Book Review: "How Far to the Promised Land" by Esau McCaulley
My reflections on Dr. Esau McCaulley's new Memoir
Esau McCaulley, How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South (Convergent Books, 2023), 210 pages.
“No one leaves childhood unwounded” is a phrase (that I often think about) I came across in a Pastoral Care and Counseling class in seminary. It is true that if we do not healthily tend to these wounds, they will deepen and bleed into every corner of our lives.
This quote also admits this difficult complexity of human life: Those who have wounded us are also a victim of wounding in their own lives. What do we do with the fact that those who were responsible for wounding us were also wounded themselves?
It is at this intersection where New Testament Scholar and Writer, Dr. Esau McCaulley writes his memoir, How Far to the Promised Land. Our scars have stories. Yet, so do the scars of those who have both loved and harmed us. “A good narrative—a Black one, at least—is not owned by any individual,” he writes. “It is, instead, the story of a people.” McCaulley sits in this tension as he wrestles with God to make sense of his and his family’s story.
In his memoir, McCaulley highlights for us that life is more messy and complex than we give it credit for. The people who have harmed us most have been harmed, too. It is only through honestly facing our own hurts, disappointments and grief that we are given the freedom and grace to see the humanity in those we love and who have hurt us.
“Life is wide and strange and wonderful, and stories are made by individual persons, not tropes” (McCaulley, p.152).
McCaulley seamlessly moves from the engaging narrative of his life to assessing the meaning beneath the experience itself to offering a sort of timeless pastoral reflection on the situation which admonishes the reader wherever they find themselves.
The throughline of the book, as expressed in the book’s subtitle, is Hope. (It is interesting that one of his other books, Reading While Black, also has “Hope” in its subtitle, too). For McCaulley, it is the truth of the power of the Gospel of Jesus that grounds one’s hope which enables us to honestly face the darkest aspect of our human experience while not being overcome by it.
McCaulley invites readers to live into the grace to see that people are more than the worst decision they have made. Grace to see that people are more than the worst some reduce them to. It is at that intersection where the possibility of forgiveness is found. It is at that moment when one is given the invitation to begin again, to start anew. It is the starting point of healing, the genesis of tending to the wounds we have accrued in this complex journey of life we live.
My favorite quote in the book highlights this beautifully:
Christians like to believe that our faith is about people who convert and immediately change their lives. We envision flawless good citizens with well-mown lawns and perfectly behaved children. But life is hard. The road is long and winding, and the path to the promised land is not always clear. Nonetheless, hard lives are beautiful in their own way. Wanderings are instructive in their own right. (McCaulley, p. 207).
While wrestling with his call to preach, McCaulley did not find himself fitting into the traditional preaching models before him. Instead, he felt his vocational call was to lean into who (and how) God has made him while using what God has brought him through for the purpose of putting into words “the varied experiences of God in the souls of Black people” to inspire hope and redemption even in the face of brokenness. To remind us that God has not left us to fend for ourselves.
McCaulley puts it this way:
With God, I’d learned, it was okay to be vulnerable. God had given me permission to soften my hard exterior and let the world know about my pain and my trials, in hopes that those who’d suffered might know that God waited for us on the other side. I had encountered God as a whisper or a mystery, and I longed to explore that. I needed to talk to him about the things I had seen and experienced. I needed to ask God in front of the world to help me make sense of Black suffering. (McCaulley, 150).
I think the greatest gift in his memoir, How Far to the Promised Land, is that he fulfills his vocational calling. He has indeed asked God—in front of the world—to help him make sense of Black suffering by honestly interrogating his own suffering. Instead of standing in the safety of self-protection, McCaulley exudes deep, matured, processed self-awareness. Instead of being superficial and keeping the reader at arm’s length, McCaulley’s vulnerability invites readers to have a front-row seat in every chapter of his life. Readers encounter the God who is kind, gracious and patient with us—and with those who have harmed us—and can make sense of our seemingly meaningless life.
McCaulley’s work is not merely an invitation to peer through a window into his life. But, he lifts a mirror and invites readers into a life of self-reflection, compassion, forgiveness and freedom. He issues to readers all hope is not lost, and that God has the power to redeem to us more than sin and Satan can steal from us.
Thank you, Dr. McCaulley, for entrusting your life and family’s story to us.
Here are a few interviews I enjoyed reading/listening to over the last few weeks:
“Behind The Book: How Far to The Promised Land with Esau McCaulley” (Podcast, Truth’s Table)
552. Esau McCaulley: How Far to the Promised Land (Norsworthy Podcast)
“Finding Beauty in the Struggle: Our Interview with Esau McCaulley on his new book, How Far to the Promised Land” (Mockingbird)
What I am reading?
MLK: A Life by Jonathan Eig
On Writing by Stephen King
Thanks for reading!
-SH