How do you forgive someone who committed unspeakable horror against someone you love?
In 2015, 21-year-old white supremacist, Dylann Roof, was welcomed into a bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Minutes later, he opened fire and murdered nine members of the church. At his trial, the family members of those killed got the chance to speak to Roof publicly, voicing their pain; and some, in the midst of such anguish, publicly forgave him.
But Sharon Risher, whose mother was shot and killed by Roof that day, was not immediately ready to forgive her mother's killer; for her, it was a long, hard road to forgiveness. Today, we discuss Sharon’s book entitled "For Such a Time as This: Hope and Forgiveness After the Charleston Massacre," which explores her journey of grief, healing, and grace after her mother’s murder.
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Lee C. Camp: [00:00:00] I'm Lee C. Camp. This is No Small Endeavor, exploring what it means to live a good life.
Any notion of a so-called good life would be naïve, and ultimately unhelpful, if it failed to take seriously that life is hard, and it is often very hard, yet much of modern life seems to conspire to keep us from taking our finitude, mortality, and grief as matters which we must accept and endure. And numerous contemporary philosophers, theologians, and psychologists are telling us that the innumerable ways we distract ourselves from these facts of life will ultimately lead us to a sorry end.
From this perspective, a good life cannot simply entail a strategy of general avoidance of or distraction from difficulty, [00:01:00] hardship, or loss. Instead, it means developing the capacity of a graciousness that can weather such hardship gracefully. So I found myself deeply moved by the exemplary nature of such a capacity in the story of Reverend Sharon Risher.
In 2015, a 21-year-old white supremacist named Dylann Roof was welcomed into a Wednesday night Bible study at the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. After the participants began to pray, near the end of the study, Roof stood up, pulled out a 45-caliber Glock, hurled racist epithets, and began a shooting rampage which left nine African Americans murdered. Ethel Lance was among the nine killed that night. Ethyl is the mother of our [00:02:00] guest, Sharon Risher. In addition, Sharon was a cousin to two other victims and she was a childhood friend of yet another victim.
Days later, family members of those murdered in the massacre got the chance publicly to speak to Roof. Some, including a family member of Sharon's, publicly forgave Dylann Roof, but Sharon Risher, she just found herself angry. Her journey would not be so simple and it would be a long one. Today, we discuss her book, For Such a Time as This: Hope and Forgiveness After the Charleston Massacre.
Reverend Sharon Washington Risher was born in Charleston, South Carolina. She completed her undergraduate degree at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, and seminary at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Austin, Texas. She's appeared on numerous national media platforms and written [00:03:00] for the New York Times, USA Today, and many more. She's the author of the book, For Such a Time as This: Hope and Forgiveness After the Charleston Massacre. She's become what she calls an accidental activist, telling her personal experience about losing loved ones to gun violence. Reverend Risher, thank you so much for being with us today. It's an honor and privilege to have you with us on the show today.
Reverend Sharon Risher: Well, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here and I just know that we will have, uh, a lively conversation-
Lee C. Camp: Yes, I'm grateful-
Reverend Sharon Risher: ... so I look forward to this. Yes.
Lee C. Camp: ... gra- grateful to have you. Near the end of your book, you speak of having become something like, uh, an accidental activist, and you say an accidental activist is someone thrust into a life-altering experience and then springs into action for specific causes or issues. And so I think, rather than first talking about what brought you to this place, I'd like to first hear a bit about your, your activism work that is focused a [00:04:00] great deal on, on gun violence and racism. What are some of the major pressing issues that you've been working on here of late with regard especially to gun violence?
Reverend Sharon Risher: I am one of those behind-the-scenes person when it comes to gun violence. I try to stay on the legislative team, especially about continuing to try to get the Charleston Loophole passed, where it has stalled. That was one of the things that I continue to press forward with, and, every chance I, uh, get to speak publicly is an opportunity for me to talk about how gun violence ravages our communities. So I continue to do these things in my own little way and not so much publicly anymore.
