There is a hymn in the Episcopal Hymnal by William Alexander Percy, Walker Percy’s uncle, that is a real fucking downer. The gist of it is that all these guys who were Jesus’s disciples had a pretty good thing going on until the Son of God showed up. They went fishing, hauled in good catches, and generally made out all right. Then Christ came along a screwed it all up. By the end of it, they are all dying upside down on a cross or something. I think we need to work on the marketing aspect of this thing. Not exactly going to pack ’em in there, Will.
But I also sort of understand where he is going. It helps to read the story that he is drawing from. All these guys were boat owners. Their dads were going to set them up, if they had not already. Not exactly big-time capitalists, but comfortably middle class. Jesus did not call the deckhands on the boats. He called the owners. Or the owners’ sons anyway.
Will Percy was a planter’s son. His father was landed gentry in north Mississippi, a United States Senator, friend to future president Herbert Hoover, and, by the standards of early 20th century north Mississippi, a liberal guy. When the floods came to the Delta in 1927, Will was put in charge of relief by his father. When Will devised a plan to rescue black people from the levy, the only dry ground they could find, his father vetoed the plan out of concern that their labor would be lost forever. Conditions quickly deteriorated and many people on the levy died from diseases, as Will feared they would.
William Alexander Percy knew about conflict. He knew the comforts that wealth brought and its discomforts. When his nephews and niece were left without parents, he gave up his life of international travel and influence to return to Greenville to raise them. He lived permanently estranged from his father. He helped the intellectuals of the North see and understand the horrible, complicated state of race relations in the south.
For him, the peace of God was not peaceful. He had to work and live in contradiction to many people and things he loved. He struggled to know what was the right thing to do. But he also knew that what he gained, the peace in his soul, was worth the struggle in his life. He may also have known that, once he went down that path, there really wasn’t any going back.
I have heard it said that the reason the church gets so tied up with sex is that we don’t want to have to talk about money. I can buy that. We are not doing great gangbusters, but we’re comfortable. I really, really don’t want the stuff to go away. Sooner or later, however, it becomes a matter of justice. Can I keep living like I’m living if it means the second graders up at Marsh Fork Elementary keep getting sick? I don’t want to answer that question just now. I’d rather go fishing.