Wrestling Our Ghosts
“A final surge of fury shook her and she roared, “Who do you think you are?””
In Flannery O’Connor’s short story Revelation, Mrs. Turpin, the “protagonist,” enters a doctor’s waiting room and sizes up all the other patients. After classifying and ranking each person waiting for medical attention, Mrs. Turpin determines no one present has stature with God as elevated as her own. The story climaxes when God reveals to Mrs. Turpin her true ranking.
I was in in New York a few weeks ago with my wife, Leanne, and friends for a special audio production of Revelation that our sister production company, More Productions, is involved in staging, God willing, for off-Broadway. The Revelation production began a weekend of performances that included an evening at the Fire This Time Festival for emerging black playwrights and ended with the last Broadway performance of August Wilson’s remarkable The Piano Lesson.
We appreciated the front-seat exposure at the festival. Moreover, as former Pittsburgh region residents who worked with Black churches in the Hill District, we were honored to attend Pittsburgh native August Wilson’s remarkable play about a Black family from Mississippi living in the ‘Burgh in the 1930s during the aftermath of the Great Depression.
The Piano Lesson follows the lives of the Charles family in the Doaker Charles household and an heirloom, the family piano, which is decorated with images of their enslaved ancestors. The play focuses on the arguments between a brother and a sister who have different ideas about what to do with the piano. The brother, Boy Willie, “plans to build the family fortune by selling it while his sister, Berniece, will go to any length to keep it and preserve the family history.” In the end, the brother literally wrestles with the ghosts of the past to be able to move forward into the future.
In reflecting on our weekend in NYC, there are several “revelations” I’ve had that hopefully are worth sharing, especially in light of Black History Month.
First, conversations regarding race need to start with a recognition that we may not be aware of our own prejudices and even self-righteousness. Our posture must be humility as we enter the complex and charged issues of race. We must be willing to have our own misjudgment and bias revealed to us, regardless of how and from whom it comes. From personal experience on a host of issues, I know that it is hard to be aware of my self-deception. I have also heard from several Black friends that they experience the same challenge of self-awareness. Grace needs to abound in our areas of blindness and ignorance.
Second, the sin of slavery that haunts our past should be neither forgotten nor impede progress to overcome it. There is an understandable debate over public displays that reflect the racial injustices of the past, but our options aren’t limited solely to erasure or celebration.
Third, I was struck during our NYC weekend by how a good story can poke the conscience and prod reflection. A story well told affects a different part of the brain than a lecture or academic treatise, and therefore story can be much more powerful than rhetoric. In our polarized society, where another’s point of view can be quickly dismissed as biased, if it is even heard, I was struck by how the shared experience of a story creates an arms-length way to explore the emotional territory. In addition to O’Connor’s Revelation, More Productions is developing two other “stories” that will invite a shared experience to explore the complex terrain of race without, we hope, letting the cause get in the way of the story.
One of those stories is a feature-length narrative biopic of Wally Triplett, the first Black draftee to play in the NFL. We developed the story of the Penn State team, which integrated the Cotton Bowl with the support of Franco Harris (who sadly just passed away around Christmas) and his fellow pro players Charlie Pittman and Lydell Mitchell. We are actively pursuing a director for the project. We are also developing a project for 2026 that explores the remarkable heroism of 1776 without either glossing over or centering slavery and the compromises made to accommodate it in order to create the Union.
Finally, the weekend’s performances reminded me that our struggles are not against flesh and blood, but against the “rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (from the New Testament Letter to the Ephesians 6:12) In both Revelation and The Piano Lesson, the spiritual realm is both revealed and engaged. I was reminded to be careful not to demonize those that I disagree with, and as a Christian, to commit myself to pray for them. In fact, Jesus commands me to “love my enemies,” not just pray for them.
Right now, our nation is in conflict. Some of us are like Mrs. Turpin, unable to reckon with our own sins and biases (until God intervenes!). Some of us are like Boy Willie, wanting to forget both the ugliness and the beauty of our stories. Perhaps we should strive to be like Berniece, Boy Willie’s sister, who chooses to embrace both the ugliness and beauty of her past and create space for healing. As we wrestle with the spirits of our shared past, let us remember that we have the opportunity to tell a new story that can put the ancient ghosts to rest and find ways to turn enemies into allies.