Praise from the Pit

A lovely spring morning. I put the soup on, and, secateurs in hand, I popped outside to do an hour in the wildness that is our garden. After uncovering the parsley struggling to survive beneath a pile of last autumn’s leaves, I noticed the ivy stretching its grippy fingers every which way. Over the dyke in both directions, up the greenhouse wall and round the damson trunk and clawing its way into the black bagged leaf mulch waiting to enrich the veggie patch.

There is something extremely satisfying about clipping and pulling up the roots of hungry ivy. I didn’t have much time. I didn’t get it finished. But I’ve made a start.

I’ve been hugely impacted these last few days by a programme about Reconstruction in the South after the Civil War. I’ve been shocked and dismayed. Gutted. That I grew up believing lies and half-truths. That I thought the Civil War decided it: African Americans are equal. Now I know there were many deliberate campaigns and decisions by white men at the turn of the 20^th century which caricatured the noble African Americans and libelled and slandered them. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I learned of the execution last week of an African American convicted of a murder someone else confessed to. He was executed anyway.

It seems that white supremacy is hungry, insidious, and active. It obscures the truth and strangles the facts and perpetuates injustice of the most reprehensible kind. I am appalled and left on my knees asking God, ‘What can I do? What can I say? How can I help? How can I make a difference?’

It turns out that I don’t know very much. I am not finished, but I’ve made a start.

In the pits of slavery, the African Americans looked up to God. They sang and they praised him and their music continues to have a powerful influence in sacred and secular society. Praise is a weapon.

As I stand at the edge of this massive injustice in which I have been an unwitting player, there is nowhere to look but up, nothing to do, at this point, but praise. Praise the God who brings what is done in the dark into the light. Praise the God who loves the weak and the marginalised, the voiceless and the oppressed. And listen for his guidance, and then obey.