Last week I
visited my brother and his family in Germany by myself. I find it
particularly rewarding to find your way around an unfamiliar place, not knowing
a language, and doing all of that on your own. It forces you to pay extra
close attention to details that you might not have noticed if you were sharing
the work load. In the midst of traveling you are forced to be more
available to your surroundings because you do not have someone distracting
you. Once I arrived in Dusseldorf, I took a train to Hamburg, which is
where they live. As the newness of traveling by train faded and I tired
of my book; I started to pay close attention to the world whizzing by me
outside. I noticed the obvious things first: the farms were eerily
similar to those in the States; the cities were not. All of the buildings
looked old. I don’t know if that says more about the American unhealthy
extreme value of the new or about the rural German lifestyle. 
Then I began
to look at the specific things in the landscape: a llama, a cool red truck,
windmills and yellow flowers. (Side tangent – I later discovered that
these flowers are named Rape… #worstflowernameever.) As the hours ticked
by, I felt my eyes wander down to the tracks. An instant overwhelmed me with a
sense of awareness of my locality. It was the rocks beneath the railroad
ties. They were worn. They had been there a while; a long
while. Probably nearly a hundred years. As the thought began
to cross my mind; my breath was knocked out of me. People were led to
death here. Probably right here. And I felt changed.
But, I began to really process what I was thinking because, let’s be honest, I
had the time. I realized that no one around me seemed affected by the
reality that we were blissfully traveling a track that once saw unthinkable
pain. I felt myself judging these Germans for being so blasé about the
Holocaust… even though I had not engaged anyone in my thought pattern, and I
would have no way of knowing the struggle to absorb and process the state sponsored genocide that occurred less than a century ago. I don't mean to say they actually are blasé so much as I struggled with projecting that on to them in the midst of my reflective moment. And then the thoughts turned toward my own
birthplace and lifestyle. I realized that there MUST be tourists that
travel to the South - to Georgia who feel a similar heaviness about the sins of
the land on which I live my own life.
This Oscar
season brought a rare occurrence for this movie-snob. 12 Years a Slave
marked the first time in a long time that the movie that won best picture was
both my pick and my prediction. Most years my prediction wins, but my
pick is much less frequent. I have high expectations for the movie I
consider the best film of the year. I want entertainment, of course; but
in addition to that, I expect the movie to exhibit masterful acting, directing,
and cinematography. I want the whole of the movie production to be
excellent: costumes, score, set direction, casting; everything. But, even
more than that, I need the content to matter. I want the audience to be
driven toward processing something significant, not necessarily something
difficult or unfortunate. For instance, Invictus was once my pick for
best picture. I think the movie that wins the Best Picture Oscar marks
the year and should reflect the people, culture, priorities and values of the
time. Well, at least the culture, priorities and values the people of the
time should have.
12 Years a Slave pushed all of those buttons in
the best way possible. So powerful. As a white woman from the South
who comes from a family that has been in Georgia for hundreds of years, I am
forced to wrestle with the blood soaked land I travel every day. I am
compelled to navigate a terrain on which my ancestors owned people. I sit
here struggling with whether or not it is appropriate to discuss the knowledge
I have on the degree to which this was true of my family. It just feels
like justifying the unthinkable. One is too many. Thinking about
oppressing another person in that way is too much.
This experience
of pondering the rocks beneath the tracks that once led men, women and children
to unthinkable pain, loss, and death forced me to remember the visceral experience
I had in the theater watching 12 Years. At the same time JD Walt’s words about
remembering and re-membering and the cross, the table, and the empty tomb flood
my mind. There is something in our
createdness that craves marking powerful events, especially the destructively
painful things that dishonored God’s design, His Beloved, and the imago dei. We can’t let ourselves forget the things that
break us. I can’t help but wonder if it
is the part of us that hungers for reconciliation, for wholeness, to be made
new.
May you find
renewed hope that God is working to make all things new each time a broken
world forces you to grieve and ponder the pain of the past.
Soundtrack – Brand New Day, Tim Myers; Whatever Thing, Enter
the Worship Circle.
