…till
[you]anchor in the promised land.
It takes a long pull… You have to persevere…to get there…
To fulfill responsibilities in our personal lives and to live out our commitments to love and justice in the world…
We need to be long haul people.
Perseverance is our spiritual theme as we begin this New Year and it is a powerful one.
Because so much of life seems to require a kind of tenacity, determination, stick-to-it-iveness…faithfulness.
Caring for a parent, as they age, or caring for a child as they grow through or just go through difficulties…over time…
Supporting friends through their own tragedies, misfortunes and…sometimes bad decisions…
Working for justice when it is one move forward and two moves back…on the best of days…
That light at the end of the tunnel can be so dim.
And “success” …whatever that might look like…so infrequent…its…sometimes… just not enough to see us through…
Sometimes our determination is all we can know for sure…all we can trust.
(Perseverance): doing something despite its difficulty or despite delay in achieving success.
That is one dictionary definition of perseverance.
But I think most of us have images of what it looks like.
You remember Sisyphus? He is a character from Greek mythology who is condemned by the gods to roll a boulder up a mountain, only to watch the rock roll back down again…and to repeat that climb…over and over… forever.
No finishing the task. No result.
An eternity of meaningless effort and suffering.
(Black Screen)
Albert Camus, the famous existential philosopher, painted a different picture of Sisyphus. It is worth pausing over for a moment.
Camus argues that, though it may confound our linear hope for progress and fly in the face of our urge to make a difference…
Camus argues that Sisyphus is happy. Yes, happy.
Perhaps the climb up that mountain becomes more comfortable over time. Perhaps the muscles that once strained under the weight of the rock now easily control it…it could happen…last week there were new faces at the gym where I exercise…New Year’s Resolution exercisers…straining and hoping that the exercises would get easier if they persevered…
Could Sisyphus begin to move the rock gracefully so that the act of pushing it becomes art? Not suffering?
“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a [person’s] heart,” writes Camus. “We must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
The struggle itself is a source of joy.
That idea is a real challenge for me. I don’t want an endless task. I want to get to the Promised Land. I want success in our work as much as anyone. And I get frustrated by the slow pace of change and the setbacks.
There are also times when I think walking away from that boulder is necessary. Times when perseverance…faithfulness…can be such a drain on the body and the spirit that walking away becomes necessary for survival.
Every boulder should not command unending faithfulness.
And yet, with all of that said… aren’t there times when perseverance has to be its own reward?
Our stories about overcoming obstacles…in the dominant culture… place little value on perseverance…our culture prefers stories of success…often quick success. Stories that minimize resistance and make no mention of helping others, of collective responsibility.
The single individual is the hero.
Any obstacles, when pointed out are easily overcome. Goodwill prevails and justice rolls down like waters.
Those are the stories we like.
Take Rosa Parks and her story.
President George Bush called Parks the “mother of the civil rights movement” at her funeral in 2005:
“Rose Parks showed that one candle can light the darkness…Like so many institutionalized evils, once the ugliness of [the Jim Crow] laws was held up to the light, they could not stand. … as a result, the cruelty and humiliation of [those] laws are now a thing of the past… Rosa Parks called America back to its founding promise of equality and justice for everyone.”
One candle can light the darkness…Rosa Parks as a solo actor, refusing to give up her seat…exposed the Jim Crow laws and they melted away…those injustices…are now a thing of the past…the founding promise of our nation restored…
Where to even start with that version of Rosa Parks’ story?
First, let’s assume that the President’s praise for Rosa Parks was genuine, rather than merely a way to divert attention from the enduring racial inequities that Hurricane Katrina had revealed just two months before her death.
Second, the success of the bus boycott was not just the result of Rosa Parks’ solo action…and not only the result of the leadership of Dr. King.
Parks and King were important…but the bus boycott was a model of collective resistance…for the long haul…it lasted over a year.
It was the Women’s Political Council, 25 Black women, that called for the boycott and printed the posters: “Walk on Monday. No Riding Today.”
Some people did walk…but most rode…because 300 people volunteered the use of their cars…there were 20 full time drivers travelling between 40 pick up and drop off stations, driving people to work and to the store, driving children to school, with routes organized by 15 full time dispatchers. This was a massive, long term community wide organizing effort, with national fundraising to support it.
Rosa Parks was no solo actor.
And the resistance did not just melt away.
Both Rosa and her husband lost their jobs. King’s home and the NAACP President’s home were firebombed. Death threats became a normal part of life. The volunteer drivers of the boycott were repeatedly harassed. The Parks case in state court was delayed again and again. It took a Supreme Court decision before the city and the then insolvent bus company gave in.
The resistance did not just melt away.
Rose Parks was not some older woman who was just too tired to get up.
At 42, she had been a leader in the activist community for a dozen years before her refusal to move led to the boycott.
