In two different stints of working at JPS, the company in charge of providing electricity in Jamaica, I was stationed at the Washington Boulevard and then Spanish Town Road complex. I travelled from “uptown” (Kingston 6, Kingston 7, Kingston 8) areas to get to work, often taking a short cut through Grants Pen Road, an area where my sister, up to a few years ago, led a community medical clinic. Because of her work there, I did not feel like this was a strange short cut to take.
The drive was typically uneventful. People walked children to school. Children walked each other to school. I passed a church on this road. I don’t remember its name, but it was a church from which a close friend’s father was buried. So I knew, behind the high concrete block wall, through the open gateway, was a church. It was one of those little facts, tucked away in the mind, like a stray strand of hair tucked behind one’s ear, for safe-keeping.
I remember one morning, driving to work via Grants Pen Road, seeing someone hosing (what I thought was) bright red paint off the sidewalk. I learned when I got to work that there had been a shoot out. That bright red paint was someone’s blood. The shooting must have happened in the hour or two before I drove past, because it was so bright, so red, so fresh. Festive really. Almost, anyways.
On another day, I turned onto Grants Pen Road and drove maybe 50 metres, before I noticed the usual bustle of people were not on the road. Next thing I know, a man runs out onto the sidewalk facing my vehicle and starts firing (a gun) up the road (ie in my direction). He is ducking and weaving while firing.
It took a moment to register: the flash from the muzzle of the gun, the sounds, this was real, not a cowboy movie. And I was driving a pickup truck that wasn’t exactly super maneuverable on this narrow stretch of road.
Within the seconds that this reality: “someone is shooting at me” sank in, another reality became apparent in my rear view mirror. Someone behind me was also shooting. Towards me. Two someones were shooting at me.
The slow penny dropped. They weren’t shooting at me. They were shooting at each other. I just happened to be between them. Not a good place to be.
While a steady stream of panicked expletives made their way like a parade through my lips, that stray strand of memory tucked behind the ear emerged: there is a church, with a high brick wall. It is a sanctuary. I will be safe there.
With my head ducked as low as I could possibly duck and still see to drive, I hauled the Mitsubishi turbo-diesel pick up truck into the steep driveway to the church, and drove to where the wall was now between me and the shooting men.
I had a high school friend who was in the Jamaican military at the time, Reynard. So I called him. In quick, sharp sentences I described the scenario. I said, I’m in the church yard, in the truck. Should I go into the church? Should I stay in the truck? Is JDF sending help?
“No!” he said. “The church is not a safe place in these situations.” And he quickly reminded me of a shoot up a few years before that had police shoot somebody up right outside a church.
“Stay low until you hear the popping stop and then get out of there as fast as you can. Keep your head low as possible.”
So, I did.
The sanctuary, in that situation, was unsafe.
But some spirit of peace, some draw of luck, or some divine purpose kept me alive and safe that day. Mine was not the bright, red paint being hosed off the sidewalk in an hour or two. Perhaps someone else’s paint - but not mine.
Now, typically, in Canada at any rate, “sanctuaries” are locked. Perhaps the greatest and most common need, to keep us safe here, especially in the deep mid-winter, is warm shelter. Most year-round sanctuaries are kept warm. And locked. Sanctuaries here do not need to keep us safe from gunmen, I guess. But I imagine more than a few people experiencing homelessness would find the sanctuary a safe haven from freezing to death.
Maybe they have to wait: for the popping to stop, to travel yet some more distance, to arrive at a safe sanctuary from that which places them at risk. As I had to do that day. The bullets of the gunmen were not aimed at me, anymore than the cold of these nights is aimed at precariously housed people. These things just are. And sometimes, sanctuaries are not safe. Locked sanctuaries, unsafe sanctuaries have little to offer - regardless the grandeur of worship.
What is the sacrifice God would have us make?
May the spirit of peace, the draw of luck, the divine purpose which knows its own intentions keep safe the bright, red paint that flows in the veins of those who may be cold this winter, 2024. May they find sanctuaries, when the church fails to share the warmth and shelter in our care.
Photo by Shaquiel McKenzie on Unsplash
wow!