10/10/09 - Spear through the Heart

October 10, 2009

What I saw this week at the abortion clinic was a group of black pro-life activists.

They come by this clinic from time to time. As I understand their mission, they protest at one abortion clinic one week, a different abortion clinic the next week, until they cover all the clinics in our broad area on a rotating schedule. so, I don't see them very often.

There were about 15 black men and women in this church group of no-nonsense people. They come in a truck, the size of a medium Budget moving van which they park strategically so it will be seen by women driving into the clinic. Covering the sides of the truck are pictures, fully 8’ x10’ of dismembered aborted fetuses.

My black brothers and sisters stand on the sidewalks in front of and behind the clinic carrying large 4’ x 4’ pictures of aborted fetuses and a variety of pro-life messages. They have an urgency about them. As cars whiz by on the busier, back street of the clinic the men and women are talking, yelling, preaching incessantly in the fervent style of preachers of the black community. No matter that no one probably hears them even in their loud tones, they just keep spreading the word of the evils of abortion, of what goes on inside the clinic, of how it ruins us as a race of people and as a people - they are not even afraid to say the word – of GOD. In front of the clinic, where women drive in and out, their messages are more poignant and personal, “Why you kill ya own flesh and blood.” “Why you do that evil thing to that helpless baby?” “Why you murder that child?” “That baby don’t belong to you. That baby belong to Jesus.”

Some of the men are dressed in distinctively military style uniforms of their own making. They wear maroonish-red barrettes with some type of insignia front and center, in the style of the Green Barrets. They have black, military style jackets belted at the waist with their names embroidered over their breast pockets and they wear bright yellow-gold ascots. Their pant legs are tucked into their high top, black boots tied with white laces. They are fighting a war and they know it and they want others to know it. The sight of them, so sure and so bold in their delivery of the message, was a deep encouragement to me and I couldn’t hold back. I broke ranks from my rosary group as I saw they were about ready to pack-up and leave and I went over to talk with one of the “military men.”

I first thanked him for coming so courageously with his group to the front lines. I meant what I said. And then I asked him what was in my heart, “What do you think of our President’s stand on abortion?”

He was up front and non-apologetic in decrying Obama policies. He was not angry, but he was not hedging either when he said Obama “signed the paper for more abortions.” He said Obama has no love in his heart for the children and he added that the old people are no better off either. And then, unprodded by me, he added his unequivocal condemnation of homosexuality as unnatural and an abomination. He said, “Obama is just in it for the money.” So, he said, his group prays for everyone - the babies, the parents, the president.

I told him how it hurts me every time I see an Obama bumper sticker. “How,” I asked, “can anyone in this country call him their leader when he openly endorses the murder of his own innocent citizens?” “Not me,” I said to this “military man.” But, of course, it was not a question at all, but my own lament. And after I said it and he said “Amen” I felt relieved that I could say this to a black man and not be accused of racism or political incorrectness or anything at all .

Maybe I was just testing the waters, by approaching him - testing whether we could still be human to one another in this political atmosphere that pits black against white and white against black, life against death and death against life, truth against lies and lies against truth - because that is where we are, that is how confused we are. This morning, we cut through all that and stood on the same side, he and I and the others, behind Jesus.

He went his way but not before extending his hand to me. “My name is Lloyd” he said, and I told him my name. “God bless,” we bid each other.

And as I went back to my group to pray the rosary, I watched Lloyd turn the truck around to drive off. I saw that the same picture on the other side of the truck had been defaced by spray painted and my heart sank.

The fifth sorrowful mystery - the crucifixion. "When they came to Jesus, they saw that he was already dead... One of the soldiers thrust a lance into his side..." John 19:33-34