An Icon of Defiance

The open hand of love and liberation

A reflection about an unexpected place on a hard news day.

At the beginning of July, I spent a couple of days on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

If you don’t know it, the place is known for its natural beauty and complicated history, intertwined in a complex story. Marked by tangled woods, unnumbered tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay, and unnavigable swamps, this half-water, half-land place served as the stage of one of the greatest of all American evils and its tragic results — slavery.

My ancestors settled there in the 1660s. That makes me what? A native of sorts? A daughter of that place? Whenever I find myself there, I get lost in both the geography and in historical memory. I love it. It is beautiful. It holds profound meaning for me. But everywhere you turn, there’s a river or stream blocking your way, an uneven shoreline, and narrow, winding roads.

The same goes for history. There are stunning colonial houses, picturesque farms, myriad historical markers, and landmark schools and churches. And if you know anything, you also know that the two most famous residents of the area were Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, two people who, once they escaped the brutality behind this seemingly Arcadian American paradise, never really wanted to return.

But return they did. Tubman, of course, returned many, many times to lead others to freedom on the Underground Railroad. And Douglass returned in 1878, when he was 60, in a kind of redemptive defiance to gather soil from the very plantation where he’d been held in bondage and was whipped and lashed as a youth. “I am an Eastern Shoreman, with all that name implies,” he said, “I love Maryland and the Eastern Shore.”  

They returned because they didn’t give up. They held fast to their dream of a better world, even in the birthplace of enslavement.

I’m not there today. I’m at home. Watching the news, witnessing history. Trying to write. Disturbed by the violent events of this past day, like most of us are.

And confused, quite honestly. Lost. As lost as I’d be without GPS on the Eastern Shore’s marshy landscape. My sense of dislocation, and perhaps even despair, deepened when I heard a pundit exclaim enthusiastically “that the picture” — the one on every news channel of a bloodied Trump, fist in the air screaming fight — “has become, ‘the iconic image of American defiance.’”

I put my head in my hands at my desk. Lost. We’re lost, I fear. So lost. We’re never getting out of this. I want to give up.

But then, I glanced at my shelves. There are many icons in the cottage. Among them — a print of a mural depicting Harriet Tubman guiding the way to freedom. It is on the side of a building in Cambridge, Maryland, near the place where she was born.

Harriet was looking at me. And I haven’t been able to stop looking her. Indeed, I’ve been meditating on the image.

This is an icon of American defiance.

You can read about the mural and artist, M. Rosato, HERE.

As I prayed over the picture, I sobbed. Really wept.

Her hand is reaching toward me. Breaking through the wall of division and pulling me into freedom — as if offering herself as a guide through the woods and waters of despair.

Brutality, enslavement, violence, imprisonment, and death. She defied them all. To lead others — to lead us all — to freedom. This is an invitation: Follow me.

Her hand is open in defiance.

Follow me. Not fight.

To be honest, hers was a fight, too. And she knew it, “I prayed to God to make me strong and able to fight, and that's what I've always prayed for ever since.” Follow me is defiant. If you follow the right way, it can led to conflict. I think Jesus knew that. I’m pretty sure Harriet Tubman knew that Jesus knew that.

But there are different kinds of fights. There are fights of the raised fist and fights of holding hands. There are fights we start for ourselves and fights we find ourselves in for others. There are fights for revenge and retribution and fights for love and justice. They are those who fight with whips and fists and those who fight with maps and prayers.

There are things that must be defied. We must never give up, not as long as we are strong and able.

Even when we want to surrender. Even when we feel lost. Even when afraid.

Once in a while, when it seems like there’s no path forward, we’ve got to get our bearings. Regain strength. Take a moment and reorient. Breathe.

There is, however, no confusion of the destination — that land of freedom. But the journey is not easy. This place is full of tangled brush and watery detours. And blocked roads, wild beasts, and those intent on sending us back.

But Harriet is there to guide. And Frederick. And the countless American saints who embodied the defiance of liberating love for others. Those who have held hands for the sake of their neighbors.

Breathe. Again, breathe. Look up and know that you aren’t alone. Reach for a hand. Let us pull one another across the line to freedom.

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INSPIRATION

May this be the day
We come together.
Mourning, we come to mend,
Withered, we come to weather,
Torn, we come to tend,
Battered, we come to better.
Tethered by this year of yearning,
We are learning
That though we weren’t ready for this,
We have been readied by it.
We steadily vow that no matter
How we are weighed down,
We must always pave a way forward.

This hope is our door, our portal.
Even if we never get back to normal,
Someday we can venture beyond it,
To leave the known and take the first steps.
So let us not return to what was normal,
But reach toward what is next.

What was cursed, we will cure.
What was plagued, we will prove pure.
Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree,
Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee,
Where we weren’t aware, we’re now awake;
Those moments we missed
Are now these moments we make,
The moments we meet,
And our hearts, once all together beaten,
Now all together beat.

Come, look up with kindness yet,
For even solace can be sourced from sorrow.
We remember, not just for the sake of yesterday,
But to take on tomorrow.

We heed this old spirit,
In a new day’s lyric,
In our hearts, we hear it:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
Be bold, sang Time this year,
Be bold, sang Time,
For when you honor yesterday,
Tomorrow ye will find.
Know what we’ve fought
Need not be forgot nor for none.
It defines us, binds us as one,
Come over, join this day just begun.
For wherever we come together,
We will forever overcome.
— Amanda Gorman, “New Day’s Lyric”

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God’s time is always near. He set the North Star in the heavens; He gave me the strength in my limbs; He meant I should be free.

— Harriet Tubman

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If you have the energy to read today, I recommend this piece, “The Gunman and the Would-Be Dictator,” from David Frum at The Atlantic. It helped me sort through some of my confusion about the events of the last day.

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