“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

These words by Soren Kierkegaard, a 19th century Danish Christian, offer a vision of life consistent with my Christian faith, which hinges on beliefs in and commitments to what happened in the past if we are to faithfully live in the present and toward a better future.

History never really remains in the past. The past is always tethered to the present. For example, I was raised in southern Georgia where what we called “manners” sifted the well-behaved kids from the misbehaved. If you said ma’am, sir, please and thank you, you were considered well-behaved. If you didn’t, you were rude and needed better home-training. To this day ma’am, sir, please and thank you are a part of my daily vocabulary as I interact with people. My upbringing — my past — formed me and still does.

As a pastor I encounter many who haven’t come to terms with their full story. It can be hard to revisit how our family system, including the hard edges of habits, practices, values and virtues have shaped us in unhealthy ways. The words we learned, the habits we formed, the values we cultivated — they all influence the story we live from and live into. We become the story we tell ourselves.

All this talk about past and present is not new to those of us living in Williamsburg. A significant portion of our economy is based upon bringing “history to life.” The story of our past not only funds our imagination, it (literally) funds our present. From museums to municipalities and social values to personal beliefs, we are never far beyond the past. Yet, we must come to terms with how it is still shaping the present and future.

Many of us have yet to come to terms with our complete national story. It’s as if we forget how family systems work on societal levels, and that a generation’s past informs the next generation’s present. We have no problem acknowledging how the Revolutionary War laid the groundwork for the society we are today. We have no problem acknowledging how other patriotic movements planted the seeds that grew in the soil of American life and produced the generational fruit of a society whose motto remains “land of the free and home of the brave,” where “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is available to all. But when we do not embrace the whole story, then we are unwittingly settling for a displaced present and disillusioned future.

Have we come to terms with how the teaching of the Christian tradition of Puritanism held by most of the colonizers, who believed that Africans and other dark-skinned neighbors have equal souls but unequal bodies? This important (albeit flawed) distinction was used to defend the enslaver/enslaved relationship as being mutually beneficial.

Have we come to terms with how in 1705 Virginia codes authorized planters to provide freed white indentured servants with 50 acres of land and nothing to freed formerly enslaved African American neighbors, which planted the seeds of institutionalized economic power that worked against African Americans generation after generation?

Have we come to terms with how Hugh Jones, an English preacher and William & Mary professor, in his influential work, “Present State of Virginia,” said that African neighbors were “to become more humble and better servants” and should remain illiterate because they were “by Nature cut out for hard Labour and Fatigue?”

Have we come to terms with how another English preacher, James Blair, the first president of William & Mary, preached in 1722 that the Christian “Golden Rule” required enslavers to baptize the enslaved and treat them kindly, but not seek equality between “superiors and inferiors?” Have we come to terms that by 1775, enslaved neighbors accounted for more than half of Williamsburg’s population?

I am not sure we have come to terms with how on June 12, 1928, the city of Williamsburg’s approximately 700 African American residents were not allowed to participate in the discussion, organized by a local priest, to bring history into the present due to Jim Crow laws prohibiting them from entering the whites-only school where the meeting was held.

Have we come to terms with how many of them ended up displaced from their homes and neighborhoods? Despite the incredible resiliency of their descendants who rose up and pressed on, the generational disruption of wealth and land displacement created an unnecessary uphill climb.

“That’s the past,” we say. Yet, we are still unwinding the impact of laws and practices reaching as far back as the 1790 Naturalization Act, Johnson v. McIntosh (1823), the Greaser Act (1855), Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Ozawa v. United States (1922), FDR’s New Deal projects and reforms of 1933-39, and as recent as historical practices still at work today in non-governmental institutional practices like “redlining” (as recent as 2017).

And, as a pastor and certified trauma professional, I do not believe we have come to terms with how the legacy and historical harms of race-based separation policies create forms of trauma that nests in both physical bodies and memories, which are passed down from one generation to the next.

But, I have hope. Black History Month helps us come to terms with the full story that has formed and is forming us. Black history is American history. It is also America’s present. And, it is critical to America’s future. Therefore, Black history must move beyond one month a year.

The work of truth-telling and right-remembrance is critical to our healing, both as individuals and as a society. Only then will the past serve as a powerful story by which we explain, understand and create the possibility of a better shared future. Only then can we heal.

The Rev. Fred Liggin is one of the pastors at Williamsburg Christian Church andfounder & co-executive director of Faith Community Development & Training with 3e Restoration Inc.