I wonder if Charles Dickens wrote his “Tale of Two Cities” in January… “It was the best of times and the worst of times…”
This January started on such a high note in my book with the historic occasion of Deval Patrick’s inauguration as Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Who ever your choice may have been early in the campaign season, I hope we might all agree that, if only for it’s symbolic significance, Gov. Patrick’s swearing in on Beacon Street was truly inspiring! Stephen spoke of his feelings as he stood with his son Paul, and watched Deval Patrick take his oath of office. There was the Governor, standing across from the Augustus St. Gaudens bronze monument honoring the Massachusetts 54th –the first Black Regiment to fight for the North in the Civil War, his hand resting on the Mendi bible—a gift to John Quincy Adams (once a member of First Church) who represented men from the slave ship Amistad who were freed after that trial. It was a symbolically powerful moment as the first African American man to be governor of this state was sworn in.
I also stood in the crowd that sunny noontime and I have to tell you: it was a crowd I don’t generally see here in Boston. Notably, it was a racially diverse crowd.
There were people young and old, gathered singly and in small groups. Standing nearby were a half dozen Black school children occasionally jumping up to try to see the Jumbotron screen of the proceedings. I felt so happy for this crowd, for these children, for my children and grandchildren. And I felt hope for the first time in a long time. It was the best of times…
If you were paying attention the governor’s race here last summer, you probably heard Deval Patrick’s story about growing up on the South Side of Chicago in his grandmother’s house. His is a happy-ending-so-far story—the result of a bunch of great breaks and a lot hard work. But in the beginning, Deval Patrick lived, as he says, in a place where hope withers and dies.
I was reminded of Gov. Patrick’s beginnings just last Sunday. After our service and coffee hour here, I crossed the river to attend a meeting over at Harvard Law School where some people were getting together to talk about a project that has captured my interest.
It’s funny how we find ourselves involved in some things. I’m reminded of the story both Stephen and I noted as one of our favorites from the Hebrew Bible. It’s a story in which the prophet Elijah is found hiding in a cave. You see, he’d been acting just like a prophet, criticizing the Queen, Jezebel. Naturally, she wanted him dead. So he did what any self-preserving prophet would do: he ran and hid in a cave! Until God came along and said: Elijah, what are you doing in that cave? And basically called him out to do what he was meant to do.
We don’t know how we will be called. What will call us. Or when or who. We can’t predict how we will finally come to understand--deeply, experientially--that we are One Body: many individual members linked in one interdependent web of existence.
But we will be called.
In Back Bay, you may have noticed, there are quite a few places of worship: Trinity, Old South, Covenant, Emmanuel, Boston Jewish Spirit, Arlington Street Church, common cathedral to name a few of the progressive spiritual centers. Once a month, the clergy from those institutions get together for fellowship and support and to talk about how we are called to address civic issues with a religious voice.
In early December, Stephen and I received an email from our friend the Rev. Nancy Taylor from the UCC church of Old South: would we please attend a press conference at her church that afternoon? Some clergy were gathering to announce the formation of a fund in memory of a young man who was shot and killed in Dorchester just after Thanksgiving. Stephen mentioned this last week in his sermon about race in America. I want to fill in the story a little more.
The young man was Jahmol Norfleet. Jahmol had done some time in prison for gun possession. When he got out, he made a commitment to turn his life around. He came under the gentle and strong wing of the Rev. Miniard Culpepper, a lawyer and the pastor of the Pleasant Hill Baptist Church over on Humboldt Avenue. (Humboldt is one of the H streets that gives the name to H-Block, a gang that Jahmol belonged to.)
It was Miniard Culpepper who led the press conference that Stephen and I attended back in December. He was there with Jahmol’s sister to tell the press that Jahmol had turned his life around. That Jahmol had been an influential part of a significant peace negotiation that took place last summer between H-Block and a gang from Bromley Heath—the dense housing project over in Jamaica Plain near the Jackson Square T stop on the Orange Line.
Those secret peace negotiations created a truce. And there were no killings in that area for several months. Until Jahmol was shot and killed, 5 days before his 21st birthday.
Just before he was killed, Jahmol was planning to create a video that might reach other youth to talk about the futility of gang life and the cycle of violence that rips apart their neighborhoods and their lives. He wanted to inspire them, to help them imagine peace.
At the end of the press conference I shook hands with Pastor Culpepper, who was visibly drained by the experience. I hugged Jahmol’s sister, who had been standing next to her brother when he was killed. She was wounded by another bullet. They both clearly loved Jahmol—a young man with a ready smile who was well-loved and kind to children. But he had grown afraid for his life and began carrying a gun, until he came to understand that guns were not the answer.
