cornovirus blues: how long? not long!

Today I felt how worn-out I am with the lock down. It's been creeping into my consciousness for a few weeks, but as a contemplative introvert I haven't minded the solitude. I still don't. Being still and alone in the garden, or in prayer or study, has NOT been a personal burden. To be sure, I ache in missing my children and our grandchildren. And I am sad that our 25th anniversary trip to Nova Scotia has been scuttled. But with a few minor exceptions, scrupulously observing sheltering at home has been an important act of social solidarity: we adhere to it both for our own health as well as the well being of those more vulnerable.

And still I felt the cumulative weariness of the past 100+ days today, perhaps knowing that there is more - much more - yet to come. It wasn't a pity party so much as an extended groan resonating through every part of my being. The coronavirus blues.Then, when I least expected it, I saw a post on FB from a friend in Canada about today being the 56th anniversary of the murder of Civil Rights martyrs Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney. The text of his message reads:

On this day, 21 June 1964, three civil rights workers were murdered by police and Ku Klux Klan members in Mississippi. James Earl Chaney, a 21-year-old Black former union plasterer and organizer with the Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE) from nearby Meridian, Mississippi, Andrew Goodman, a 20-year-old Jewish anthropology student from New York, and Michael 'Mickey' Schwerner, a 24-year-old Jewish CORE organizer

and former social worker from New York were lynched on the night of June 21–22 by members of the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Neshoba County's Sheriff Office and the Philadelphia Police Department located in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

The three had been working on the "Freedom Summer" campaign, attempting to register African Americans to vote. While seven of the killers ended up being jailed on federal charges of civil rights violations, the state of Mississippi didn't prosecute anyone for the murders until 2005, when they eventually charged one of the killers with manslaughter. He was then convicted and sentenced to 60 years imprisonment.
Chaney's younger brother Ben later joined the Black Panther Party and the urban guerrilla group the Black Liberation Army, for which he ended up serving 13 years in prison.

Immediately, from some place deep inside, the words of an old African-American sermon resonated in my heart: Hold on, sisters and brothers! How long? Not long! So hold on... And I wondered where my pictures of their memorial wound up in the basement? Back in the summer of 1982, I was in Philadelphia, MS working as an organizer with the Mississippi Wood Cutters Association. Wood cutters are the heirs of chattel slaves who continued to work the land for large white land owners

after Reconstruction. And, Philadelphia was where Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney were working during the Congress of Racial Equality's (CORE) Freedom Summer of registering voters throughout the South. 

One day driving the dirt roads outside of Philadelphia, I came across a modern United Methodist Church. It had been burned to the ground shortly before the three civil rights workers were kidnapped, tortured, murdered and buried in a nearby lake. Noticing the memorial marker, but having no idea that I was on hallowed ground, my young daughter and I got out of the car to see what we had stumbled upon. An elderly African American man watched from his front porch across the road and eventually sauntered over to ask if we needed help. He was a deacon in the church. And when I spoke with quiet reverence about both the burned church and the murdered martyrs, he invited us to join him for some lemonade. Over the next few months we visited his home often: he arranged a small cot on his back porch for us to rest on when organizing kept us out too late, his wife regularly set out a small bowl of butter beans for us to eat when she knew we were in the area (we were vegetarians at the time), and he introduced me to other woodcutters who were interested in changing the power dynamics of their poverty. It was a blessed surprise that I have held close to my heart for decades.

Seeing the pictures of the Mississippi martyrs snapped me out of my privileged doldrums - at least for now. How long? Not long... I believe the holy calls to us in a variety of small ways every day to encourage and guide us along the way. This is a really odd and trying time of staying vigilant and engaged - especially when so many young activists are out in the street - and I am too old to join them. I am also worried sick for them as the plague is no where near done with us yet. So, I returned thanks to God for the Face Book wake up call, thanked God, too for my friend's posting, and asked for a little more courage and patience. 

Serendipitously, one of my daughters posted this picture yesterday on Father's Day. It was taken moments after they got off the train from NYC to join me for part of the summer's organizing in Mississippi. How long? In the grand scheme of things, Lord, not long. (And now I need to go find those pictures!)