“There was once, in a far-away country where few people have ever traveled, a wonderful church. It stood on a high hill in the midst of a great city; and every Sunday, as well as on sacred days like Christmas, thousands of people climbed the hill to its great archways . . . ” — a story written by Raymond MacDonald Alden
Since Derrick Bell’s death, I have been steeping myself in his sober stories that explore how the “racial bonding of whites means that black rights and interests are always vulnerable to diminishment if not . . . destruction.”
Every year in America, thousands of churches fail because they had nothing to say to the children—the grown children, that is, like Abram and his wife Sarai when Papa Terah made Haran home. Consider. When we won’t cross the rivers always known to us for lands never yet shown to us, money is always the matter.
The blunt fact is that scriptures Old and New pronounce a fulsome God damn not on foreign nations but on the prophets’ own land. Stiff-necked Bible-thumpers prefer Micah mounted in museum glass to the real thing. But if we do not take scissors to our scriptures, then those blunt words of Rev. Jeremiah Wright exactly match the purpose of the prophets: to that land which perverts equity through greed and force the word is, God damn!
The struggle is a mystery. You cannot force the fight to make yourself grow. It is strange grace to be given such a night and such a fight and such sight as comes with the rising of the dawn. The gift is offered far more often than it is accepted. It can come through the veil of any crisis—at work, in health, in jail …
“The Ayes are 33, the Nays 29! The bill passes.” My oh my! Those were the words in the New York State Senate chamber this past week as the marriage equality bill was passed into law. Sometimes you win. What pride we share with our fellow citizens in this state today.
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