Lynn Morrissey is a writer and
poet, who has written for The
High Calling and numerous web sites, including Jennifer
Dukes-Lee’s. She is the author of Love
Letters to God: Deeper Intimacy Through Written Prayer; Seasons
of a Woman’s Heart: A Daybook of Stories and Inspiration; and Treasures
of a Woman’s Heart. We happen to belong to the same church in St. Louis, and I’ve
actually served with her husband on the church Board of Deacons.
Lynn has written a fine poem
about the murders of nine people at the church in Charleston, and I’m privileged
to share it here.
Charleston
by Lynn D. Morrissey
in memory and honor of the martyred members of “Mother” Emanuel AME
Church, Charleston, South Carolina, June 2015
Nine faithful saints met below a
mahogany-lined,
stained-glass sanctuary
in an undercroft meeting room,
unaware.
Nine innocents assembled,
as children in a Sunday-School
circle,
smiling,
sharing,
daring
to entwine the stranger in their midst
in love’s caring embrace.
Opening their good hearts to
him,
opening their Good Books,
their fingers traced ancient
emblems on a page,
onion-skinned words,
pregnant with power,
that birthed life and love,
freedom and hope,
while he unearthed a pistol with
nine bitter bullets,
threatening to unleash Pharoah’s
racist vitriol
of centuries past.
(Didn’t
he know that God commands to let His children go?
Didn’t he know that Pharoah and his
slave-owning minions throughout the eons
always get sucked under and perish
in the undertow of hate?
Didn’t he know that Christ came and died and
rose—
that He set the slaves, the captives free?)
Would that the stranger had
unsheathed the Sword, two-edged,
and turned it on himself,
pledging to let it do its
piercing surgery,
dividing his withered soul and
spirit, tethered joints and marrow,
cutting to the quick his narrow
thoughts and intentions,
his rancid racial dissension,
slicing out the bigotry hidden
in his own subterranean, Satanic heart.
Would that he had subjugated his
repugnant faux-supremacy under
the Supreme Judge.
Would that he had begged Him
and them
for mercy for even contemplating what he was about
to do.
(He could have stopped.
Racists
can always stop.
They
must.
stop.)
Instead, he raged on, firing
close-range shots like cannons,
abandoning all humanity,
decency,
morality.
He left them there,
nine innocents below the
mahogany-lined,
stained-glass sanctuary,
blood-stains on his hands,
slave-chains on his heart,
chains sure to drag him down and
drown his soul.
But for nine faithful saints,
the waters parted.
They walked through to safety.
They walked through to higher,
holier ground.
Photograph: Emanuel African-Methodist-Episcopal Church in Charleston,
via Episcopal Café, which also has a brief
history of the church.
