A Pilgrimage

Who knows how long this will last?
You know, we’ve come so far so fast.

But, somewhere back there, in the dust,
Is that same small town in each of us.

–Don Henley and Bruce Hornsby
The End of the Innocence

I gave notice at my job a couple seeks ago, because I’ve been feeling increasingly restless doing the receptionist duties that have been how I made my living the last year or more. It has not been feeding me, except in the direct monetary sense. I need to rediscover my, and my country’s, small town.

I plan to be on the road for about a month or so, and will sort out my next move when I return home.

Part of the purpose of this trip is a sort of pilgrimage to the deep south. I will be visiting Atlanta, Birmingham, Montgomery and other places, retracing some of the steps of the civil rights marchers, who have been my heroes ever since I can remember.

For an indication of why, let me pass along this story from those days, that I encountered some years ago:

In the March from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, there was an old black woman who was overcome with fatigue and sat down on someone’s lawn to massage her feet.

After a short while, she saw a shadow darken her dress, and looked up to find two men with hate in their eyes, who told her that they were going to teach her a lesson about knowing her place. From the way they said it, she knew that this lesson was to be communicated by their fists, or worse.

Her eyes filled with compassion, she said: “I am an old woman, and if you are going to beat me, there is not much I can do to prevent it. But, if you don’t mind, before you start your beating, I would like to take a few moments to pray for you.”

The men looked at her, stunned into silence.

She knelt, closed her eyes, and said: “Lord, I ask that you pour your love into the hearts of these men, who are in such pain, such terrible pain, burdened as they are by hatred.”

When she opened her eyes, they were walking away, defeated.

——————–

The South has long had a reputation as a place of intolerance and bigotry, and a study of history obviously lends some support to this understanding.

But it is also a place where scenes like the above happened. Not just once, but for years, as long-downtrodden people stood up non-violently to demand justice for themselves and also in solidarity with their persecuted brothers and sisters — and their cause was immeasurably ennobled by their compassion for their persecutors.

That time and place was the closest America has ever come to being a truly “Christian nation,” I believe.

I’ll be hitting the road some time next week. I’ll probably post a few times during the trip. Please pray that I might have a safe journey – both the literal one and the spiritual one.