Racism tests spiritual healing in Hill District
One recent evening, 15 people gathered in the parking lot at St. Benedict the Moor Church Convent. It had been a 90-plus degree day, and a possible storm was forecast. The wind whipped men’s pants and women’s blouses. But no discomfort or threat could dissuade the group from seeking change through prayer.
The convent is an anchor at one end of the 2900 block of Webster Avenue in the Hill District. The sisters who live there have participated in the block’s three-year experiment in coalescence through healing.
With masks on, standing more than an arm’s length apart, the group
formed a circle. Rhonda Lockett, a longtime resident with the gift of connecting people, had inspired the prayer vigil.
“We are at a moment of torment on the earth,” Ms. Lockett said, and, beside her, Michael Hayes, the pastor at Hillcrest Seventh-day Adventist Church on Wylie Avenue, said, “Yes.”
“We thank you, Lord, for allowing us to be alive today” Mr. Hayes said. “We pray for George Floyd and his family and so many others who have lost their lives in this world we’re in. Bless the family to help them grow by your grace. We’re asking on behalf of Pittsburgh and all of us as a whole. We need renewal today.
“I pray that you would do miraculous things, Lord. Put new eyes in our eye sockets, new hearts in our chests so we can learn to love the things you love. Stop the disunity and derision. Help us, Lord, to treat each other with decency, respect and equality.”
Mr. Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25 did not unite members of this block of Webster Avenue. They have been doing the work since 2017, with support from the Neighborhood Resilience Project. The project focuses its efforts on repairing the damage trauma has had on generations of minority families and neighborhoods.
Gathering for prayers is a regular event, Ms. Lockett said, adding: “We are like family on this block.”
The Neighborhood Resilience Project has a trauma response team that sends staff and volunteers to offer immediate support to people at the scenes of crime. It is an outreach that jibes with a national call for alternative, more calming, models of response to certain emergencies the police now handle.
The trauma team’s coordinator, Maurice Hickman, spoke to the circle, saying, “We’ve got more than one pandemic going on right now.”
The group murmured, “Yes.”
“We’ve also got black men killing black men, people who don’t know where their next meal’s going to come from,” Mr. Hickman said. “Yes.”
“Turn it around!” he called. “Yes.”
“We ask for your help right now, Lord,” he said. “We’ve been trying to do it on our own. We ask in your name. Touch their hearts. The path has already been laid. All we gotta do is walk it out with care and kindness. It isn’t hard.”
Sister Donna Cronauer spoke with passion when she asked God to plant “your spirit in all those who are in charge. Give them the grace they need to change, to allow people to be free from oppression.” She asked for help for white people: “Help to energize us.”
Yes!
All these decades after the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, when so many battles were won, everyone acknowledges the movement made resplendent progress. But considering this country was built to enforce white supremacy, to assure white privilege, the movement’s gains were the equivalent of remodeling the house. It wasn’t afforded access to the basement, to the foundation.
When the foundation is rotten, the house is in danger, and our house has been in danger of condemnation for too long.
I believe in the power of the masses, if we use it as one people. White people must be and remain energized to exert our will on those in power to make irresistible the demand this house be dismantled and built anew. If it requires the help of a supreme being, I will become a praying person for the cause. Whatever it takes.
As a child of the ’60s, hopeful of change the civil rights movement promised, I since have been disillusioned by how far it didn’t go. Today, I feel more optimistic than ever, hoping, maybe even praying, the pressure of the majority of Americans does not abate. I asked Ms. Lockett later about her faith that God would finally work his wonders on the miserable injustices that plague our world. She cited the story of the deliverance of the Israelites: “It took them such a long time. They were slaves of the Egyptians.”
“This is a critical time,” she said. “I believe changes will come. Voices are being heard.”
Veronica Lewis, an elder at the Hillcrest church, closed out this recent prayer gathering, saying: “We don’t know why George was sacrificed,” she said, “but he has opened the eyes of the world.”