How do I tell you that much we’ve thought real is illusion?
That much we thought Christian, a counterfeit?
Much we thought history, myth?
How do I tell you that our white, Christian ancestors
Embraced illusion, counterfeit and myth
To cover their shame?

Will you cover your ears,
Will you shout me down,
When I say that covered shame
Remains, festers, kills,
And keeps getting passed to the next generation
And the next?

I don’t need to tell you:
Shame that’s exposed hurts like hell.
But only – only – when brought out into the light
Can shame be dealt with and sent away.

I don’t know how. And yet I tell you:
That way alone is the way out.
Otherwise, we will stay stuck
Exactly where our proud forebears left us.
And we will keep pretending
That we’re not.

Facing what we think we cannot survive,
Saying what is agony to admit,
Laying down pride and privilege,
No longer confusing fear of God with fear of loss –
That way lies truth and love
And life.

Postscript

I published this post three days before my mother’s death in 2017. That week, I took a very hard trek back to the Civil War town where I was born and grew up. And though I didn’t speak it aloud, I silently, repeatedly, asked the question this post poses, “How do I tell you?”

Now, it’s 2020. At the dawn of the year, I updated the Kindle version of We Confess! The Civil War, the South, and the Church, which had not been reformatted since it was published in 2011. In the process, I added an “Author’s Note” that highlights something I’ve known, but am just now beginning to grasp.

There is no good way to tell people what they do not want to hear. What matters is to say what you’ve learned, in love, to put it out there, for anyone willing to ask:

Tell us about past events,
so that we can reflect on them
and understand their consequences.¹

So we can choose a different way.

Related posts

• Can we talk about shame?
• The Civil War, the South and the church
• The great righteousness-justice divide
• This girl is a woman now
• Four questions – about Trump, Evangelicals, self-deception and the Civil War
• The truth will set you free

Footnotes

1. Isaiah 41:22 CJB. ↩︎