Lee C. Camp: You mentioned the Loophole. Can you tell us more about that, uh, for those who are unaware of kind of some of the legislative agenda going on there?
Reverend Sharon Risher: It's called the Charleston Loophole, and what it [00:05:00] is, when Dylann Roof went to apply to be able to buy a gun, his background check was not completed in the three-day period in which the law allows. After a three-day period, through a legal, reputable gun seller, the gun seller has the right to go ahead and give you the gun pending the background check comes back clean. Well, that did not happen in this case. We know that the background check would have not been complete 'cause he had a charge with substance and that would have deleted him from being able to get the gun. And I don't talk about this a lot, but that's where the [00:06:00] families in Charleston sued the federal government and, after seven years, we won because the NICS system and that whole system of doing the background check and everything was flawed and did not do what it was supposed to do, and then here you go, he was able to buy a gun and do what he did, which opened the doors for so many other people still too.
And so the Charleston Loophole is extending that waiting time between seven and 10 days, allowing the NICS system and all who do the background check a little more time because now, like everything else, the system is backed up. Be-, but because the system is backed up, we can't let carelessness happen to allow what happened in Charleston in that church to happen again, or not even in a church, just regular people being able to get a gun and [00:07:00] something snaps in their brains.
Lee C. Camp: You speak, in the book, of work on behalf of sensible gun policies. What are some of the others that you have advocated for that you think could make a significant difference that seem to be rather obvious that we might want be paying attention to?
Reverend Sharon Risher: The universal background checks, that's one of the issues that I have gotten behind and that continues. Well, we know, this summer, I was at the White House when President Biden signed the executive orders he did, one of the strongest orders in 43 years when it comes to gun law reform. So there have been movement, but we all know, in this world of politics and legislation, things move slow, but we are thankful for every headway that we got. And a lot of the state has picked up red flag laws, the ERPO laws that a lot of people have been talking [00:08:00] about, being able to take away someone's gun for a period of time. If there seems to be documented mental issues or some form of domestic violence or whatever, then a judge or a police officer could file a motion to get that person's gun removed from them for a particular period of time and then be reevaluated whether they would get their guns or not.
So there are a lot of things that we could do to just tighten things up, not trying to go against anybody's Second Amendment right because everybody has the, yes, the right to own a gun, but now what you do with your gun and h-, and all of this plays into a whole nother thing-
Lee C. Camp: Mm-hmm.
Reverend Sharon Risher: ... when we come into the gun violence. So if there are not rules and regulations, and because we are a culture of people that's growing, then our laws need to change to [00:09:00] grow along with what we have in our society and in our communities.
Lee C. Camp: You've also spoken about the relationship between gun violence and racism. Could you tell us a bit more about that?
Reverend Sharon Risher: So we know that Black and brown people are disproportionately killed by a gun more than anybody else, and that's because of the systematic racism that comes in our social and criminal justice system from a long time ago is still reeling from everything that it was founded out of.
So here we are still dealing with having to just be treated like anybody else, but now, you know, there are sets of people that have power of a gun to be able to shoot you down like an [00:10:00] animal and it was the right thing to do in their minds.
Lee C. Camp: What are other pressing considerations, in your mind, in thinking about the disproportionate impact of gun violence on people of color? What are other kind of major things you've learned or seen or that have concerned you?
Reverend Sharon Risher: Well, let me tell you this, gun violence ravages a family. You know, people see, you know, well, their GoFundMes for funerals, you know, there's a funeral, but that kind of violence ripples through every part of your life. Some mothers I've met with and been with, that have lost [00:11:00] children, found themselves upside-down, couldn't go to work, couldn't financially support their children, their other children, because now you've suffered this traumatic thing, you can't work, you can't provide, you get behind on your bills. Mental health, as far as grief support, it's not readily made.
You know, for us in Charleston, and I was lucky, the state of South Carolina and the federal government made sure that the nine families and everybody in Charleston impacted by what happened in that church, that things were available. They made that up really fast. But the thing about it is you're shoved all this paperwork in your face telling you what you can apply for and all of this and you're in the middle of trying to figure out what just happened to my [00:12:00] life?
