Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 94

Last night we watched the film Harriet. I was struck by the juxtaposition between the first and close to last scenes.

In the beginning we see Harriet, her family and the other enslaved people on the plantation she lived and worked on gathered around the front porch of the “big house.” The slaver sits in a rocking chair in the corner of the porch next to his wife, his grown son, Gideon, stood nearby.

On the porch stairs stands an older Black man, holding up a Bible and preaching about the merits of being loyal to your master.

It’s incredible to imagine the power of the delusion underpinning the idea that there was anything righteous about enslavement. Add to that the complexity of that message being delivered under the guise of a sermon by a Black elder.

The pecking order is clear. The enslaved people stand below and outside of the big house. The preacher is on the stairs, the middle ground between earth and sky. The slavers sit comfortably, looking down from on high.

It’s almost like watching a magic show, or some kind of strange theatrical production. Everyone playing their part to uphold the fuckedupedness of the situation. But for completely different reasons.

For the people on the porch, the delusion maintains their power and financial status in the community. For the preacher, the show is his opportunity to appear loyal and maintain a comfortable life in the church and out of the fields, even though later we find out he’s an abolitionist.  

For the enslaved, it’s a matter of life and death.

It’s all very civilized and at the end they all say, Amen. Except Harriet.

At the end of the movie we’re in a starkly different reality. The slaver has died and Harriet’s not only escaped slavery herself but over a decade has helped dozens of others escape as well.

Harriet is alone with the slaver’s son. They are stood in the middle of a clearing in a wood. Harriet’s managed to get him off his horse and weaponless. She’s got him on his knees, a shot gun pointed at his head.

In his mind he owns Harriet and always has. She belongs to him.

In her mind he has never owned her and never will. She belongs to no one.

It’s a different kind of set-up now compared to that opening scene. They are together in the wild, on an equal footing. No big house for miles. No porch and no stairs. No families surrounding them. And definitely no preacher.

She’s standing over him, looking down at him.

And then she gives him a teaching. She has become the preacher. There is no more middleman between her and her oppressor. She speaks truth to power as clearly as she can.

“God don’t mean people to own people, Gideon.”

If you’re wondering whether or not she shoots him dead right then and there I invite you to watch the film yourself to find out.

A friend of mine recently told me about an interview she saw with a young Black activist. She was talking about violence. She was talking about how people should be relieved that Black folks are only demanding justice and not full on revenge.

She was saying how Black people have actually demonstrated incredible restraint in the face of an unbelievable amount of violence heaped upon them over hundreds of years. That out of that struggle they’ve built resilience and an incredible tolerance level for stress.

That same friend has so often reminded me to never “fall off my seat”. In dharmic terms, this means never breaking the sacred bond with my own true nature, which is love.

Of course, this is a high ideal and I confess that I have often fallen off my seat. Sometimes so hard that it takes me days to heal and even longer to crawl my way back onto it.

Never falling off your seat includes remembering that ultimately the sacred bond is never broken. We are what we are, no matter how much delusion tries to tell us otherwise.

Harriet Tubman was clearly guided by a power higher than herself. And throughout her life she never fell off her seat. She knew that it was only love that could save her and that it was only love that set her apart from her oppressor.

She died peacefully at home at the age of 93 surrounded by her family.