A Reflection on Future Pilgrimages (Atlanta)

New Eyes

Jason Snape

I'm Jason Snape, and Sue and I will be going on the Atlanta All Gods Children

pilgrimage this fall. This will be my first, and yet most of these locations are familiar places that I will be seeing with new eyes and heart. 

I taught at Georgia State University for 10 years beginning in 2011, and passed through Sweet Auburn most days of the week. It had profound contrasts – John Lewis's powerful six-story mural, towering over a parking lot. Big Bethel AME church, where there was almost always someone asleep on the steps. Beautiful old brick buildings on Auburn, boarded up or with new businesses opening up or closing down. The looming bulk of Grady Hospital, the only answer for all of downtown Atlanta's health woes. Municipal Market, where I took new grad students for lunch. Then GSU and its sometimes shiny, sometimes banged-up halls of learning and change and hope and energy. And always, the homeless, trying to survive in hard places. This was all part of my daily landscape, but I was going through it, not into it. Aware of the stories, but not in them. 

I have also been to a service at Ebenezer Baptist, back in the 90s. My friend Robert from college invited me to go with him. It was an education. I learned what preaching really meant, how it felt like something massive moving inside me. I was one of a few white people in a packed Black church, and sat right in the middle. It was uncomfortable and unfamiliar. I didn't feel unwelcomed, but I was also grateful for Rob. It felt like when I rode MARTA buses from Stone Mountain to downtown to work every day – an education in being quiet, and waiting, and feeling small and out of place as we all went into our day.