Lee C. Camp: You've alluded to this, but you didn't become, uh, an activist by just getting up one morning and deciding, right? Ki-, will you share a little bit about what brought you to this work in your life?
Reverend Sharon Risher: Well, you know, one thing I could say about me, I guess I've been a activist all my life, and it started in high school with the student government. You know, I really got turned on to that in eleventh grade by a really great civics teacher. And, from that point on, I always kind of had an interest. I went to college wanting to be a lawyer and to be into politics. So that spirit of service and wanting to help people has always been there, and the most, the significant thing, was when I heard Martin Luther King speak when I was nine years old in Charleston. I happened to be in that [00:13:00] room, standing in the background, because my mother, who worked as a domestic person, had a extra gig and worked that catering gig that night-
Lee C. Camp: Huh.
Reverend Sharon Risher: ... and she wanted me to hear him and I was there. And to hear him speak, I knew, ooh, I wanted to be able to speak like him. And Martin Luther King put, uh, a seed in me, so my life circle and everything has brought me to this because, when my mother and my two cousins and the rest of those people was killed in that church, the Lord awakened in me, "I have prepared you. I have sent you to seminary. You have worked as a chaplain. You know how to relate to people. You know my word. You're going to be the one to have to speak up and be there for them, to let [00:14:00] people know that what happened in that church was just not circumstance and we are not going to let the reason why be buried."
Lee C. Camp: You're listening to No Small Endeavor and our conversation with Sharon Risher, whose mother, as well as two cousins and a childhood friend, were among the nine murdered by Dylann Roof, in 2015, at the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Coming up, Sharon and I discuss what it was like to find out that her mother had been murdered, as well as how she came, only slowly, to forgive the man who committed the atrocity.
We recently heard from a lot of our podcast subscribers saying that they particularly loved our episode with husband and wife music duo Johnnyswim. I'm especially fond of that episode as well, some great stories from Abner and Amanda, as well as some of their live performances at one of our lives [00:15:00] shows at the lovely Ryman Auditorium here in Nashville. And we included, in that podcast, an especially moving rendition of We Shall Overcome performed by Johnnyswim. You can hear that episode with those outstanding musical performances on our podcast, available wherever you listen.
If you would like to give us feedback, I'd love to hear from you. Tell me what you're reading, who you're paying attention to, who you'd like to see on the show, or send us feedback about today's episode. You can reach us at feedback@nosmallendeavor.com. We'll be right back with more from Sharon Risher.[00:16:00]
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Lee C. Camp: Welcome back to No Small Endeavor, exploring what it means to [00:18:00] live a good life. I'm Lee C. Camp. This is our conversation with Reverend Sharon Risher, whose mother, as well as two cousins and a childhood friend, were among the nine murdered in the racially-charged hate crime committed by Dylann Roof in 2015 at the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Today, we're discussing her book entitled For Such a Time as This: Hope and Forgiveness After the Charleston Massacre.
You know, as, as I was reading your book and reflecting on your story, I think that, you know, you, you sharing how, in this one awful, horrific instance, you, you lose your mother, among the nine is also two cousins, is also a childhood friend of yours, I, I kept thinking, you know, none of us ever expect to be in the midst of that kind of loss or grief, but you weren't even living in east of the [00:19:00] Mississippi. You were in Texas the the time time, is that right, when you, when you found out.
Reverend Sharon Risher: Correct. I was in, I was living in Dallas, Texas.
Lee C. Camp: Yeah. And what was the experience like for you, to whatever degree you do or do not want to talk about it? And we can move on if you don't want to talk about it at all. But coming to learn what, what had happened, you know, what's, what's kind of your internal questioning?
