In a recent issue of Give Us This Day, Robert Ellsberg tells
the story of Harriet Tubman. She was
born into slavery in Maryland in 1820. A
woman of deep spiritual experiences, she endured for years until, at the age of
29, she was inspired to act on her enduring inner conviction that God wanted
her to be free. From her home on the
Eastern Shore of Maryland, she made her way by night to Pennsylvania and
ultimately to Philadelphia, traveling at night with no map, no compass, no
guide except the North Star, always in peril of her life. Long after Appomattox, for the rest of her very long life, she went
on working for the liberation of those still bound in one way or another.
Her story inspires the imagination. We can easily daydream about the heroism of
reaching the land of freedom and then going back for those still enslaved in
the place we came from. It’s a pleasant
thought, one that allows us to fantasize about dangerous deeds but excuses us
from doing them because, of course, we are still on the road to the land of
freedom a long way ahead of us—beyond Lent, beyond next year, beyond
death. Time enough to go back for the
others when we get there.
The gospel doesn’t much hold with daydreaming instead of
doing. For us, the real lesson of
Harriet Tubman is that wherever we are on the road to freedom, we must keep going
back for those behind us. Where would we
be, after all, if others hadn’t come back for us?
Note: Give Us This Day is published by The
Liturgical Press, www.litpress.org
©2014, Abbey of St. Walburga
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