"29. This Time--David Meece"
The rapid, descending piano notes told her that yes, the momentum was still building. But how?
The past is behind us / What has been now is gone / But right now is with us / And we must carry on / And when regret closes in / I don't see what might have been / I see grace, and I know whatever comes / He'll make a way
The song had only just begun and already here was a hint. The faith here was staggering. No matter how grim the picture looked, he refused to dwell on what might have been and chose instead to lean forward, on the promise that whatever came, God would make a way. Even if there was none, God would make one. Was she watching that happen right now?
This time / This is what counts / This is what our life is about / This time / No backward glance / Now is the time / This is our chance
Our sins lie behind us / All the weeds we have sown / How well they remond us / What we are on our own / But we are not on our own / God never leaves us alone / All our sins are forgiven every day / We get to choose
This time / This is what counts / This is what our life is about / This time / There's no backward glance / Now is the time / This is our chance to make / This time / This time / This time / All that God wants it to be...
When she'd had a few seconds to recover from the otherworldly push and pull of the music, the concluding message felt curiously...simple. Dignified but simple. No demand for retroactive justice, not even for an apology for harms already suffered, just a firm emphasis on the importance of "this time". It reminded her somewhat of Frederick Douglass, who had famously said, "Do nothing with us." To the extent that it deviated from her other knowledge of Douglass, it was by sounding tame.
Was this all that lay behind the defensiveness that she had been trained to revile as "white fragility"? A simple desire to be treated with basic respect in the here and now, the past forgotten? Just who had she imagined herself to be, taking such violent umbrage at the merest hint of its presence and assigning it such sinister motives? That question might have to go unanswered, but what she had actually been was all too clear: a pawn.
Her "heroes" had lied to her again, baiting her into doing their bidding, and now here she was, holding the bag: a giant, invisible knapsack of guilt, made all the heavier by the knowledge that the sins she was staring in the face were not those of her ancestors but her very own. Such comfort and release as she was receiving right now, she was receiving from the dead, from one of her victims. What a colossal irony.