Reverend Sharon Risher: I worked in Parkland Hospital, and I worked as a chaplain. I got a page that there was a death. Of course, chaplains respond to all deaths, and so I went to the room, had seen these people before, and when, the grandfather had died, and they was kind of expecting this, he was old, so there wasn't a whole lot of e-, big, emotional outpouring. Uh, you know, they were prepared, so they were really stoic, and for some reason, that night, I didn't have my paperwork that I needed them to sign off, and, usually, I always carried that. For some reason, I didn't have it. [00:20:00] Get downstairs, I had my phone plugged up, I'd looked at my phone and I saw these missed calls from my daughter, and that alerted me on alarm, back to back missed calls from my daughter in North Carolina, something's going on. Let me check in right quick.
Call my daughter. She tells me about my nephew calling her, saying something happened in the church, and I was like, "What church?" and she said, "Granny's church," and I'm like, "What?" She said, "Nobody really know anything, but, uh, Jonquel called and said they were on their way down, they're in Charleston, they're on their way down to the church to try to figure out what was going on. Somebody would call me back." So now I'm like, "Okay, okay, Sharon, you got these people waiting on you. Let's take care of them, get all of that done." And I tell you, I really rushed those people out of there, I really did, uh, 'cause it was like, "Let's get this done. [00:21:00] You know, God bless you. If there's anything the hospital could do to support you, please call us. Bye."
Run back downstairs, start making calls, not getting answers. Finally, I got so anxiety-ridden, I had to leave, because now there's reports on the TV saying something's happened, but they don't know, fatalities.
3: 30 Thursday, early Thursday morning, I get a call from the federal government confirming that Mama was killed. That started a hurt and pain and fog and not understanding. Your brains just go haywire 'cause it's like, you know, you remember, back in the day, outer space, don't compute, the robot would get all crazy and stuff would be blowing out his brains? That was me. And to [00:22:00] be in Dallas, there was no one, a cousin or somebody, I could call.
You know, I'm calling my boss and I'm talking back and forth with my son. My daughter had been upset and he's like, "Ma, don't call her right now to let her know. Wait and let her sleep 'cause she's been crazy. Don't call." And so I finally ended up calling my daughter maybe about 5:00 that morning 'cause I just felt like I had to talk, you know, to let her know before she woke up and saw it on the news.
Lee C. Camp: As you share that, you know, imagining the unexpected loss of a loved one is, is grave and difficult enough, and then the loss of a loved one because of the malice of another human being seems to be another thing altogether, and I think having to process that, I, I can't imagine what that is like.
Reverend Sharon Risher: I [00:23:00] know, to find out what really happened, you know. This little young boy was avowed white supremacist and you're trying to make sense of all of this, you know, it's like, "What?", just realizing that this is real, that there are actually people out there that really think this craziness. And then, 48 hours later, they're at his arraignment hearing and family members start to forgive. My sister was one of the first ones to say, "I forgive you." I'm in Dallas, Texas, listening to this craziness, screaming and hollering, 'cause I couldn't im-, I couldn't compute that these people were standing up there talking about forgiveness when I hadn't even processed what had happened.
From that Wednesday night, when I got home, until I finally got into Charleston that Saturday, [00:24:00] I was a total wreck, you know, no shower. I, I just, I was just, I was a walking zombie.
Lee C. Camp: Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, the oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in the South, I think founded in 1818, perhaps, which has its own sort of remarkable history prior to the Civil War.
Reverend Sharon Risher: Right. Mm-hmm.
Lee C. Camp: Would you tell us a little bit about that history and then what you think, selecting that church as a target, what does that mean to you?
Reverend Sharon Risher: I'm not a expert on Emmanuel's history, but we know that Denmark Vesey was very much connected to that church and, during the time, reportedly tried to lead a slave rebellion in Charleston, which did not happen, and then he was lynched. You know, Emmanuel became because the slaves who would go to [00:25:00] church, to the Methodist church with their slavemasters, had to sit in the balcony and could not be part of the congregation. And Richard Allen, the founding father of the AME denomination, decided that he no longer wanted to sit in the balcony, and started a group of people that started the AME church. I think the first one was in Philadelphia, I think.
