Tag: racism

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O healing river

O healing river, send down your waters,

send down your waters upon this land.

O healing river, send down your waters,

and wash the blood from off the sand.

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This land is parching, this land is burning,

no seed is growing in the barren ground.

O healing river, send down your waters,

O healing river, send you waters down.

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Let the seed of freedom awake and flourish,

let the deep roots nourish, let the tall stalks rise.

O healing river, send down your waters,

O healing river, from out of the skies.

Where do you notice healing flow? Where are parched places?

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Hands

I do not know if these hands will become

Malcolm’s – raised and fisted

or Martin’s – open and asking

or James’s – curled around a pen.

I do not know if these hands will be

Rosa’s

or Ruby’s

gently gloved

and fiercely folded

calmly in a lap,

on a desk,

around a book,

ready

to change the world…

Jacqueline Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming

What story do your hands tell? What do your hands open toward? How will you change the world?

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A SERVICE OF MOURNING

Sunday, June 7, 7:00 to ~7:30 pm, Live Streamed on Youtube.
The Charlottesville Clergy Collective invites you to “A Service Mourning the Deaths from COVID-19 and Racism.” This service names the dual diseases of COVID-19 and racism that are ravaging our country and our world. It also calls us to respond. Please mark your calendars and join us for this service.

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Settling our body

“Gather together a large group of unsettled bodies – or assemble a group of bodies and then unsettle them – and you get a mob or a riot. But bring a large group of settled bodies together and you have a potential movement – and a potential force for tremendous good in the world. A calm, settled body is the foundation for health, for healing, for helping others, and for changing the world. ” Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands

How do we settle ourselves in these unsettled times?

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the country hardens

In the stiffened air the country hardens

into black and white, trees and snow.

Nothing moves but us warm-blooded ones…

Wendell Berry, in “A Small Porch”

Why do these opening lines not let me go as I ponder this world frozen by a virus, held in the suffocating grasp of slavery in ever changing constructs of racism?