This week I almost didn't attended the First Haitian Baptist Church in Boston.
I'm in Beantown for a three-week Haitian Creole course, and I wanted to have some first-hand experience with the local Haitian community while in town. Before leaving Ontario, I looked up places of worship in the city's Haitian centres. I found out about the First Haitian Baptist Church. Among the biggest of the many Haitian congregations in the city, they meet in a beautiful former synagogue that they purchased after discriminatory city planning forced the Jewish Community to relocate in the late 1960s. I planned out my transit routes, and was excited to test my emergent language skills against a sermon in Creole.
But then something unthinkable made me seriously consider changing my plans. On Wednesday, four days before I was planning to attend FHBC, a desperately misguided young man, driven by a hatred that goes back far beyond his twenty-one years, shot and killed nine people in an African-American church in South Carolina.
Hearing the news, amid feelings of disbelief and anger, I instantly became aware of my skin colour, and the impossibility of my setting foot in the Haitian church that Sunday. How could a young, unaccompanied, white male attend an entirely black church for the first time so soon after something like this? It couldn't be done. Out of respect for the comfort of the worshipers, I decided not to go. I'd find a white church.
In the intervening days, as the tragic headlines rolled out, I kept mulling it over. Was mine the appropriate response? Was this a time to emphasize divisions, or a time to defy the legacy of segregation that lingers still, even in a multi-ethnic city like Boston? Would it be more honourable for me to leave them alone to reflect on what such a tragedy means to them, or to stand beside them, and praise the Great Healer, the God who created all men, who sees neither Jew nor Greek, black nor white, permanent resident nor tourist?
Heartened by stories of the families of the Emanuel victims offering forgiveness to the shooter, I reconsidered my cancelled plans. Ultimately, I decided my best move was to go, but to try my best to look the part. If I looked like a proper churchgoer they would find my presence less jarring, I told myself. I bought a tie.
Sunday came, and I made my way across the city, bussing through Somerville, Mattapan, Roxbury, many of Boston's poorer neighbourhoods, to arrive at FHBC minutes before the service began. I walked in. I got some sidelong glances, but no one stopped me at the door. I found a seat (near the back, but not too far back as to arouse suspicions) and an usher shook my hand. The music started (the band was on point) and I stood at all the right moments, trying my best to physically communicate my non-hostility. The people around me started to ease up a bit.
After the music a man prayed, and the congregation's pain over the Charleston tragedy was expressed in his words. Women around me echoed his words with cries of concord. Next a man read some announcements. He then called for anyone who was visiting for the first time to stand up. I knew what he said but I was held in my seat by a now useless impulse to avoid drawing attention to myself. People turned to look at me. The man repeated in English: "If anyone is here for the first time, please stand up." The lady behind me tapped my shoulder and urged me on, smiling. I stood to my feet. Hundreds of Haitian eyes fell on me. I waved awkwardly to no one in particular. Then the people cheered out a "Welcome!" and clapped their hands. An usher passed by and handed me a visitor card. I sat back down.
The sermon, from the parts I could understand, was based around the verse from the Lord's Prayer, "forgive us our sins, as we have forgiven those who sin against us." The pastor contrasted this thought with a well known Haitian proverb: "Bay kou bliye, pote mak sonje." The one who strikes forgets, the one who bears the scar remembers. His bold message was grounded in the recent tragedy. The appropriate response, he said, was not simply to bear the scar as a token of abuse, but to work to heal the scars. Clearly a spirit of reconciliation was in the place, and I was blessed to be a part of it.
The sermon ended, and I made my way outside. I walked a few blocks up the street to wait for my bus. A few minutes later, a family from the church pulled their car in front of the bus stop, and offered me a ride back to the subway. I climbed into their car and they asked about my story. They told me I was more than welcome to come back again next week.