Something struck me about the results of that press conference: though half a dozen white ministers stood with Rev. Culpepper and Ms. Norfleet and other Black clergy, the photos that ran in the Globe and elsewhere cropped everyone else out of the picture. The media editors made it look like Rev. Culpepper and the young people of Dorchester and Roxbury and Mattapan and Jamaica Plain are standing alone.
But they are not, and they will not stand alone! Because we are, in the words of Paul to the Corinthians, though many, one body.
Later that week, I heard that Miniard Culpepper had started a fast to bear witness to the suffering in his neighborhood and in Jahmol’s family. He would not eat until there was some progress in finding Jahmol’s killer. I called Rev. Culpepper because we had met and talked and shook hands. Because I had hugged Jahmol’s sister, I left a message that I would fast and pray with him twice a week so he would not be alone in his physical and spiritual undertaking.
I had meant for this shared fasting to be a private matter. I mention it now only because Pastor Culpepper brought it to light at a follow-up meeting to talk about the fund established for Jahmol. It seems it meant a great deal to him that someone he didn’t even know would join him in this prayer of our bodies. That someone else would raise up their hunger for justice and for peace to bear witness to the hunger we all share as members of the same corporate body.
That’s why I crossed the river to Cambridge last Sunday. Rev. Culpepper invited me to meet with some of the youth from H-Block. To join with New York filmmaker Mark Harris and noted law professor Charles Ogletree and other community organizers and clergy to hear what the young people who knew Jahmol--who live in the same circumstances and neighborhood--to hear what they have to say.
Someone asked the young people how they were feeling. After a difficult silence, a voice popped up:
-It’s never going to stop.
-What do you mean?
-The violence, the shootings, the killings—it’s never going to stop. It doesn’t matter what we do, the killing’s never going to stop.
It was hard to hear those hopeless words.
The meeting went on for more than an hour—the youth talking about fears and frustrations, distrust and hopelessness. And then another voice said:
-If I’m honest, deep down I know I want revenge. But I know that that won’t help. That won’t change anything except that someone else will be gone forever, the way Jahmol is gone forever. So we have to build peace. That’s the only way. That’s why we made the truce. For peace.
We made a plan to meet again and begin thinking about the message of the video. A young girl said that she wanted to come to the next organizing meeting but someone would have to pick her up in a car, because her mother won’t let her go out walking anymore. It’s just too dangerous.
It is the best of times. It is the worst of times. And it’s still only January…
Stephen mentioned it here last week: There have been three murders in Boston in as many weeks. All three have been young people. Fourteen year-old Emmanuel Saintil was shot just before Christmas. Jason Fernandes, also 14, was shot in Dorchester on New Year’s Day. Thirteen year-old Luis Gerena was shot near the Bromley-Heath projects in Jamaica Plain a week ago Saturday. For the past 16 months, Boston has averaged one shooting victim a month under the age of 14! We focus on the fatal shootings of which there were 54 last year. But there were 323 other shootings!
The meeting across the river was ending and I felt I wanted to say something, to connect with the young people in the room. I wanted to say that it’s not like this everywhere. In my neighborhood children can go outside without fearing they might be hit by a stray bullet. I wanted to tell them how outraged I am that their lives are so different than mine.
But those words felt like so much dust in my mouth. Instead I said:
-I just want to tell you: my church is in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston. Most of the people who sit in my church are white. But I want you to know that today in my neighborhood, in my church, we talked about you and your neighborhood. I just want you to know that we are thinking of you. I just wanted you to know that.
And what I want you to know is that after I said that, the boys and girls clapped. As they filed out of the law school conference room, each one stopped and shook my hand or hugged me and they said to tell you thank you for thinking about them.
“If the foot would say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body.’ As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”
The body is a model and marvel of diversity and interdependence. The upper row of teeth needs the lower to work properly that we can eat that we might live. When you hurt even the smallest part of yourself--you know what a paper cut does to your day!--your attention is diverted, your attention is forced to it, that you might care for it. That you might take care.
A tooth that aches? O my. We worry it with our tongue and are willing to spend a good deal of money to make it better. And what of more difficult shifts in the body? A chronic pain. The loss of sight. A degenerative illness. The dwindling of capacity through normal aging. How we grieve such loss in the body…
Illness, pain, or suffering in the body is an invitation to care. It is sometimes the very door that is opened to welcome care into our lives via the diverse gifts of professionals, family, friends, even total strangers who think of you and wish you well, who pray for you and send you love.
Our city body is suffering. It is sick. It is in pain.
We have diverse gifts. The door is open. We are one body.
When one member suffers we all suffer.
When one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.
Let us make cause for rejoicing.
Let us take care of ourselves and one another.
Let our best resolutions endure long past January
and lead us to honor the body with our diverse gifts.
May it be so. AMEN
