Zack…the Prophet of Brunswick
By Dr. David Galloway, Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Atlanta
originally published on SouthOfGod.com site
Zack’s mouth utters expletives without pause. My mother’s Ivory Soap method that she used on me once as a boy to clean up my foul language would not touch Zack’s profanity. I’m not sure that Clorox would fare much better.
I first met him a year and a half ago at the Glynn Country Courthouse, as the Ahmaud Arbery trial was going on. I hobbled up, cane in hand, trying not to fall on the undulating grassy yard in front of the courthouse. There was Zack, holding forth about some evil in our land, in front of five older white women. I was frankly shocked by the words he was issuing forth, describing his anger over the way poor people had been and were treated in Glynn County. You could almost see the women leaning back, as if the power of his words were pressing on them physically. Being an astute observer of human behavior, I noted their eyes widening in a rhythm that followed his word choice. His use of the N-word (Zack is black) was frankly jarring to me. I was surprised by the scene, but smiled to myself. I love surprises. Who was this guy?
It turned out that I had met his wife, Gladys, even had a brief conversation with her at a Gullah Geechee cultural event on St. Simons Island. She was an Episcopalian, a member of St. Athanasius in downtown Brunswick, a predominantly black congregation. Her father had been the priest there many years earlier. Gladys and I played a familiar game in the small Episcopal circles we run in: Do you know so-in-so? which will usually bring a reaction, positive or negative. She and I had established some ties across the State of Georgia in the Episcopal world which got me to watching the broadcast online from St. A, as it is referred to, during the pandemic. But I had not met her husband, Zack, but that was about to change directly. Profoundly.
Zack identified himself to me as a pastor, a Baptist pastor, the pastor of St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church, located on G Street in downtown Brunswick, two blocks off the main drag of Glouchester. He had grown up in Brunswick, went to serve in Vietnam, returned to attend Morehouse, finally landing back in Brunswick. To say he is an activist is an understatement.
He was quick to share his opinion on current leadership in Brunswick and Glynn County, his disdain for “kept” preachers who are beholden to the “Massah” aka the powers that be. He has a sharp social commentary as to how society is constructed to work for the wealthy and keep poor folks down. He is particularly critical of members of his own race who go away to be educated by the “system”, only to return to impose their “high-minded” insights and control on the home folks. His insights are at times delivered in the professorial tones of an Oxford lecture hall, but at other times, the scalding hot eruption of volcanic fire. I have been fortunate to be around the man enough to hear both, and versions in between. When I am in close proximity to Zack, I note that I have never caught a whiff of fear emanating from him, something that is all too detectable in some of the careful clergy I have encountered. Trust me… I know what fear smells like coming from my own damn self, having survived dealing with overly comfortable church folk in my day. I survived, barely, and sport a few scars and a limp.
For me, Zack is a prophet, the one who stands on the edge of the community and calls out the hypocrisy that he sees, the hypocrisy that others dare not call out or name. My sense is that he sees himself in that light and has taken up the mantle in his hometown of Brunswick to serve in that capacity. “My religion has turned to rage” is one of his oft-uttered side comments, after he has lanced the dragons of societal posturing. His quixotic stance reminds me of Old Testament prophets as well as the militant protests of our own 1960s in this country. For me, he is refreshing in the face of many religious functionaries who play “nice” in the public square in order to keep things comfortable. Zack is a tiger, no domesticated house cat. For me, he is an existential, flesh and blood challenge to my own tendency to avoid conflict, to get along. I need Zacks in my life to keep me honest.
What a juxtaposition, an odd couple if you will, Merton and Zack. After weeks of exploring the monastic persona of Merton, here I am trotting out a prophetic person immersed in the “stuff” of community. The theme of solitude and solidarity reemerge for me in two real-life examples. On the Eve of Pentecost, as I am writing this, I came across a powerfully prophetic line from Merton’s journal that speaks to the creative tension between the insight of solitude and the call to action in solidarity: “Yes, we have the Holy Ghost all right- in a cage with His wings clipped.” I could imagine Zack uttering the same line, perhaps spiked with some bountiful pours of profanity.
Currently, Zack and I are working on the issue of homelessness in Glynn County. A while back, there was a day shelter, The Well, that was located downtown in Brunswick operated by Faithworks. It provided a space for homeless people to gather during the day, get their clothes washed, shower, and grab some time to do some planning for their next steps. I met two of the staff members, Tab and Jenna, who have both a passion for the homeless as well as organizational expertise to get things done. Admittedly, The Well was a stopgap effort, as yet undeveloped to meet the root causes of the situation, but represented a good faith start on the part of the faithful in Glynn County. Unfortunately, there were two oublicized incidents of violence with some downtown business folks, not necessarily from the homeless from the Well, but it prompted the business community to pressure the city to shut down The Well.
