It Won't Be Long Now

Two days earlier, on Pentecost evening, we had gathered at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., to call forth and to celebrate, with great fanfare, the coming of the Spirit. But on this Tuesday morning, this "Day of Christian Resistance," it was the Spirit who called to us.

For three days, during the Peace Pentecost 1985 conference, we had been affirming, claiming, and encouraging "The Rise of Christian Conscience." But on this momentous morning, as more than 1,000 of us gathered for a special worship service, the conscience we had validated with countless words rose anew and broke beyond the bounds of our feeble human reasoning. In the vibrant warmth of Washington's Metropolitan A.M.E. Church, this conscience overflowed our hearts and took on the form and life of the Spirit.

Throughout the conference, an ensemble of Sojourners vocalists had been performing songs of hope and life from South Africa. They opened this worship service with the same song they had sung to begin the conference: "Oh, freedom, freedom is coming. Freedom is coming. Oh, yes I know."

On the last note of the song, the audience exploded in a tumultuous burst of spirit and emotion. Within seconds, the entire assembly was on its feet, clapping and cheering. Shouts of "Freedom is coming!" "Jesus is coming," and "Yes!" filled the sanctuary for almost five minutes. We were ready.

We were ready for justice to roll down like waters. We were ready to proclaim freedom for the poor, for the oppressed in Central America, for those held hostage by nuclear weapons, for the suffering blacks in South Africa, for the unborn and for women, for the people of Afghanistan, and for those languishing on death rows.

We were ready to acknowledge the interconnectedness of these issues. The Rev. Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, had reminded us of this in a rousing Pentecost evening sermon based on Ezekiel 37. He exhorted us that the time had come for Christians to breathe life into "dry bones" and to connect "the thigh bone to the hip bone" in a movement that would bring justice and freedom to all of God's children.

And we were ready for freedom within ourselves to seek and proclaim the truth. We were ready, as Henri Nouwen had reminded us on Sunday morning and as Jesus had told Peter 2,000 years ago, to so love God and be committed to feeding God's sheep that we would stretch out our hands and let ourselves be dressed and led where we would rather not go.

But it was injustice, oppression, and the systematic disregard for human life that had brought more than 1,000 of us to Peace Pentecost 1985, held May 25 to 28 on the campus of Catholic University. We came from across the country and around the world, seeking signs of hope and resistance in the churches. And we found them.

THE CONFERENCE WAS an exciting fusion of the different streams of the movement of Christian conscience. The sanctuary movement, Witness for Peace, the Pledge of Resistance, the overground railroad, the Nuclear Train campaign, the Free South Africa Movement, the Plowshares actions, the Catholic Worker, and countless other peace groups and advocates for the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the unborn and women, and the convicted on death row were all represented.

During two days of workshops, prayer, Bible study, worship, and nonviolence training, we saw the work of our brothers and sisters across the country, and we turned from despair to hope, from exhaustion to inspiration, from fear to courage. Shelley Douglass, a founder of the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Washington state, told about the resistance of the Agape Community to the Department of Energy Nuclear Train. Two attorneys who formerly prosecuted Nuclear Train resisters are now defending people in court for committing the same acts. Don Mosley, co-founder of Jubilee Partners in Comer, Georgia, told how a school bus full of Central American refugees seeking sanctuary made it through a border patrol checkpoint in Texas with the unexpected help of a tornado.

Throughout it all we were reminded that by acting in faith against political, economic, social, and personal forces that oppress and desecrate life, we had found new and more abundant life. We also had found defeat, harassment, failure, and persecution. But, drinking deeply from our spiritual roots, we inspired and encouraged one another to "hold on to the prize."

All this and more brought us to the church that Tuesday morning. There we sang and prayed and worshiped and bathed in the joy of the Spirit. But, as the Rev. Timothy McDonald reminded us, we had not come to stay in church. We had come to take our burden for life to places where life was not upheld. It was time to "stop talking the talk and start walking the walk."

So, with banners and posters and songs, we walked—twice stopping for prayer along the way—from the church to Lafayette Park, which is across the street from the White House. During a commissioning service, Vincent Harding reminded us that we were on a co-mission with many who had struggled for life and justice before us. Those of us planning to commit acts of civil disobedience received stoles, and then all of us, after a final prayer, left the park in six processions to march to the different demonstration sites.

THE GROUP WITH THE shortest distance to walk marched around the White House once before stopping in front of it to pray for an end to the arms race and for the poor, its principal victims. When more than 70 Peace Pentecost participants ignored a police warning to move from the sidewalk and continued praying and singing, they were arrested.

A bus full of children who had come to Washington to visit the capital sites pulled up next to a bus loaded with arrested protesters. The children waved to the protesters, many of whom wore clerical collars and were mystified that they didn't wave back. When one protester stood up, turned around, and showed the children his handcuffs, a police officer told him, "You're setting a bad example for those kids." "No, officer, we're setting a good example," the protester replied.

