A Voice In Ramah

Racism is not a feeling.

Racism is not just something you are susceptible to if you don’t accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

Racism is not going to be dismantled by evangelizing belief in the same God who looks away as you demonize Black bodies, brutalize refugees and immigrants, erase the humanity of LGBTQIA persons, crusade against Muslims, diminish women…

Racism and capitalism and homophobia and xenophobia and every-other-religion-except-Christianity-aphobia and classism and sexism and ableism and adultism and all of their cousins live in the same building. The doors of their apartments are open to each other and they visit and fellowship with one another because their ancestors taught them to stick with family. They laugh at your attempts to fumigate their spaces with the very thing that feeds them: hatred. They set the family dinner table with your pronouncements and eat to their hearts’ content.

A thought: you should not be allowed to hold a job financed by the people if you don’t have a basic understanding of systemic oppression.

Another thought: Biblically – there will be no healing without justice. No reconciliation without repentance and repair. No fellowship and friendship dependent upon cheap grace. No beloved community and kin-dom without a radical revolution of values. You can’t get there wearing the same fashions that fly here.

In the name of Jesus the Black Christ.

The past couple of weeks have been painful ones for those who care about American race relations. On the heels of the slayings of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, I sought out someone who could help me make sense of the current moment.I turned to Emma Jordan-Simpson, the executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
— Read on nynmedia.com/content/leader-leader-emma-jordan-simpson

Interfaith Day of Prayer – Prayer from Emma Jordan-Simpson
— Read on www.ucc.org/idop_emma_jordan-simpson_5_7_2020

“I woke up this morning with one of the songs of our ancestors on my mind:

I’m a rolling, I’m a rolling,

I’m a rolling through an unfriendly world!

I’m a rolling, yes, I am rolling

Through an unfriendly world.

O Sister, won’t you help me?

O Sister, won’t you help me to pray?

O Sister, won’t you help me?

Won’t you help me in the service of the Lord?”

Our songs tell us that we knew how to ask our kin for help as we were risking it all to make our way through to freedom. Our kin learned to listen for the sounds of the ones headed to Beulah, to freedom.

What does it sound like when our kin are asking for help today to make it through to freedom? What are the sounds our ears and hearts need to be attuned to if we claim to stand on the shoulders of those whose “vocation” was the Underground Railroad?

I can not hear these songs as just disembodied tunes with meaningless or otherworldly lyrics. And, I think my ancestors would caution me not to think that being able to occupy the same burning houses of the masters whose greed created a world dependent on the subjugation of people, any people, is freedom. Anybody in the business of subjugating is adding another brick on the walls that hold up the world white supremacy, patriarchy, colonialism, and slavery made. I ain’t free until we are all free.

I don’t want a world that just replaces those powers with their cousins. I don’t want my grandchildren’s world to look back at me, tracing the contours of the chains I placed on someone else.

I believe another world is possible.

So, this morning I woke up with a determination to keep on rolling through.

To pray – to keep watch in God’s direction.

To stay in the “service of the Lord” – the work of liberation.

To own my vocation.

I am the Underground Railroad.

“There is a lot of embedded symbolism within the narrative of the piece. The contours of the base represent the Maryland/Delaware Peninsula, where Harriet was enslaved, eventually escaped, and continued to return for her freedom raids. The dramatic step up/cut is the Pennsylvania state line, and they are stepping out of the slave states to an elevated freedom. The wind illustrates the peril of the journey but is also a metaphor for the intense opposition she faced. The dress is enveloping the girl, billowing protectively like a flag, and is meant to represent all of the legal protections afforded every United States citizen-a symbol of the future equality to come. Each hand signifies an attribute, Determination, Protection, Fear, and Trust. The Union military coat represents Harriet’s time in South Carolina raiding plantations and bringing the freed slaves back to Union occupied Beaufort.” (Artist – Wesley Wofford)

https://www.woffordsculpturestudio.com/#

Eighteen years ago today on this day – September 11, 2001, I didn’t have GPS or a map and I was trying my best to get home. The towers had fallen. New York City was in chaos. I was physically ok but could not wrap my mind around planes crashing into buildings. I sent my staff home and left my office on 73rd street. I got as far as 23rd Street and could get not below that to my child who was on 16th street. It was my child’s second day of Middle School, the towers had fallen, and I was trying not to lose my mind.

Mercy, Jesus.

A member of my church and dear girl friend was able to get below 23rd Street to get to my child’s school on 16th Street.  She brought her up to me. I will always love my dear friend for many reasons – but I am eternally grateful to her because she took my hysterical call.

Now, I had to figure out how to get the both of us home.

None of the usual routes were accessible to me. I was a relatively new driver and didn’t know much about NYC’s roads because I usually just drove to work, to church and children’s play dates. That was it.

But the late Deacon Cozetta “Mama G” “Coco” Green knew the roads. She had traveled them before. I called her and she stepped into the fullness of her witness. She encouraged me to put in the earphones to my cell so that my daughter didn’t have to hear our conversation and know the degree to which her Mama was struggling.

And, Deacon Green went to work. She talked me through back alleys, roads and passageways all through Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens and then Brooklyn. Her challenge was my limitation. I couldn’t orient myself with north, south, east or west. Left and right meant nothing – those were useless points of direction and reference. My mind was just not functioning in that way. But she didn’t shame me, or give up on me, or make me feel like I should know better, or I should get it together. She knew I was in “calm hysteria” and she talked to me until she could figure out how I needed to hear her directions.