The Well complied with the city, shutting it down for 65 days. That commenced about forty days ago. That arrangement left the 70 to 80 folks using The Well daily without a place to go. My man, Zack, opened up his church, to house these homeless, a few blocks away from where they had been. The city cited code violations in Zack’s church and shut it down, boarding up the doors and windows of the church. Zack responded straightway by pitching a tent in the yard of the church to provide a place of refuge for the homeless persons. He was promptly cited by the city, twice.
There have been 20 to 25 people sheltering under the tent in the hot Georgia sun over the last few weeks. I have spent several days there, talking with these folks who have many different reasons for being homeless. Rather than seeing them as a “category” of humanity, it is a good thing to see them for the persons that they are, each with a unique story. One person is a young woman who is 8 weeks pregnant and plans on taking her baby to term, even though she is not married and has no job. A young man with welding skills came to Brunswick hoping to find a job. A middle-aged woman in recovery finds herself on the street, hoping to find a job and settle down. A woman in her thirties has fled a marriage of physical abuse and is trying to just get her legs so she can get back in the game.
Each person “under the tent” has a story as to why they are here at this time, each one hoping for a chance to build a life. The thumbnail description I offered of these four misses the mark in that they all have extensive stories, as complicated as the stories any one of us carry with us. We invited the clergy of Glynn to come and take the time to get to know who these people are, what their needs are, and to imagine how the church might respond with compassion. I am hoping some of my sisters and brothers will take up this opportunity, rather than investing time in endless, non-productive sharing of “my opinion”. It seems to me this is a time for thoughtful and compassionate action, and the response of this group in the past gives me a measure of hope. Zack’s not so sure.
For me, the “shift” from monastery to the street poses certain existential and spiritual questions that ask for answers. I find myself needing the solitude to deepen and center my own soul. At the same times, I am energized by being on the street, deep in the mix with people that God loves. Again, my pervasive dialectic seems to emerge: solitude and solidarity. I am at one of those moments that prove to be defining, the proverbial Frostian two roads. Perhaps there is a third way, a path that includes, rather, embraces both. I must admit, mostly to myself, that I do not know what the way forward looks like. And I am strangely okay with that, remembering the prayer of Merton that I cited a few weeks ago.
I am strangely prompted to remember the motto of my high school, Briarwood, in a south Atlanta suburb of East Point. We were a new school, freshly built, our young teachers with a kind of late 1960s spirit. We were making it up as we went along, and so the Robert Frost quote found its way as our motto beneath our crest: “I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”. Perhaps it’s just the romantic in me that was captured by the enthusiasm of such a verse. But it has haunted me for fifty years, that notion of a purpose, birthed in a Kennedyesque New Frontier that did not die on an afternoon in Dallas. That hope for a better day, a better way, has fueled my life. That optimism was tempered by the too-soon death of six classmates who graduated with me in May of 1972 at a ceremony at the legendary Atlanta Municipal Auditorium that hilariously housed both Live Atlanta Wrestling and the Atlanta Symphony. Those classmates, some close friends, would die before the end of my freshman year in college, driving home a counterpoint to my youthful optimism. Again, the dialectical tension of hope and despair, birthed early in my story, was recast again as I entered the transition to young adulthood.
On this particular night, it has me thinking that my love of “story”, that is, narrative, is birthed out of my own, circuitous, rambling, stumbling way. As a person of the South, I have read stories o’plenty, written by Hem, Flannery, Harper, Eudora, and my friend, Conroy, and leaned in to listen to tales told by elders, ancestors like my grandfather around a fire. And, I know full well that everyone has one, a story, that is. It’s just that some know how to tell it well, while others are learning to claim their unique journey, the individual trajectory that has transported them through time and space to the present moment of Now.
I do know one thing for sure. I am committed to listening to the amazing stories of people wherever I encounter them: clergy that I get the privilege of coaching; doctors who are struggling to find meaning in a profession that is changing rapidly: persons who are seeking meaning, some who are in transition; people who hunger for a spiritual experience; persons who feel lost and want to recover faith; and homeless who are trying to make a way through this particular valley of experience. Even in the midst of my quandary of dialectical tension, it leaves me blessed. I look to both Merton and Zack for inspiration as I make my own way to the next chapter of my particular and peculiar story.
Blessings.