Building A Village 4 - See You at Tha Crossroads

So You Won't be Lonely

At the turn of the millennium, the hip-hop group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony released the song Crossroads. The music video opens with an all-too-familiar scene of Black people mourning the loss of a young man who seems to have been taken far before his time. As the mourners cry out, what appears to be the reaper of souls comes and takes the young man’s soul away. Throughout the video, this scene replays over and over again as members recount the loss of a friend and loved one. This song spoke to how so much of life is unpredictable and was one group’s attempt to deal with the loss that often seems to be all around us.

The 80s and 90s were tumultuous for many people in urban & inner-city America. As gun and gang violence surged and crack cocaine flooded the streets, countless lives were lost as a war on drugs was waged. The murders of Tupac and Biggie Smalls, along with the death of Eazy-E, shocked the hip-hop world. While those are all familiar names, many others were gunned down in their homes and communities, while those accused of perpetrating the violence were sent off to prison to serve long sentences.

As a people, we have often used art to process life’s complexities and grieve death. As I reflect on the past three years, I can’t help but think about all the people I’ve lost during this time. Most of them were far too young, and yet, their deaths happened all the same. So, to deal with my grief, this is my art.

2021

When Daniel and Piretta died, I began wrestling with the way we view and think about death. My friend Daniel was killed, shot in the back by someone he tried to help. He was a gentle, big man with a large heart; there was rarely a person he wouldn’t help. My friend and co-worker Piretta died while I waited in an emergency room 1000 miles from home. Piretta passed 21 days after her 40th birthday, and Daniel was barely in his 30s. I had tasted the cold sting of death before in many ways, but their deaths hit different.

They shook me.

Already reeling from the losses of the pandemic, my heart and brain couldn’t really deal with the magnitude of loss that I was experiencing. How can so much death, pain, and suffering happen? And why does it seem that these times of loss come in waves?

Piretta’s death happened far from home, right before the launch of a significant program we were working on to serve students in Birmingham City Schools. It’s hard to explain what it’s like to go to the emergency room with someone and leave without them. I’ve had this experience twice now. I’ve lost people who’ve spent long stints in the hospital, but Piretta’s passing was the first time that within hours of accompanying someone to the ER, they had slipped away from this world into the next.

Loss changes you.

I didn’t know that.

Actually, I’ve come to believe it’s the grief that changes you.

⁷ For we walk by faith, not by sight. ⁸ We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.

2 Corinthians 5:7-8

Death isn’t natural. We treat it as though it is because everyone will die, but it was ultimately outside of God’s original design. Death entered into the world when man (Adam & Eve) rebelled against God (Genesis 3). As believers, we embrace the truth that in Jesus, death has lost its sting, and the grave has been stripped of its victory (1 Corinthians 15:55-57). We also accept what Paul has to say: to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, and we don’t grieve like those with no hope. Yet, we still grieve. The Apostle Paul says in Philippians 2 that God spared his friend from death to keep Paul from experiencing “sorrow upon sorrow.”

As I’ve thought about the concept of “building a village” and pursuing community and individual flourishing, I can’t escape the thought of what happens when a member of our village dies. I want to see a world filled with flourishing, peace, and joy for everyone. Our society mocks those who pursue things like “world peace.” They joke about it as if it’s an unattainable goal. Why? Because we know how broken our world is, how filled with sorrow and despair this world can be. But as those who labor for the renewal and transformation of all things, we desire a world free from needless suffering. A world filled with peace. A world free from strife. A world free from poverty, racism, and all types of injustice.

I digress.

One of the lies that I used to believe about death was, “It was just there time to go.” I’m not sure where this lie originated, but I don’t think it is biblical, and it seems like more of an excuse to overlook all the contributing factors that lead to premature death. People, especially in the Christian world, say this and tie it to the sovereignty and providence of God. As if God’s will is done in the timing of our deaths and not the living of our lives.

(I’m about to dive into a theological argument).

Jesus told his disciples that when they pray to pray like this,

“Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
¹⁰ Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven…” (Matthew 6: 9-10)

Why does Jesus tell his followers to pray for God’s will to be done? Because on earth, God’s will isn’t always done. This is a concept that runs throughout the entirety of scripture. From Genesis 3, it wasn’t God’s will for humanity to rebel against Him. It wasn’t God’s will for Cain to kill Able. It was the decisions of others that led to premature death. Adam and Eve died spiritually, and Able died physically. These deaths led to a long history of premature death. Wars. Murder. Famine. Genocide. Racism. Violence against women. Slavery. U.S. Chattel Slavery. Segregation. Prejudice. Gun Violence. Apartheid. Rage.