But that's the history. Emmanuel has always been that place where social justice issues were brought to attention and a place where people gathered. That, that's the main thing, the place where people gathered to be able to figure out how they were going to do ... Martin Luther King was in that church. Any local politician, any state politician, any person running for any office, would make it their duty to stop and be a part of a worship service at Emmanuel AME [00:26:00] church. So that church has always been a beacon of the community, a church where your educated, professional people, you know, re-, kind of took home in Emmanuel.
So Emmanuel's had a rich history of educators and professional people and a part of the rich history of the civil rights movement and all of that. And then Dylann Roof, doing his research, he knew what that mean. You know, it's how crazy they think, if they try to hurt the thing they think Black people love the most, to not understand that, uh, yeah, it's the church, but it's the people, so no, no matter what you do to the church, you're not going to take away the spirit of what causes the church to be there. And, you know, of course, his brain couldn't comprehend that because he was trying to make, uh, you know, a statement. He wanted to start something he didn't even understand.
Lee C. Camp: Tell us a little bit about your mother. What are some of the [00:27:00] fond things that you remember?
Reverend Sharon Risher: Well, Ethel was definitely a complicated girl, for real [laughing]. She really-
Lee C. Camp: Aren't we all? Aren't we all?
Reverend Sharon Risher: Oh, my God, but my mom, man, [laughing] it, it's just so much about her, but, you know, so part of that was being, uh, a young unwed teenage mother with me. You know, my mother was only 15 year, 14 years older than myself, in 1958, with a biracial baby, and the circumstances of my birth was definitely not something she wanted to share, and she didn't. Because she knew someone, she kind of told the story that, uh, you know, he was the father, 'cause, back then, can you imagine the taboo of being a young unwed mother and all of that and the real circumstances, to be able to tell that, you just didn't.
So she had to quit school. She had to [00:28:00] quit school in order to take care of me, along with her mother, and then she met my stepdad and they got married, so there were four other children besides me. Mama was always tenacious, always a hard worker, always wanted you to do better. My grandmother, and even my moms, worked in to the big, large mansions, in, in Charleston, as, you know, house people. My grandmother was kind of a nanny/cook kind of person, clean up. She worked for big-name families and, you know, during that time, you can always get your daughter or son a job somewhere with these people. So my moms would do ironing for them, that they would let her make the money, that my grandmother took care of everything else.
And so my mother knew what quality was. You know, she knew the finer things because she [00:29:00] worked with them, and so she had that attitude about her own place and about things, and her thing was you can have whatever it is you want if you work hard and it's the right thing. She wasn't a real touchy-feely kind of person either. My mom was a, uh, okay, so, in the hood, you would say hustler, but in the real world, you know, she would but an entrepreneur.
Lee C. Camp: Yeah [laughing].
Reverend Sharon Risher: So Ethel was an entrepreneur in the settings that God allowed her to be in. She knew how to make money, she did-
Lee C. Camp: Yeah.
Reverend Sharon Risher: ... and she wanted us to have things. We moved when I was in tenth grade and, when I was in twelfth grade, you know, I got out of there. I was running the hell up out of Charleston as fast as I could get [laughing]. And so I went on to college in Charlotte and that's how I ended up in Charlotte, but, [00:30:00] uh, my mama was proud of me. I w- would be the first one to go to college and her thing was, "I don't know how we going to pay for this, but we going to figure it out," and I applied for every grant, everything I could get my hands on. But she always supported you, always. So two out of five children went to college, that ain't bad.
Lee C. Camp: I liked your stories about that she liked perfume and James Brown.
Reverend Sharon Risher: Definitely. You know, to this day, I have a whole ... Oh, I have a dresser full of things that I know she would like. And there was one particular perfume, it's W by Banana Republic, and she smelled that thing and said, "Ooh, I smelled this when I was in Belk's and it sure smelled good," so that was her cue to say, "You need to buy me some of that [laughing]." I went to Louisville for a chaplain convention, bought it when I was in [00:31:00] Louisville, sent it. It was delivered that Thursday, and she was killed Wednesday.
