The day before we arrived in Birmingham, I had weathered the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery where 4,000+ lynchings of Black men and women are commemorated. I couldn’t imagine anything worse.
I filed into “The Experience Room” at 16th Street Baptist Church with my fellow pilgrims, sitting front and center, innocently, until that bomb exploded. Even though it was a mere enactment, I was stunned and left choked up most of the afternoon. Children wiped away. Their dear mothers keening.
Thank God we arrived at nearby Camp McDowell that night for the Sabbath.
We returned for the “regular” service the next day; for me, it was anything but the usual fare. Sweet release had started on the bus while rolling into town with my mates. Twenty minutes of meditation and my tears had finally flowed freely. Then we were welcomed and folded in for Worship, complete with live jazz accompaniment and a sermon that was out of this world. And those little kids, dressed to the nines, with their parents and grandparents, were all around me. They had returned to church, trusting enough that all was well.
It was a blessed paradox to me…a testimony that healing is even possible.
Always Bridging 