My Hands are Yours

This week I read Alan Paton’s powerful novel Cry, the Beloved Country. I’ve seen the movie numerous times when I would show it in my contemporary world literature class, but I had never read the book before.

The setting is 1946 apartheid South Africa. It is the story of two fathers: the black Anglican priest Stephen Kumalo and the white landowner James Jarvis. These two fathers struggle to understand their own sons whose lives have been tragically connected. It’s about two good, good fathers who love their sons, who suffer for the pains of fatherhood, and who find continued redemption through their sons.

I don’t want to reveal the plot, but rarely have fictional characters become so real and alive as Kumalo, Jarvis, and the other priest Theophilius Msimangu. Some critics have claimed that Cry, the Beloved County is every much a Christian allegory of suffering and redemption as Pilgrim’s Progress or as Dante’s Inferno. Just reading that book gives me renewed hope in others, in myself, and especially in the Savior and His cleansing and healing Atonement.

These families that Alan Paton creates are in sharp contrast to James Goldman’s family in The Lion in Winter. This is a play about King Henry II and his wife Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. It’s Christmas in 1183 England. It’s the one time of the year that King Henry allows Eleanor out of her imprisoned exile to be with their three sons, John, Geoffrey, and Richard. All three sons are vying and conniving and deceiving with their parents to inherit the kingdom at the expense of their brothers. It is a play of hatred, anger, deceit, and power.

Whereas, Cry the Beloved Country is only about love, forgiveness, sacrifice, and peace through suffering. A phrase that Msimangu speaks to Kumalo as they begin their journey to seek the lost son Absalom is, “My hands are yours.” This becomes an extended metaphor that by offering our own selves to others in service and love will we find what we’re searching for, including peace.

Also, repeated numerous times in the novel are the greetings, “Go well, stay well.”

So this week, may you go well and stay well.