I can't wear that perfume anymore, but, lately, I'm drawn to just smelling the top of it. But, yeah, she liked, she liked fine perfumes, and anytime we would go home and everybody would be together, she, [laughing] "Put that James Brown CD on," and we would get and she would be in the middle and we would be dancing, and she was lively when she was lively, but when it came to everyday life, it was about being the best you can, doing the best job you can, being able to take care of your [00:32:00] family and to be there for her children. You know, not all of us kind of made it, but she was there for the ones that needed her. And, after she died, I lost two siblings after my mother died, and I think some of that was the brokenness they had 'cause they depended so much on her, you know, so. Yeah, but Ethel was something.
Lee C. Camp: You're listening to No Small Endeavor and our episode with Sharon Risher.
We're going to take a short break, but coming right up, scenes from President Obama's eulogy at the funeral for the massacre victims, as well as Sharon's own journey to forgiving her mother's killer and how her vulnerability and faith have spurred her towards her good work in the world.[00:33:00]
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Lee C. Camp: Welcome back to No Small Endeavor, exploring what it means to live a good life. I'm Lee C. Camp. If you're just tuning in today, we're joined by Reverend Sharon Risher, whose mother was murdered, along with eight others, by Dylann Roof in a racially-charged hate crime at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. That church is one of the oldest Black churches in America with a rich history of being involved in civil rights. Today, we're discussing Sharon's book entitled For a Such a Time as This: Hope and Forgiveness After the Charleston massacre.
President Barack Obama: We do not know whether the killer of Reverend Pinckney [00:36:00] and eight others knew all of this history, but he surely sensed the meaning of his violent act, an act that he imagined would incite fear and recrimination, violence and suspicion, an act that he presumed would deepen divisions that trace back to our nation's original sin. Oh, but God works in mysterious ways.
Lee C. Camp: It seems to me that the national tragedy of which your mother was one of the nine victims, and I guess the, the victims, of course, were many more than that, that nine, all of the families and all of the community, the neighborhood, but it seemed to me that the, the fact that President Obama comes and [00:37:00] delivers a eulogy speaks to the poignancy and the tragedy of the moment, and preached. You know, it's, uh, it's, I've listened to his eulogy, and it's this moving, beautiful sermon that, that, uh, that also, I think, shows, simultaneously, this sort of deep knowledge of the Black church traditional and scripture. But I wonder what, what was that like for you having President Obama in that sort of setting of grief for you and your family?
Reverend Sharon Risher: Unless I get Alzheimer's or something and I'm not claiming none of that, I will never ever forget sitting there, listening to the first Black president, and just saying, "Mama, look at this, Mama. Look. He's talking about you." The pride I felt, the pride she felt when she voted for him, that was just, it was just [00:38:00] so overwhelming.
President Barack Obama: [singing].
Reverend Sharon Risher: When he started to sing Amazing Grace, it was like silence, and then, when people really understood he was singing, that's when everybody started singing.
President Barack Obama: [singing].
Reverend Sharon Risher: You talk about the heavenly choir, it was a heavenly choir in that place, and all I could do was lay my head on my son and cry like a baby.
President Barack Obama: [singing].
Clementa Pinckney [00:39:00] found that grace. Cynthia Hurd found that grace. Susie Jackson found that grace. Ethel Lance found that grace.
Reverend Sharon Risher: He came afterwards and met with each family, nine different families.
President Barack Obama: [inaudible 00:39:22].
Reverend Sharon Risher: They had a little space put up for us and chairs and everything and, when he walked in, and it was like, "Oh, my God," I'm saying in my head, "Mama, look, look, Mama, look." This is what's going in in my head and, when I hugged him, it was like, "Oh, my God." He smelled so good [laughing]. President Obama, I don't know what cologne that was, but if I ever, ever figured this out, I'm a buy some [laughing] because he was the best smellingest man I had ever smelled in my life [laughing].
And he really was genuine, and I put hands out first, I remember a little etiquette, I put my hands, out [00:40:00] and he hugged, and that meant so much, that he felt that he could bring you intimately into his space like that and he's the president of the United States.
