The Journey: Forty Days of PromiseCelebrating the Legacy of African American Christianity
Day Six: Watered with Our Tears
Day Six: Watered with Our Tears[1]
They arrived on two ships, one year apart. The second ship, the Mayflower, landed in 1620 with 102 Pilgrims seeking religious liberty. The first ship, a Dutch man-of-war, came ashore in 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia, with twenty enslaved African men and women. Captain Jobe of the Dutch man-of-war bartered the seventeen men and three women for food to Sir John Rolfe’s Jamestown settlement. For the leaders of the Jamestown colony, Africans were mere commodities for European trade and servitude. In the land of the free, American slavery had begun.
Solomon Northup’s Narrative: The Hope of Years Blasted in a Moment
Solomon Northup lived free for thirty-three years in Rhode Island until he was kidnapped and enslaved for a dozen years in Louisiana. When he was first stolen, he spent two weeks in a slave pen where he met an enslaved woman named Eliza, her daughter Emmy, and her son Randall. His account of her separation from her children offers insight into the agony of deprivation, the need for hearing one another’s story, how not to empathize, and how to feel another’s pain.
Northup tells the story of Eliza’s life, as she related it to him, in great detail. After years of enslavement, she was promised her freedom and told that she was traveling to Washington, D.C. to receive her free papers. Instead, she was delivered to a trader named Burch.
“The hope of years was blasted in a moment. From the height of most exulting happiness to the utmost depths of wretchedness, she had that day descended. No wonder that she wept, and filled the pen with wailings and expressions of heart-rending woe.”
Spiritual Friendship 101
Of their enslavement together, Northup writes, “We were thus learning the history of each other’s wretchedness.” They participated in Spiritual Friendship 101 by practicing the arts of story sharing and story learning.
Northup and Eliza were eventually conducted to a slave pen in New Orleans owned by a Mr. Theophilus Freeman. A planter from Baton Rouge purchased Randall. All the time the trade was occurring, Eliza was crying aloud, wringing her hands, and begging that Freeman not buy Randall unless he also bought herself and Emmy.
When he answered that he could not afford them all, Eliza burst into paroxysm of grief, weeping plaintively. The bargain agreed upon; Randall had to go alone. “Then Eliza ran to him; embraced him passionately; kissed him again and again; told him to remember her—all the while her tears falling in the boy’s face like rain.”
In response, “Freeman damned her, calling her a blubbering, bawling wench, and ordered her to go to her place, and behave herself, and be somebody. He swore he wouldn’t stand such stuff but a little longer. He would soon give her something to cry about, if she was not mighty careful, and that she might depend upon.” His callousness models exactly what not to do when responding to another’s grief.
Northup, on the other hand, entered Eliza’s agony. “It was a mournful scene indeed. I would have cried myself if I had dared.”
Learning Together from Our Great Cloud of Witnesses
1. Who has treated you like Freeman treated Eliza? Who has told you to “quit your blubbering,” and “I’ll give you something to cry about!” What impact did such insensitivity have on you?
2. Who has cared for your soul like Solomon Northrup cared for Eliza? Who has listened attentively to your earthly story of suffering? Who has mourned and wept with you and for you?
[1]Excerpted, modified from, and quoted from Kellemen and Edwards, Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction. Purchase your copy at 40% off for only $10.00 at www.rpmministries.org.
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