Dark days are here but all is not lost

“GOD IS inside you and inside everybody else,” says Shug in Alice Walker’s novel, The Color Purple. Through the sisterly solidarity of the two women, Celie Harris, the story’s narrator, arrives at an understanding of a gender-free, nonpatriarchal God.

She becomes aware God is not a vigilante waiting to pounce on her in the event of any misstep in deed or word. All living things are there for our enjoyment and admiration. The divine, to put it mildly, is annoyed should one “walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it”.

This is in contrast to the warrior God deployed in the cause of elites skilled in manipulating the desires of the poor and all those who locate themselves among the globally forgotten and aggrieved.

In these desperate days we are witnessing a resurgence of tribalism. This is evident both in the electoral choices of Americans who voted Donald Trump into power and in the machinations of those who remain committed to ensuring Jacob Zuma remains president of South Africa.

In his acceptance speech on Wednesday night an avuncular Trump addressed the people of the US. He reminded me of a slightly inebriated uncle speaking at a 21st birthday party. He thanked Hillary Clinton for “a very hard fought campaign”. It was a time “for America to bind the wounds of division. We have to get together”. Fears of political pundits were assuaged.

There was no acknowledgement of how he had inflicted deep wounds and instilled fear. The confidence of the mandarins of the global economy steadied the dollar.

Canon Benjamin MusokeLubega, a son of the soil of Uganda, reminded me recently of the significance of the Asante Adinkra symbol, the Sankofa bird. This mythical bird is shown in flight, its head turned in the direction from whence it had come.

Sankofa, translated from Twi, means “Go back and get it”. It registers an appreciation of the need for rootedness, an awareness of one’s origin and to search for what has been neglected or forgotten, while moving forward.

Last year President Barack Obama delivered the eulogy at the funeral service for the Rev Clementa Pinckney. This pastor of Mother Emanuel AME in Charleston was murdered in a mass shooting at a Bible study class at his church.

Citing the writer Marilyn Robinson, Obama spoke of “that reservoir of goodness, beyond, and of another kind, that we are able to do each other in the ordinary cause of things”. He added: “If we can find that grace, anything is possible. If we can tap that grace, everything can change.” Then he started singing, leaning into the notes like a Gleemoor Baptist pastor. No night lasts for ever Everything will and must change. The president sang and the bent back stood proud in the heat of a forgotten sun when the president sang the wounds of the thorns on Jesu’ head lost its sting when the president sang Calvary’s crown shone red in the shine of the moon guiding naming raging days we never knew, claiming nameless ones known only in the name of death time was unshackled when the president sang and roses grew where Abel’s blood seeped

into fields of wrath and of captivity when the president sang we heard the songs of victoryvoices

sounding from below the roaring waves across the lash of mournful whips in the wind’s lament as we stood in the light of a day when a president sang of those who were promised and who never received the pilgrim’s bounty

as he hymned of God’s shepherding voice

calling us loving us to our Zion home blessed are we who live in a time when a president sang of grace. We say “Amen” in the name of a God who blesses with fields coloured with purple.