Lee C. Camp: I've read a lot of books and I've read a lot of people's stories about difficult things they've been through, and yet I think that there's a sort of vulnerability, even a raw vulnerability, in your book that kind of took me by surprise sometimes. There was, you, you know, you share about your own anger, your own history of depression, your own experience with addiction, your own divorce, and you say, at one point, "I really do hate to put all of our business out there like this, but I honestly believe that people need to know the truth." Would you tell us more about that?
Reverend Sharon Risher: Well, it started in writing the book and [00:41:00] talking with my son, who's a psychologist, and you never talk to your son who's a psychologist unless you want the damn truth [laughing].
Lee C. Camp: That's a little terrifying, to think of talking to one's son who's a psychologist [laughing].
Reverend Sharon Risher: He was over and I was talking about it and he was like, "Ma, if you're not going to tell the truth, what's the point in writing the book? You can't tell a little bit." And then the publisher and the editor, when I said substance abuse, then they're like, "Well, what substance?" and I'm like, "What substance [laughing]?" And there, again, my son, "Mom, you got to tell the truth," so I did, and I think part of telling that truth is, see, so many people hide behind stuff. In my brains, you would have never known that I was going through all of that hell. Maybe some of my good [00:42:00] friends knew, but still couldn't really put their hands on it. Knew something was up, but just couldn't really put their hands on it because I was so good at hiding and keeping secrets, and you learn that. From a child that went through domestic violence with my stepdad and my moms, you learn to keep secrets. You learn how to make things look normal when, in the inside of you, you're screaming.
So that vulnerability was to say we all have things and we can't judge each other, you know, 'cause everybody will have gone through something in their lives that was just, took them, could have taken them out, and had taken some people out. the spirit of my mom and just my ancestors about never giving up and, of course, forefront, most any, is my faith in God. That was, that's ... and I guess I haven't mentioned that because, for me, [00:43:00] that's just a automatic. That, that's just, I don't even have to go there because we already know, I know, nothing in my life, good and bad, has taken me from my faith, knowing that no ba-, no matter how bad it gets, God loves me and I could figure this out.
Lee C. Camp: You mentioned, uh, a moment ago, that you were distressed, being you're in Dallas, and, next thing you know, your, one of your sisters is announcing forgiveness of the man who had murdered your mother, and then you're also very vulnerable in, in the book about that forgiveness, for you, was, uh, a process. You even say, quote, "My journey toward forgiveness has been hard, lonely, and complicated." Tell us a little bit more about how you see forgiveness as a process.
Reverend Sharon Risher: Well, see, to even [00:44:00] get towards that, you have to kind of, you know, the, the steps of grief.
Lee C. Camp: The psychiatrist, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, in her book On Death and Dying, discussed what she described as five somewhat linear stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Her work was widely seen as revolutionary in helping make clear that grief is a process for those who are facing terminal illness, but she later revised her work in dealing with those who were survivors of loss. She made more clear that grief was not so much a linear process as a somewhat messy process that included initial shock and a later testing stage, which tries out new ways of coping with the loss, along with all of those other stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Here, especially, it's worth noting simply that survivors of loss, Dr. Kubler-Ross made clear, [00:45:00] have a long and arduous process through which they must typically travel.
Reverend Sharon Risher: You find yourself going from anger to this and that, and so you, you roll with that because you're still trying to understand that, and you can't understand it no matter how hard you try, so now you're depressed. You don't want to think about it. You, you know ... There was lots of trying to figure out stuff during that time. I had hurt my ankle, so now I'm dealing with health things. The same ankle that I'm having problems with right now is the same ankle I hurt almost seven years ago. God put a few people in my life when I was in Dallas grieving and dealing with a injury, quitting my job, not knowing what the hell I was doing.[00:46:00]
And then, finally, my daughter said, "Ma, come on home," which is her house, North Carolina. You know, I lived in North Carolina more than I lived anywhere else, so Charlotte was home, and I moved to Charlotte to try to figure stuff out, and, you know, having long yelling matches with God, trying to figure out, "Why, God? Why?", figuring it out, and figuring out, well, God, used my sisters and them to show a nation how forgiveness could come even through something like this, that only a God could make a transformation of a heart to get to that.
