Legacy

“Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that,” Martin Luther King, Jr.,  penned in his book Strength to Love, published in 1963. Over the last several days this quote has flowed across the internet. Perhaps it is intended to bring comfort to the citizens of Charleston or to all of us who feel so inadequately helpless in the aftermath of the June 17^th shootings in a building that should have been sacred, should have been safe, should have been immune from the terrors we face on the streets outside our houses of worship. But that day, hate forced its way inside and darkened forever the light of a place of holy sanctuary. And this is to be Dylann Roof’s legacy – hate in the Holy City.In the aftermath of South Carolina’s enormous tragedy, I can’t help but contrast King’s legacy – King, a man who had every reason to carry loathing in his heart but by all seemingly public accounts did not – with that of Roof’s. I’ve pondered King’s quote, pondered the man himself. He was in no way perfect, as none of us are, but unlike many Christians he did not profess or pretend perfection. His life contained enormous failures, enormous transgressions. And yet, he isn’t remembered for any of those things. Instead, he is remembered as a man who amazingly brought this country to a place of closer unity – still, even now, balanced on the blade of a knife – and healing.

Political issues are not my bailiwick, and please rest assured this is not a political diatribe. Instead, I’m writing about legacies, the whispers of ourselves left floating on the wind when we are finally called home (or elsewhere). So my question is this: if there were only a single thing for which you could be remembered, what is it that you would choose?

The day after my eighth birthday, I awoke to the sound of my father sobbing, a sound that sent terror quaking to my core. I’d never heard the man I’d always believed could conquer mountains cry before. Still clad in my nightgown, I inched my way down the hall to my parents’ bedroom and peered around the corner. I watched as my mother held my father, cradled childlike in her arms, the phone still dangling from his hand. Moments later joined by my brother and sister, we waited for the catastrophe to consume us, too.

My mother, in the eventuality of seconds, noticed us standing in the doorway, and managed to brokenly tell us that our grandfather had died. My father’s father, a man we barely knew, but a man I adored all the same had spent his adult life pastoring rural, farming communities as a Methodist minister many times receiving his pay via crops, fried chicken, and hand-me-down clothes.

We drove the long stretch of interstate from Florida to Virginia to attend his funeral, and at eight years old I had no idea what I was supposed to feel as I’d never dealt with death before. But as a quiet, observant child, I did what I did best. I watched. I noticed the people who streamed through the funeral home, the church where my grandfather had been the pastor for eleven years, and my grandmother’s home. And I listened. I listened to their stories of his kindness, his quiet generosity, his acts of service to his community and its individuals. And I knew that this was the kind of person I wanted to be – in a word: selfless. No one used that word, but that was what each and everyone described. And as a tribute to that life of selflessness, every single person, more than 200, drove the long 3 hours from that tiny Shenandoah Valley town to Richmond, Virginia, for the graveside service. That life of selflessness – that kind of love – was my grandfather’s legacy.

Like Martin Luther King, my grandfather was flawed, cracked, and even in some ways broken. But like King, he loved beyond the capacity that many are capable of sharing. His bond with my grandmother transcended all; his love of his family grounded him, but he had an erratic, sometimes violent temper. And, still, his legacy, his whispers left behind, hinted at none of that. Instead, it simply breathed of his tremendous love.

So, if I should be fortunate enough to choose my legacy, my whispers left behind, then it would be the same as King’s and of my grandfather’s – love. Maybe if enough of us consciously choose that legacy, then the walking, breathing evil like Roof, while far from being incapable of being ignored, would fade quickly into the ether of forgiveness and love which is evil’s greatest fear.