All of these things have desolated our villages, families, and society. None of these are God’s will. They have destroyed families and robbed us of our joy and time. We are called to push back the darkness in our villages, not embrace it. We have embraced darkness in too many places and churches instead of pushing against it. What I mean by this is. Instead of pointing out the injustices and evil that lead to premature death in our society and culture, we wash over it with faulty theological reasoning. Instead of fighting for a society where fewer people suffer at the hands of others, we make political arguments equivalent to “that’s not my problem” and spiritually over-realized eschatological statements. Don’t get me wrong, not all suffering can be eliminated through our actions, but some suffering is unnecessary. Born not of God’s will but out of men’s wickedness.

How Do You deal with the pain?

What is pain? Merriam-Webster describes pain as “a localized or generalized unpleasant bodily sensation or complex of sensations that cause mild to severe physical discomfort and emotional distress and typically results from bodily disorder (such as injury or disease)” and “mental or emotional distress or suffering.” Pain is discomfort or agony. It’s a sign that something is not as it should be. It’s a message from our nervous system that something just isn’t right and requires our attention. According to the definition above, pain can be physical, mental, or emotional. Pain comes in many shapes and sizes and can manifest in any part of the body or in any area of our lives.

In Shelia Wise Rowe’s book Young, Gifted, and Black, she discusses why we grieve and how we often do it in secret or socially acceptable ways. To illustrate her point, she directs our attention to two famous black males who died of cancer without many people knowing they were sick. Both Chadwick Boseman and August Wilson died of cancer. She had this to say about both of them, “These gifted Black men were gravely ill and continued to work through it. They literally gave their lives to produce great work for the culture. This is quite heroic yet also truly sad.”

This is the type of grief that our culture often produces. Grief that suffers in silence. Grief that just pushes through. Chadwick Boseman’s death on August 28, 2020, brought the Black community grief, and the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world grief. But what about the things that cause us as individuals grief? What about the ways we suffer because of our pain? How do we deal with the pain we experience when things fall apart?

We are not alone in our grieving.

“He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.” Isaiah 53:3

Grief can simply be described as “sorrow.” Sorrow is a deep sadness.

I learned to suffer in silence.

Dishonesty about my pain became my friend.

Afterwards

I started this piece the week of Thanksgiving, 2023. My hope was to publish it the following week. Little did I know that grief would come and revisit me. Tuesday, November 28, 2023. I won’t recount the details here. I’m not ready to walk through that day again. What I will share is that members of my team and I experienced another tragic and unexpected loss. Another shaking. Another loss. Another member of the village was taken.

Grief.

I decided to go in another direction with this piece than what it was initially intended to be. I was going to recount the losses I’ve experienced and speak about each individual’s significance and their role in my life. I kept the original format of this post that speaks about Piretta and Daniel because I believe it illustrates how grief and loss disrupt our lives and plans. Often, things don’t end the way we would like them to, and it leaves us grasping for meaning and finality.

My life is in the midst of a change or an evolution. I am growing. Being stretched beyond what I previously believed I could endure. I am learning. Discovering that death is inevitable in our villages. That suffering, grief, and loss are beyond us at times. My roots are breaking through the hardened ground to find nourishment that helps me to endure.

I recently met with a friend for lunch, and she shared that she could see I was changing. Maturing. But she told me, “Don’t lose your joy. “Count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.” God is at work in our villages, even amid our suffering. My wife and I recently had a conversation about joy. She asked me, “When the bible speaks of joy, what do you think it means?” After pausing to survey what the bible says about joy, I shared that I believe joy means to keep living. To not allow the pain of life to rob us of life’s beauty. The darkness of suffering can dim our hearts and cause us to close our lives to others. Rejoicing in suffering reminds us that suffering is not all there is. There is more. So much more.

As John Onwuchekwa wrote in his book We Go On: Finding Purpose in All of Life’s Sorrows and Joys; I am learning to acknowledge life’s difficulties and keep living. But I am also learning not to grieve alone. To not suffer in silence. I am not alone. You are not alone. Grief gives our villages meaning. It’s one thing to enjoy life together but another to endure pain together, and learn to keep living together. In a village, pain affects us all. In a village, we learn to “rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.”

The End.

Thank you for reading my musings in this post. They are far from perfectly put-together prose. It’s my attempt to coherently describe the complexities of pain in our lives. I would love to hear from you all about the grief, suffering, and loss you’ve walked through and how you are learning to rejoice and lean into your village. Please leave a comment.

Building A Village is a series of posts about the challenges and rewards of pursuing a better today and a brighter tomorrow. Each post will be filled with stories of my experience and my thoughts on how we can see transformation in life and community. To become a paid subscriber, please click the link below.