The spiritual and personal conviction we brought to the actions created its own drama, and, in a paradoxical fashion, the drama moved us to even deeper conviction. A solemn drumbeat accompanied the reading of names of executed prisoners during the march to the Supreme Court. One of the marchers walked in chains, and by the time the group reached the court steps, 43 names had been read, each followed with the response, "Lord, have mercy." After a short litany, the protester's chains were unlocked, and following a time of prayer, the arrests began.

At the Department of Health and Human Services, protesters prayed for a society in which the lives of women and children would be upheld, and in which desperate women would not be driven to having abortions. To show that respect for unborn life also requires respect for women, demonstrators gathered in the formation of the women's symbol.

The group protesting at the Soviet Embassy against the violence in Afghanistan was encouraged by a former Peace Corps volunteer in Afghanistan, who talked of the spirit of the Afghan people. Those being arrested felt reconnected to the other protesters when they heard over a police walkie-talkie that arrests at the State Department had been completed.

The Peace Pentecost action at the South African Embassy was one of more than 150 that have occurred there in the past six months, yet it too was unique. After the entire group prayed for an end to apartheid, the usual delegation of three persons went to the embassy door and asked to see the ambassador. But when the group received the standard refusal, Timothy McDonald surprised everyone by asking if the demonstrators could use the embassy restrooms.

At the State Department, almost 100 protesters sat in the driveway and sang and prayed for brothers and sisters in Central America who suffer the effects of U.S. policy. In all, 248 people were arrested that day, and with the arrests began a sometimes tense, occasionally moving, always challenging, and often funny experience.

THE SINGING THAT had begun with "This Little Light of Mine" during the procession to Lafayette Park continued almost nonstop through the rest of the day and the entire jail experience. Both our funniest and most poignant moments came through song. As the police escorted us that first night to a large cellblock reserved for demonstrators, and after the women had already filled one big cell and were starting to fill another, the matron asked one woman if she preferred the "singing or non-singing section."

Later that night we heard the men, who were being held in a cell down the hall from us women, begin singing. Soon we began exchanging songs, singing such classics as "I'm in the Mood for Love," "You are My Sunshine," and "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." And when the women overheard a male guard remark snidely that he wished we would sing "White Christmas," of course, we sang that, too.

But it was the Latin song "Ubi Caritas" that became our mainstay, our cry to the Spirit, during times of uncertainty, weakness, and weariness. Even on our last morning in jail, when we were in individual cells, one woman's gentle humming of "Ubi Caritas" awoke us, spread through the jail as we all joined the singing, and reminded us that we were not alone.

Occasionally we got tired of singing the same old songs, but we needed the hope and focus the songs would bring. On the day that we waited to be arraigned and sentenced, we were about to give in to exhaustion and hunger when someone jokingly suggested that we sing the "Hallelujah Chorus." Before we knew it, Ellen Flanders, a 57-year-old former choir director from Albany, New York, was leading us in a four-part version of the "Hallelujah Chorus." When we finished the song, we almost expected our cell doors to burst open.

We reached the women's cellblock in the D.C. jail at 3 a.m. the next morning and discovered that our reputation as singers had preceded us. If we stopped singing momentarily, the other women inmates would ask us to sing some more. Soon they were asking us to sing their favorite hymns and, before long, were singing with us. One of the inmates blessed us with her beautiful renditions of "Precious Lord" and "Amazing Grace."

Later in the morning, first a handful, and then several, of the inmates came to the center of our cellblock. They could move about freely, but we were locked in our cells and could only stand at our doors and put our hands through the bars. Black hands clasped white ones, forming a large circle, and we began singing "We Shall Overcome." With each verse, we could feel the hope rising within ourselves and within the inmates. Then, when we thought the song was over, one of the inmates started a new verse: "Moms and kids together ..."

We continued to sing and talk with the inmates, and when we left the cellblock, one of the women thanked us for bringing "some peace and unity to this place," but we knew they had given us much more than we had given them. We left as changed people.

WE HOPED AND prayed that we were not the only ones to change. During the arraignment before a District of Columbia commissioner, a cynical and argumentative man, we watched his features soften and his tone become less accusatory as he listened to our statements. He was visibly moved when one man stated, "I prayed for the people who would be arresting and trying me."

"You mean you prayed for me?" the commissioner asked incredulously.

"Yes, and I would have prayed for you by name if I had known it," the convicted protester responded.

Much of the jail experience was a series of "hurry up and wait" times. To help his fellow prisoners through it, Ed Loring, of the Open Door Community in Atlanta, told the men early on, "It won't be long now." As they waited and waited through endless jail processes, the men reminded one another, "It won't be long now."

What began as a joke became a rallying cry, a sincere belief, and a fervent prayer. As long as we remain faithful, as long as we hold on to the prize, as long as we trust in the God of freedom, we know that it won't be long now until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream.

Vicki Kemper was news editor of Sojourners magazine when this article appeared.