chance to take a spin with them.

But instead, I must write about a somber topic, as once again our nation has been stunned by a profound tragedy in Charleston, South Carolina, and the greater Ashland community rocked by a heartrending loss of teens to the spillway at Pleasant Hill Lake. Many are weeping, and we don’t have the power to turn back the clock, to change the outcome. We feebly extend our hands to comfort the bereaved among us, but as the ancient words of Matthew 2:18 remind us, “In Ramah was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.” They are “no more,” at least in this world.

Will it ever stop? I want to write about flavored Triscuits, not about grief and loss. Yet the horrific truth is that even as I write these words, there is a child surfing the internet for companions in hate, there is a young adult drawn to the infamy of Adam Lanza, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and now Dylann Storm Roof.

We stand helpless in the face of such profound horror, such devastating loss, often distancing ourselves from the news reports with the hope that the nightmare will prove to be only a dream, not reality. Yet the loss is real, the reports of desecration and destruction verifiable. Mention Columbine, Nichol Mines, and Sandy Hook, and we remember the violation of the high school cafeteria, the Amish schoolhouse, and the kindergarten classroom. In Littleton, Colorado, the movie theater was bathed in blood. In Blacksburg, the Virginia Tech campus was shaken. And now, in Charleston, it is Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal, murder in an ordinary church basement. While all these murders were heinous, there is something different about sacred space, about bricks and mortar designated as “sanctuary.” In Charleston, holy space was invaded, and we weep in response.

A gruesome story near the end of the Old Testament book of Judges describes the brutal rape and murder of a young woman from Bethlehem. The biblical narrator concludes the passage with these words: “Everyone who saw it was saying to one another, “Such a thing has never been seen or done . . . Just imagine! We must do something. So speak out” (Judges 19:30).

How do we speak out? The Israelites responded with vengeance, war, and retribution. Yet the people of Mother Emmanuel (God with us) are showing us another way. The world is watching as reconciliation and redemption are trumping murder and hate. Yes, we must speak out about justice, about guns, about race, and about wounds still festering one hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, but as interim pastor Norvel Goff, Sr. understands, the power of love is stronger than hate. “This territory belongs to God,” Goff witnessed. “Bible study will continue, but because of what happened, we will never be the same.”

In our own ways, we are forever changed by tragedy, but we choose between retribution and restoration, revenge and redemption. As Charleston’s Mother Emmanuel speaks, she is guiding us through her valley of tears to a new way of remembering, a new way of justice, and a new way of reconciliation. Let anyone with ears, listen!