Last night I watched the award-winning “12 Years a Slave”
and was brought to sobbing tears.
Something deep in my soul was touched and I could not stop the tears
from flowing. I’ve seen many films on
slavery, but just like watching Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ”, never
have I seen it depicted in a way that threw me into actually feeling the misery of
slavery that I experienced last night.
In my younger years, I lived in a town about 20 miles
outside Detroit. It was the mid-1960’s
and our nation was in the midst of violent times. Being so young, I never understood what I saw
on the news each night. I never realized
how close we were to the violence around us.
I lived in a community where whites and blacks lived comfortably next to
each other. We played together. We had slumber parties together. Fear was never in the mix. But something changed during that time. I saw and felt the fear in my parent’s eyes. Suddenly, for one week in the summer of 1967,
we were not allowed to be out past 6:00 p.m. on hot summer nights. No hide and seek. No flashlight tag. My
mother wanted to know where we were all the time. We had to play in our own backyard instead of
our usual bike adventures throughout the neighborhood. I was confused as to why things changed. I was 7-years-old at the time and along with
my sisters and brothers, the army of children we played with outside our home
never posed a threat to any of us and vice versa. It wasn’t until I became older that I asked
my Mother about her fear during that turbulent summer. She simply said, “We were not afraid of the
children, we were concerned about what the adults would do.” It was a simple answer but it carried a huge
stick.
That week in July, 1967, shaped my life in many ways. My parents left an indelible etch in my soul
with their reactions to the events swirling around us. Fear is gripping and powerful. It keeps us from injury, but, if allowed, it
also keeps us locked in to thoughts/behaviors and locks us out of growth and change. Even though my little heart loved all my
friends of different color, my mind could not erase the fear my parents
experienced, and I witnessed firsthand. As days and years went by, I remember a sense of insecurity
that arose within me whenever I visited friends homes. Being young, I was trapped with a feeling I
could not explain, but it was palpable.
Things had changed and I did not feel as safe any longer. Time went by, and I socialized less with my black
friends. I did not even realize it
either. It was something that seemed to
have a natural process to it. It did not
happen overnight, but the distance nonetheless did happen. The strange thing is it happened on both
sides. My black friends distanced
themselves as well. There were no longer
the fun summer times exploring our turf together. It became more like “us” and “them” and none
of us knew how to stop it. It’s as if an
invisible screen was put up between us. A seemingly do-not-cross line was drawn in the
sand. Perhaps a screen of skepticism or distrust had invaded our lives without
permission. I do not believe in my heart
it happened knowingly. No, it was much more
subtle, elusive and destructive. It was
to become the pattern that I showed my children at times when they were growing
up. Be leery; be cautious around those
that are not like us. Be guarded when in
unfamiliar settings. It was, once again,
that fear of the unknown. The fear of
not what I would do, but what others could do to me. It grew out of the mustard seed planted in my
youth by parents who did not instinctively realize how much their influence
would be passed on to their children.
So as I watched the movie last night, a well-spring of tears
flowed not because I had never realized how damaging slavery was, but more
about the injustice of ignorance that people follow even today. Slavery still binds our minds. It still inflicts its intolerance in the
world around us. We see nations fighting;
wars started and people killing people because they have not opened their minds
to the possibility of freedom through accepting others even when they are
different than ourselves. That is the most
wicked form of slavery, I believe, because we are not always clear and aware of
its insidious nature within ourselves.
It wraps around our heart like a coiled snake ready to rear its head and
puncture our soul with venom. And the
very sad part is often we react in behaviors taught to us long ago. Sometimes we don’t even realize we harbor ill
thoughts toward one another until the moment it happens.
This movie’s profound impact moved me in ways I have only
experienced a handful of times in my life.
It left me with questions that only I can ask of myself. Do I harbor destructive feelings and thoughts
toward others deep within me? When
prompted, how do I respond to injustice when I see it happening? Just like slavery, World War II brought about
mass annihilation to millions of Jewish people while the world watched and did very
little at the beginning to stop the gruesome crimes against humanity. What would I have done if I lived in those
times? What would I have done if I had been
in the audience while Jesus’ body was being destroyed at the cross? I like to think I would have had the gumption
to take a stand, but no one truly knows what we are made of until those moments
happen to us, do we? Not even the Apostles were there to help Jesus
when His time came. They scattered to
the wind when they were faced with what was happening.
We live in a world that can be grim and foreboding, but my
hope and prayer is that my one life will be a life filled with compassion and
kindness to everyone I meet in this journey even if it feels uncomfortable or
unfamiliar to me. I pray I can overcome
past experiences that left me with dark markings about others. That is my responsibility to this world. That no matter what challenges I face, I face
them with honesty and integrity to do the right thing even when others do not
reciprocate or turn their faces away. That
is the light I carry within me. That is
the light I desire to leave this world when my time comes.
"No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it
will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, so that
those who come in may see the light.”
Luke 11:33
