BLACK AGE: reconciliation

Sinclair told me a few weeks ago he planned to host a service in collaboration with a chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership conference on the 14th of January at his church in Maryland. Sinclair means a great deal to me. Pastors are a complex bred of men, and in the Black American church they hold sway over the consciousness, and the thinking of a large segment of Black America. The deeper problems of our people stem from the core of our existence. Our belief-systems are defined by our relationship to white Americans and four decades after Dr. King was killed we cling to the source of our tragedies fearful of the challenge, the work that Dr. King’s ‘dream’ requires if our goal is to be free.

People around the globe, who are thinking, are asking obvious questions about the inertia of Black America. It is pass time to address our inertia like warriors, not punks skittish around the opinions of white Americans. The time to emote, and fuss over what the white man did to us is gone. This is the time of reconciliation. White people will not ask for forgiveness the way we need them to. What they will do is to act out what they want, and need in ‘our’ relationship. It takes wisdom, and strength to operate at this level, and as a group of people we, Black Americans, are not at that level of maturity. The mere suggestion of this approach always stirs up anger, and separatism.


If we are to retreat from our tradition, open ourselves in the sacred work of healing and reconciliation to gain the right perspective, and relationship to power we must walk a different path, with different eyes, keener awareness, and a centerness that anger, and inertia are incapable of creating. That being said do we need a central figure, a leader like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. today? No. We don’t. We need a new religion that doesn’t cling to form, and cry for justice. We need to do something, initially, as drastic as gathering together in healing circles with all of the races to heal the whole. Healing of the whole will centralize individual problems into another light, another framework that will enable Black Americans to see ourselves through other eyes learning to ‘see’ us. This kind of beginning will engage the creative juices of everybody in this dance around the fires of our being human.


The singular difference with Rev. Sinclair Grey’s service was the attendance of people from Reverend Moon’s church who joined other churches in worship and praise last night. Somehow Reverend Moon’s philosophy and practice brings all of the people together. What Christian denomination does that? What can we learn from Rev. Moon that the Black Church is incapable of doing?


If we don’t start somewhere different we will remain what we call ourselves: niggers.”


©Gregory E. Woods
Keeper of Stories
1/15/11

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