She was Youth Leader for the NAACP Chapter and Secretary to the Chapter President. She travelled the state collecting testimony from Black women who had been sexually assaulted…for NAACP cases. Just months before the boycott, she attended a training session at the Highlander School in Tennessee, a primary training center for labor and racial justice organizers throughout the south.
She later wrote: “the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
And the boycott was not an impulsive act of resistance to a single humiliation.
Parks herself had been thrown off the bus years earlier…by the same bus driver.
But she was not the first or the only person to resist.
In 1944 Viola White was arrested for refusing to give up her seat. Her case was held up in state court for years…delay after delay…until she finally died.
In 1950, Hilliard Brooks refused to reboard at the rear after paying his fare at the front, another of the Jim Crow indignities. The police shot and killed him when they arrived.
nd in 1955, before Rosa Parks’ arrest in December, two other women had already been arrested for refusing to give up their seats.
The community did not rise in support of either of them, primarily because promises of reform were made…but not kept.
By the time of Parks’ arrest, the community had persevered and suffered long enough…they had reached the breaking point.
The breaking point.
Following the success off the boycott, unable to find work in Montgomery, she and her husband had to move, eventually to Detroit. They struggled financially until Rosa was hired in the office of Congressman John Conyers, a dozen years after the boycott. Parks continued to be an activist for racial justice in Detroit and served on the national Board of Planned Parenthood.
Rosa Parks was eventually honored by three US Presidents.
In 1983, Ronald Reagan said of Mrs. Parks: “We’ve made historic strides since Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus. As a democratic people, we can take pride in the knowledge that we Americans recognized a grave injustice and took action to correct it…”
“We’ve made historic strides…”
Rosa Parks was being woven into a fable about the civil rights movement. A fable that some still believe.
That fable went like this: “…there had been an injustice, [long ago…not now].
…but once courageous individuals [like Rosa Parks…not an organized community] pointed it out, that injustice was corrected,
…and proved the greatness of American democracy.”
I’m quoting Dr. Jeanne Theoharris, who has written extensively on the Parks story and legacy.
That fable, that national narrative makes no mention of the community of resistance that persevered…through decades…
And because that injustice was “back then” and “so easily” corrected…the dominant culture can be proud of the greatness of our democracy…rather than focus on the ongoing failures..
Dr. Theoharris describes the meaning that can more honestly be found in this story:
“What the Montgomery bus boycott shows, is that when change does happen, it is often because people labored for decades and sometimes generations…. These activists were slurred and ignored, slammed and surveilled, and ignored again. They kept going when all their efforts seemed in vain. In witnessing their persevering courage, other people found their own.”
Their persevering courage…when all their efforts seemed in vain.
Long haul people…like so many here in this sanctuary. Folks who stand vigil at ICE headquarters, who welcome asylum seekers, who attend meetings, write letters to congress and make calls, who show up for the fundraisers and contribute your time and energy to help bring the Beloved Community into reality.
And like so many here, hundreds, who volunteer and serve as teachers and ushers, lay ministers and justice group convenors…
So many.
Steadfast. Faithful.
It is not easy being long haul people. Not easy in our personal lives. Not easy in our efforts for equity and fairness. Not when the needs are endless, when progress is slow and when the setbacks can be heartbreaking.
It helps to be centered not only on success but, as Wendell Berry wrote, on “preserving qualities in one’s own heart …that would be destroyed by acquiescence.”
It helps to be inspired by a vision for Beloved Community like that stonecutter in the parable who saw himself as part of building a cathedral.
All that helps but there is something more here.
Maya Angelou had planned a big party for her 40th birthday on April 4th 1968… the day Dr. King was assassinated. She went into a deep depression which lasted weeks. It was James Baldwin who helped her dig out.
“The times were so solemn and the daily news so somber,” she wrote later, “that we snatched mirth from unlikely places and gave servings of it to one another with both hands. … Jimmy [Baldwin] said, ‘We survived slavery…you know how we survived? We put surviving into our poems and into our songs. We put it into our folk tales. We danced surviving… and put it in our pots when we cooked pinto beans. We knew, if we wanted to survive, we had better lift our own spirits. So we laughed whenever we got the chance.”
It is a very different picture from that image of Sisyphus, alone and grim, struggling to push his rock up that hill.
But I can imagine Sisyphus looking our way and …is he smiling?
We are going to need to be long haul people this year…there is no doubt…this year and longer.
Being long haul people…the spiritual discipline of perseverance… is not solo work, at least it is so much more difficult as solo work…
Determination helps. Commitment is required. But surviving and thriving requires finding some joy in the effort.
The joy comes from the sharing of the task…shoulders to the boulder, as it were… singing and worshipping and praying together. As we do here. Supporting one another for the long haul, lifting our spirits as we go.
It takes a long pull to get there but … together … we can anchor in the promised land.
Topics: Perseverance