Oct
17
I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1950s and ’60s.
When I tell people that, most know the subtext. My hometown was infamous as a place where the Civil Rights movement was a hateful, ugly thing. In news around the world, people saw our law enforcement officers mow down peaceful protestors with water from fire hoses. They saw police dogs set loose on people who wanted nothing more than respect and a fair chance. They heard about the deaths of young Black girls — girls who were just my age — who died when cowards bombed a church on a beautiful September Sunday morning.
I left Alabama in 1973 and never moved back.
Friday afternoon, I experienced something healing. A group of white people gathered on land where their church was built and prayed for the land to be healed. The land was once part of a cotton plantation. For generations after the slaves who worked those cotton fields had been freed, their descendents barely eeked out a living by working as sharecroppers on the same land. Much like the ground I walked when I was a child, this ground had been cursed by oppression and injustice.
Joining this group of people who look like me was the pastor of another church, a nearby church that was founded by newly-freed slaves the day after Emancipation Day. He prayed with us and read from Jeremiah 31:29-30: ”In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” The bitterness of sour grapes, eaten by men like my father, need no longer be tasted by their children.
If land can be consecrated and cleansed of evil, lives can, as well. Generations of lives, even. Maybe it’s happening now. Sometimes the bitter taste lingers; sometimes the sweet taste of promise bleeds through.
