Nine Lives
I was born in Charleston, SC. I came into this world, completely clean. Like all newborns, I began my life free of any judgement, unable to find fault in any race or skin color, without bias to any region or country and devoid of any political party affiliation.
Isn't it amazing to know that no matter how different we are, we all start this journey with our heels in the very same starting block? (Tweet it.)
Somewhere down the line we all lose a bit of that purity. If you are lucky you are brought up by parents who instill faith and tolerance in your heart. I was raised to respect elders and be thankful for my blessings. But for many others, a once white slate can become tarnished with layers of learned habits.
The term "habit" often has a negative connotation, but we often develop positive habits: prayer, exercise, volunteering, etc. The negative habits are the ones that can often get top billing in a person's character. Over time, a tea bag can rim a once white cup with an herbal film. A person's character can be stained the same way. Whether it be by family members, television, a group of friends, or even learning about our own past history, those negative habits layer onto our white yet porous character and dye it over time.
The tricky thing about this calcification of character is that it happens gradually, the way plaque attaches to a clean tooth. You might not notice it until it becomes too difficult to scrape away. This is the revelation I had Thursday morning, when I woke up in our beautiful Holy City, turned on the news, and heard of the bloodshed in the historic AME Church. There were nine lives lost that day and it was as if someone had taken a crow bar to my chest and cracked away nine ribs, exposing my open heart to the elements.
I recognized something in Dylann Roof. Not in a sense that we have met face to face, but I resonated with his overwhelming sense of being too full of emotion. I could imagine Dylann, sitting in that prayer group with a twitching leg, battling the demons in his own mind. There are those people in this world who feel too much. Some are much more docile, being overwhelmed with compassion, grief, or disbelief. My own mother felt too much sadness. She fought sadness like a trained ninja, but ultimately lost the battle. But the thing that unites all of these characteristics is the sense that there is no other option than the extreme. While a healthy mind can understand the limits of traditional logic, an unhealthy mind, riddled with layers of plaque, can see nothing other than decay and death.
I realized, just like that tooth, it was too late to give Dylann's conscience a good descaling.
I think what Dylann Roof was trying to do was shock the system here in our peaceful community, and he succeeded. But instead of causing a cataclysm of hatred, Mr. Roof placed a metaphoric defibrillator on all of our hearts and gave us a jolt of octane so powerful that we could only react with love. (Tweet it.)
That love exists only to bolster the weak hearts that are in mourning. A mourning so great it reverberates through our entire community. I can tell you that we will continue to have a solemn shroud over this city for a long time to come. But this veil of grief is also a powerful agent of positivity that descended on our city and caused us all to look internally, analyze the areas of our own hearts that are broken, and give the rough patches a good scrub. We will not be a community defined by hatred, we are not a city known for terror, and we will not be a population that continues to let something as superficial as race continue to stymie the desire for our city to be more than just a town, but a commonwealth.
Mr. Roof, if I can even address you as a "Mister" because the title itself implies age or wisdom and of which you have neither, I cannot fathom how you doomed your life to lay in a bed lined with the most sinful sheets imaginable. You took nine lives. And by the grace of God, through verbal admissions you were forgiven nine times by the survivors and victims of your egregious acts. By an act of the highest divinity, you have received the holy pardon only cats that exist in fables hope to achieve, using all nine lives of their cosmic score card.
Matthew 10:18 says, "And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul."
Nine lives became nine souls. Amazing how those souls in heaven are making a higher impact on this world than most living beings will ever attempt.
Charleston has shown that we will not cower in fear, because our collective soul exists indefinitely. We are the nine and we recite them by name: Clementa, Cynthia, Sharonda, Tywanza, Ethel, Susie, Depayne, Daniel & Myra. We will count your names like rosary beads for all our prayers yet to come. May you rest in sweet peace and light everlasting.