6/7/20 “Reflection” by Nancy E. Petty
We are a broken nation. We are a broken human family.
As I walked through downtown the night after the first protest all I could see was all the brokenness. Broken windows. Glass scattered everywhere. Broken signs. Broken benches. Broken spirits crying out in the streets. The next morning, Sunday morning, I decided to walk back downtown. I had heard that people were going that morning to clean up the city. As I walked down Fayetteville St. and saw the mass of diverse people cleaning I was overcome with emotions. The sight of Raleigh citizens from all walks of life banning together to clean up. But something struck me as I watched people feverishly scrubbing the graffiti off the buildings and sweeping up broken glass. As I walked, I wondered about our inability to sit with the brokenness, the pain, the destruction.
If you know me, you know my OCD tendencies to have everything neat and in place—picked up and cleaned up. But on that Sunday morning I wonder how our collective need to have things neat and clean up and sanitized keeps us from seeing the pain and brokenness and anger? How does our need for order keep us from hearing the cries of our wounds that are still raw and open?
If we can’t sit with and see and accept our brokenness, I’m not sure we can heal it. The first step to wholeness is always to admit something in broken.
I am broken. As a white privileged person who grew up in the south, I am broken. I grew up in a part of North Carolina where it was not unusual to see the Klu Klux Klan burning crosses on the side of the road. I grew up in a small rural town in American where the racism there mirrored that of larger America. Racial bias was taught to me implicitly and explicitly. I am broken.
I want to heal this brokenness. I am committed to healing this brokenness. People like William Barber and Barbara Harris and Roz Pelles and Yara and Charmine and Erica and Chalice Overy have helped me heal some of my brokenness through authentic relationship, honest conversation and sometimes very hard conversation. AND, I have more work to do. A lot more work to do. And that work continues here at this table where there is no distinction between race, or gender, or gender identity, or color of skin, or whether you are a saint or sinner. All of us come to the table broken and in need of healing.
This very table represents brokenness. A broken system that condemned a justice loving man of color to death. Out of that brokenness, Jesus says love is stronger than hate, and death is not the final word. This meal calls us to love; and it calls us to risk our lives for justice-love.
