Some lies we tell ourselves

Some lies we tell ourselves because we cannot bear to see

The people that our forbears were, and that we yet could be. 
"They did not really hate," we say, "they didn't, I just know!"

Dear God, please open up our minds, the bitter truth to show.

 

Some lies we tell ourselves because we have a dreadful fear

That those we love would turn aside if that truth they could hear.

Lord, teach us that we're not alone in having things to hide; 

We all have ugly history we'd rather put aside.

 

Some lies we tell ourselves because we deeply dread to face

The bleak and angry sins that so consume the human race, 

And yet we must - we know this, Lord; if we'd be fully true,

To face these sins of history is something we must do.

 

Teach us that facing history's truths is not a prisoning thing;

Indeed, true freedom only comes when, in the words we sing,

We face the sins that we and our ancestors once embraced; 

Those lies we told ourselves can then be banished and erased.

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, November 2022.

MUSIC: Tune SALVATION, Kentucky Harmony, 1816.

 

 

This text is basically a first reaction to a ... the best word I can come up with is "pilgrimage" to The Legacy Museum and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice (aka "the lynching memorial") in Montgomery and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. In a time in which many just won't face the ugly parts of history, some deny them outright, and some even seek to enshrine such forgetting in law and education, such banishing and forgetting seems inimical to a faith that places any value on confession and repentance (which, I think, includes Christianity...?). 

[Note: this does contain a few "sins" of hymn writing, it's true -- contractions!!!??? The tone of this one, as it formed in my head, seemed to demand that some polish give way to a more vernacular and unpolished idiom. I might change my mind eventually. Who knows?]