Have I Got A Witness?

It was January 1994. My neighbour and new friend Shelia and I were walking up to a small wooden church building. Shelia had invited me to go to church with her. She and her husband had built and moved into the house next door in the summer of 1992. They were the only black family in our street, and I was really eager to meet Shelia and her husband and two teenage children. It took a while, because I was busy with a brand new baby, my son Nicholas, who was born in July of 1992. My husband watched Nicholas while I went to church that first time 21 years ago. I had no idea what church my neighbour was a member of, and it became apparent I was walking up to a mostly black members church. I remember being a bit nervous. I knew enough about black history in the US to know that to this day most black people and most white people live separate lives in separate neighbourhoods. Our neighbourhood was no exception. Other than Shelia and her family, there was one neighbour in the next street over who was a nurse and her husband was black, a guy my son Nicholas really liked to hang out with at neighbourhood BBQ.s when he was a toddler. Charlie was an electrical engineer, and Nicholas would go talk to Charlie in his backyard. As I was walking up to the church with Shelia, I wondered how my presence would be welcomed. I needn't had to worry. As soon as I walked through the door, I was warmly greeted and hugged. I still remember thinking how much better this world would be if all white people welcomed black visitors to their white churches with equal warmth and kindness and open hearts. I was baptized by our Pastor, the Reverend  Bishop Obey, on March 20th 1994, a defining moment for me spiritually and personally. I keep the picture of my baptism in the Bible Shelia and her family gave to me. Over the next 21 years New Life Baptist Church, that is now located at a beautiful big new building across town, nourished my soul and helped me make sense of my youngest sister's suicide, my other sister's untimely death from cancer, the demise of my parents' 45 year marriage, my father's Alzheimer's and death, and my mother's alcoholism and subsequent death from kidney complications. The church strengthened my marriage, my energy for my son and his talents, my determination to shake off the sadness and trauma after all the loss. To hear then on the news that last night a deranged hate absorbed white young man went into the Bible study at Emanuel AME Church in Charlestown, South Carolina and killed 9 parishioners including their Pastor,the Reverend Clementa Pinckney, after spending an hour with them was spine chilling. I know about Bible study on Wednesday nights, I attended a few some years back. To think that this stranger was welcomed into the class, in view of the openness of the way I was greeted, only makes the massacre that took place more heart breaking. At my church I always feel like I am accepted, loved, unconditionally. It seems like politics these days is forcing once more the issue of race and colour. It is like we are turning the clock back to a past where prejudice and hatred towards black people in this country were common fare. Polarization in politics is bringing the division and thin veneer of racial relations back to the foreground, and I hope the resulting dialogue will be a positive and fruitful one. During sermons, the preaching pastor will often ask, when making a point about faith : " Have I got a witness?" It is a question designed to encourage affirmation and testimony from the audience. I think the affirmation the world needs today is that we can all agree as civilized people of this great country that hatred and the deadly violence it wreaks have no place in a decent society. " Have I got a witness?", please, can we agree that we need to start opening our hearts and minds to a brotherhood of civilized souls that can see across the spectrum of race and colour to a future that will set everyone free from the fear and suffocating limitations of prejudice towards our fellow men and women?