We were pulling out of the parking lot as the sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon. It was Saturday morning following our first week of orientation at the School of Theology…and we were heading down off “The Mountain” (Sewanee-speak for leaving the campus…since the campus of the University of the South is literally on the Cumberland Plateau, about 2000 feet above sea level…amazing for this sea level kinda gal) and into the heart of Alabama. We were on a pilgrimage to Hayneville, Alabama to honor Jonathan Myrick Daniels and other martyrs of Alabama who lost their lives during the civil rights struggle. The Episcopal Church has set aside August 14th in honor of Jonathan, an Episcopal seminarian who took a leave of absence from his studies to support African Americans in their efforts to register to vote in 1965 and lost his life…. http://vimeo.com/14117023.
When we arrived at Hayneville five hours later, we joined a large multi-ethnic crowd in the courthouse square, prayed and then processed to the first site, the jailhouse where Jonathan and his friends had been held.
The inside of the jail seemed like something you would see in a third-world country. After some readings (including Psalm 85, verse 11”Truth shall spring up from the earth and righteousness shall look down from heaven”), we moved to the next stop, Varner’s Cash Store, all the while singing spirituals and hymns prominent in the civil rights movement. I found myself quietly weeping behind my sunglasses as I sang and walked in lock-step with two African Americans who knew the words to those songs by heart…thinking of how impossible what we were doing would have been 46 years ago.
We stood around the steps of Varner’s Store (now Central Alabama Insurance) where Jonathan was shot and killed, heard how the deathly encounter enfolded as read from a biography, and again prayed. We then processed back to the courthouse square to a memorial established in honor of Jonathan by his VMI classmates, read scripture (Galatians 3:22-28) and prayed before entering the courthouse where Jonathan’s killer had been acquitted.
But for this day, the courthouse was turned into a sanctuary…the desk where the law and justice of the land are dispensed now was converted into an altar where the Body and the Blood were about to be dispensed.
There were probably 150+ people squeezed into that oh, so typical Southern courthouse, and instead of Atticus Finch striding in front of the judge’s desk, an Episcopal bishop humbly spoke words of repentance, remembrance and reconciliation. Jonathan and twelve others were eulogized before the bread was broken, blessed and shared. And then out into that muggy Alabama heat…and back on the bus to Tennessee, sobered by the example a fellow seminarian had given us of the cost of the way of the cross.
And so after three weeks, our orientation ended this week. On Wednesday, after a quiet day of retreat at a nearby convent, we participated that evening in a Matriculation Ceremony (http://theology.sewanee.edu/news/new-students-are-welcomed/) in All Saints Chapel where our name was individually called and we signed a book that all students entering the University of the South have signed since the dawn of time…or at least the dawn of the University. We were all given academic gowns (Harry Potter’s Hogwarts style)…and then classes began the next day. And so, my pilgrimage at Sewanee begins…here we go!
