Category: race

activism, Love, Purpose, race, spirit, Take Action

The Truth of Connection

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A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Beyond Vietnam” speech at Riverside Church in New York City, April 4, 1967

From this moment on, I choose the truth of connection. You here with me and me here with you. Even when you feel yourself most alone, I am holding you. And maybe you don’t know it, but you are holding me. 

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activism, Poetry, race, Take Action

Out Loud, With Your Very Own Voice

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The way the kindergarten teacher called it on the first day of class.
The way the receptionist spoke it into the waiting room before the annual checkup.
The way the librarian whispered it when entering information on the card.
The way the coach boomed it during lineup.
The way the camp counselor hollered it at the YMCA summer Olympics.
The way the local newspaper listed it among the loving grandchildren she left behind.

The way the principal announced it during the graduation procession.
The way the future in-laws enunciated it during that first meeting.
The way the minister intoned it when asking the dearly beloved to witness this holy union.
The way the nurse confirmed it before writing it on the birth certificate.
The way the HR assistant checked its spelling when setting up the job interview.
The way the emcee declared it at the awards ceremony.
The way the children proclaimed it when asked who their people are.

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activism, Children, growth, Parenting, prayer, race

This Sweet Thing We Grow For Him

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For me, the honeysuckle does it. Out walking the dog, I pass through that place behind the apartment building where the vine-covered shrubs form a loose fence line with the neighboring townhouses. There, the scent lifts me up from whatever chaos is in my head. I pause and find one underneath, going for the yellow blossom. While the fulsome white catch the eye, I’ve learned from experience. The yellowed, crepey petals store astonishing sweetness.

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activism, memory, prayer, race, Take Action

Pilgrimage: Montgomery, Alabama

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The National Memorial for Peace and Justice

Montgomery, Alabama. An unexpected pilgrimage.

When the US Congress outlawed the importation of slaves in 1808, domestic trafficking of humans exploded. Montgomery’s railroad and river trade quickly became a grim, teeming market for enslaved people. Traders paraded chained humans up Commerce Street to the center of town, and auctions took place in the direct line of site of the state capitol at the top of Dexter Avenue. By the 1850’s, Alabama’s capital was only the 75th largest city in the country but it had the second largest population of slaves.

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activism, prayer, Purpose, race, Take Action

The Spirit Calls Us to Liberation

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Vigil for Safe & Sane Gun Laws at the NRA in Fairfax Virginia on the 5-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting

Maybe you, like me, are trying to figure out what “spiritual practice” is all about. My Unitarian Universalist congregation and faith strive to be homes for spiritual sustenance; yet I’m often at a loss for how to nourish the spirit outside of Sunday services. I show up to the Women’s Ritual Council full moon circles when I can, light a candle before bed, write gratitudes in my journal. These seem worshipful. So too do yoga, meditation, singing, gardening. But not every stretch or song turns the heart toward Beloved Community.

What makes an activity a form of prayer? And when is it simply self-care?

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activism, Children, Poetry, race, Take Action

Body Partial

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Haimer World of Ghosts

Tiny glassed domes rising from pores
spill into trails
salting the lips,
blinding.
Slick and breathless under
a screen flickering
every angle of the terrible cleaving.
The panopticon
inversion, a litter of bodies
in the desert. Children jostled,
fenced camps, a flashback
between camera cuts.
We pretend to miss
the similarities.

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activism, Children, community, race, Take Action

Whose Life Matters: Privilege, Policing, and the Distribution of Trauma

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cop holding baby 2

One block from home after a Black Lives Matter event, blue strobes flash in the rearview mirror. The irony does not escape me. I bend to pull my wallet from under the seat. Beyond irony, a stunning privilege. I feel around the floor. My hand closes around leather. I pry it out and set it on the passenger seat.

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Learning, Poetry, race

Privilege Play

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Cartier-Bresson Boys Guns

My son in the dark
with a Nerf gun rebuilt
using power drill
and silver paint
darts between houses
and flattens into shadow
while I walk the dog
twenty paces behind
performing solitude
first
and then alarm
as he springs
from between parked cars
and levels his sights
certain
all of us will make it
home
alive

Image: Henri Cartier-Bresson (1935)

race, Reading, Reading Beyond, Writing

Reading Beyond: Asali Solomon

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Solomon Disgruntled

Disgruntled, Asali Solomon (2015)

Kenya Curtis is growing up in 1970’s Philadelphia with a dad who wants to seed a revolution and a mom who’s working to pay the rent. Her living room is the gathering place for the Seven Days, a collection of tired but dedicated survivors of the Civil Rights movement, fending of complacence and creeping towards middle age. Because she is the kid that celebrates Kwanzaa and can’t eat pepperoni pizza because of the pork, school is a place of derision that borders on shunning.

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