Deacon Green just kept saying, “if you drive with the sun in your face and not the back of your head, you’ll be ok, you’ll be going in the right direction, you can do it. I’m here. Where’s the sun? Is it in your face or the back of your head? Alright, there’s gonna be a gas station coming up, look out of the passenger side, you see it? Good, now drive past that bodega and turn toward the driver’s side. Good! Now, you see a bridge on the passenger side? Go under it and there will be a side road. Take that. How you doing? Aren’t those buildings on the passenger side such an unusual color? Isn’t that a huge cemetery over there? I think you are doing great! That’s the city’s worst supermarket on the passenger side. I’m proud of you, you are hanging in there!”

That’s how I got home. Seven hours driving through unfamiliar territory with a whole city on edge, my child in the passenger seat but Cozetta Green in my ear, guiding me by landmark, speaking my language and telling me that I was ok because she was there with me.

When our congregation gathered the next day just to be in each other’s presence, I couldn’t wait to see Cozetta. I rushed her and she welcomed me with open arms. She hugged me and whispered in my ear over and over again – “I knew you could do it.”

Mama G is with the ancestors now but while she was with us, she sure found ways to make us believe we could do absolutely anything. And we all could, in part, because she was ALWAYS gonna do her part. Encouragement. Speaking the language we needed to hear. Sharing what she knew. Refusing to let us worry about what we didn’t know. And hugs. Lots of hugs.

She knew the roads, in part because she had shopped ev-er-y street in the Metroplitan area, never being limited to the malls. She knew the deals on every the street in this city.

She knew my deal. She loved me home.

****

I pray for the families who lost so much on 9/11. I pray for the victims of terrorism the world over. I pray for us, for all of us. I pray for myself. And I pray that God would be gentle with all of our tomorrows.

ROLL CALL FOR MICHAEL BROWN

It will happen,

an honest mistake

in a hot August classroom.

Someone will blink

at the name and swear this

“Michael Brown” can’t be

that “Michael Brown.” Or someone

will be too busy with her head down

finishing syllabi to look up and see the flash

grenades and tear

gas. Someone will be running

late, his mind on the cops

that will probably ticket him

for not having a permit.

Someone won’t see why a name

is such a big deal. Someone will

read his name like the next item on a list

of groceries and move to the next student

before the first groan rumbles

through the stale Missouri air.

Someone will start to speak

his name and then cover his mouth

like a Roman priest closing Janus’s door

and praying all the violence of the world will stop

short of his porch. Someone will ask,

“Michael Brown? Is Michael Brown here?”

and we will all have to answer.

—Poets Respond
August 17, 2014

__________

Jason McCall: “This poem was inspired by the death of Michael Brown, the unarmed black teen killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri. His death is one of the many recent cases of unarmed black males dying at the hands of police officers. He was scheduled to begin the college this semester.”

(jasonmccall.weebly.com)

THE IMMIGRANT’S APOSTLES CREED

We believe in Almighty God,

who guided the people in exile

and in exodus,

the God of Joseph in Egypt and Daniel in Babylon,

the God of foreigners and immigrants.

We believe in Jesus Christ,

a displaced Galilean,

who was born away from his people and his home,

who fled his country with his parents

when his life was in danger.

When he returned to his own country

he suffered under the oppression of Pontius Pilate,

the servant of a foreign power.

Jesus was persecuted, beaten, tortured,

and unjustly condemned to death.

But on the third day Jesus rose from the dead,

not as a scorned foreigner,

but to offer us citizenship in God’s reign.

We believe in the Holy Spirit.

the eternal immigrant

from God’s reign among us,

who speaks all languages,

lives in all countries,

and reunites all races.

We believe that the Church

is the secure home for foreigners and all believers.

We believe that the communion of saints begins

when we embrace all God’s people, in all their diversity.

We believe in forgiveness,

which makes us all equal before God,

and in reconciliation,

which heals our brokenness.

We believe that in the Resurrection

God will unite us as one people,

in which all are distinct

and all are alike at the same time.

We believe in life eternal,

in which no one will be foreigner

but all will be citizens of the reign

where God reigns forever and ever. Amen.

(Written by Rev. Jose Kuis Casal, the director of Presbyterian World Mission. He is an immigrant to the USA from Cuba. Icon image, Copyright © by Kelly Latimore / www. kellylatimoreicons.com.)

Credo (Dorothee Soelle)

https://vimeo.com/223289599

The view from from the Harriet Tubman Rocking Chair on the porch of the White House on the CDF Alex Haley Farm, Summer 2019.

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.” (D. Bonhoeffer)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s words were close in my heart this week during the Children’s Defense Fund’s Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute for Child Advocacy Ministry.

New perspectives, new friends, affirmations of work and the rekindling of old friendships, food for the journey, the spark of challenge – all toward sharpening that spoke.

I don’t want to just rescue children – I want to tear the systems down as a guarantee of non-repeat. And I’m grateful to walk the way of joy with folks whose bags are packed with spokes.

All thanks be to our God for the gift of Haley Farm. Amen.

I’ve been hanging out with the Baptists for real since 1989. Nevertheless, I’m still singing carols and celebrating Christmas until January 6 right along with a good portion of the faithful across the globe.

Right now, I am on a journey with the wise ones. We are being guided by a star of wonder and light toward the house where Jesus lives.

Along the way, I’ve got one thing on my mind: what I will I offer of myself when I finally get to that place where the stars are standing still?

Frankincense? Gold? Myrrh?

What do you give in honor of the one whose birth caused His mother to sing:

All of you who are rich and powerful, listen up!

No more standing on our necks, crushing our hopes, occupying our lives with your terror, sucking the life out of us. I’m birthing God’s answer to the cries of the poor,

the oppressed, the hungry, the terrorized.

This answer will turn the world right side up again!

Hang in there, broken-hearted and weary ones!

Freedom is on the horizon!

(Luke 1)