And because I'm an ordained minister, I had to allow myself to be open, because then how can I preach the word of God if I have not allowed myself to be able to feel all of that, and we already know that God asks us to forgive.[00:47:00]
I was preaching, I was preaching a World Communion Sunday, and I had my sermon all together, yada yada, and the next thing you know, I started feeling kind of warm and then the words, "I forgive you, Dylann Roof," come out my mouth, and my brain's just scrambling 'cause I'm trying to figure out ... this is not on my manuscript, I don't know what's happening to me right now, and that day, God was like, "You, you know, you've done the work. You have looked into yourself. You're not going to look at him as a monster. You're going to look at him as a human being, the same way I look at you." And that's how I got to forgiveness because then I started to see Dylann Roof not as a monster, but as a human being who God love just as much as He love me.
Lee C. Camp: [00:48:00] Near the end of your book, you talk about the process of, of keeping on, and I'd like to spend just a few minutes talking about that kind of as we come to a close. But, you know, thr- through the book, you've talked about your father died after being robbed and attacked, your sister Teri died of cancer, your mother murdered in the massacre, your sister Esther died a few years later from acute respiratory failure, perhaps still never having recovered from your mother's murder. With that sort of repeated sense of loss, how have you learned to keep on keeping on?
Reverend Sharon Risher: [laughs]. So we going to go back with God 'cause, you know, people say, you know, once you've been through something horrific, you start to count every day as a blessing, and you know [00:49:00] what? It's real. Now, you know, every day not going to be all balloons and happy birthday and all of that, [laughing] but, you know, the purpose is to open your eyes and be alive, to be able to walk ... and I figure, from that, I could figure it out. God has given me the ability to figure stuff out. I've allowed myself to surround myself with people who are going to want to see me thrive and prosper, and that's part of, of it all, surrounding yourself with a community of people.
And, see, the community don't have to be a lot of people, but a community is a church, synagogue, wherever it is that you might worship whatever it is that you might worship. Having a community is your inner circle family, your children, your grandchildren, or friends that you have been friends with 30, 40 years, and it just might be one or two, but [00:50:00] you have to have people in your corner, and you have to be able to accept when people want to help you, and that was one of the hard things for me.
You know, us Southern Black women, we figure we could just do it all, we don't need no help, and I come to realize that's not true, and so I had to learn to say exactly what, when God said, "What is it that you need?", I have to come say what it is that I need, and if a person can't provide that, then I'm not going to get mad at them because at least they asked, and at least I could be humble to accept what they're willing to give me. E- e- even if it's just a hug or a hello, I have to be able to receive that. So I thrive to continue to receive and give the kind of love Jesus call us to, I really do try [00:51:00] hard.
Lee C. Camp: We've been talking to Reverend Sharon Washington Risher, originally of Charleston, South Carolina, now of Charlotte, North Carolina. Reverend Risher, thanks so much for your time together with us today and for your, your good work and your good words in the world.
Reverend Sharon Risher: Thank you so much for having me again. Thank you.
Lee C. Camp: And we are grateful to have you listening to No Small Endeavor. You just heard our interview with Reverend Sharon Risher, activist, speaker, and author of the book For Such a Time as This: Hope and Forgiveness After the Charleston Massacre.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of Lilly Endowment Incorporated, a private philanthropic foundation supporting the causes of community development, education, and religion, and the support of the John Templeton Foundation, whose vision is to become a global [00:52:00] catalyst for discoveries that contribute to human flourishing.
Our thanks to all the stellar team that makes this show possible, Christie Bragg, Jakob Lewis, Sophie Byard, Tom Anderson, Cariad Harmon, and Tim Lauer.
President Barack Obama: [Singing].
Lee C. Camp: Thanks for listening. Let's keep exploring together what it might mean to live a good life. No Small Endeavor is a production of Tokens Media LLC and-
Speaker 6: Great Feeling Studios [laughs].[00:53:00]