Lovely beyond any singing of it

In spending the last few weeks reading Cry, the Beloved Country, I have been amazed at the wealth of pain, redemption, charity, and sad irony that has been present. If you don’t know the story, allow me to share with you the basis, and forgive the length of this entry.

A priest, Kumalo, from a small village receives word that his sister is sick. He is also concerned about his brother and his son. These three people have all left the small, peaceful village to live in the big, bustling, harsh city of Johannesburg, South Africa. The priest decides he must go to his sister and he must find his son. His wife, fearful that maybe he too will not return, gives the money she had been saving to buy him a new clergy collar and robe. He takes the money he has been saving to buy her a real stove and with the combined funds, he travels to the unknown.

In a nutshell he learns that his sister has become a prostitute, his brother has become a corrupt businessman, and his son has impregnated a girl without marrying her and has been arrested for killing a white man. He is devastated.

The white man who has been killed happens to be the son of a rich farmer in Kumalo’s small village, a man who has been kind and good and honest and fair to the blacks during apartheid. It is now up to Kumalo to take his sister’s son and raise him, to take the young girl who will have his grandchild and provide for her, to watch his son hang and die, and to go and tell the white man that his son is the reason for all of his grief.

The white man who was murdered, ironically, was fighting for a free Africa, fighting a battle for justice and equality. The final words he wrote in a letter are as follows:

“What we did when we came to South Africa was permissible.

It was permissible to use unskilled men for unskilled work.

It was permissible to develop any resources if the labour is forthcoming.

It was permissible when we discovered gold to bring labour to the mines.

It was permissible to leave native education to hose who wanted to develop it.

It was permissible to allow the destruction of a tribal system that impeded the growth of the country.

It was permissible to believe that its destruction was inevitable.

But it is not permissible to watch its destruction, and to replace it by nothing, or by so little, that a whole people deteriorates, physically and morally.

We are caught in the toils of our own selfishness.

No one wishes to make the problem seem smaller than it is. No one wishes to make the solution seem easy. No one wishes to make light of the fears that beset us. But whether we be fearful or no, we shall never, because we are Christian people, be able to evade the moral issues.

It is time---”

He never got to finish the last sentence.

This book has hit me as very allegorical to the preexistence, our life here as a test, and the paths we choose while here. We know the problems are not small, the solutions are not easy, the fear can be great, but we cannot evade the moral issues. We cannot make excuses for what we do. We cannot justify sin. We cannot live under the toils of our own selfishness. Man people will fail to live the standards that they should be living while in their metaphorical Johannesburgs. And for that, one person may be called on to raise his sister’s son, to provide for his son’s wife and child, to share the burden of sins committed by his loved ones against the good and innocent. One person will be called on to do many things. And then they will get to return to the small, peaceful village that Alan Paton described, “There is a lovely road that runs for Ixopo into the hills. These hilss are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it.”