America Still Has A Soul

i wake to the news that john lewis is dead.

i shared the pre-announcement of a few weeks ago--and felt the impact then, but today, i wake and cry and cry and cry and cry and find the Good Trouble video on prime and pay my $6.99 and watch it and cry some more.

i'm crying all the cries i didn't cry along the journey...

...the cry for the pain of my daughter, for the fear for her life in the hospital (not for the gallbladder as much as for the covid test that i watched them do to her bravery--swabbing the back of her brain on top of all the gallbladder pain)

...for the fear for my life that i felt in the strange waiting rooms of that night and the call to you for prayers and the subsequent shaming, again, by my ex for needing to do that, that made me take the post and your kind words down

...for the fear for my son's lives in their boise and new york stories

...for the fear for black people and people of color i carry in my white woman body every time i slow down to see if the police officer is going to turn violent--if i can put my body in between that bullshit that happens to black people when racism and supremacy and fear are in the heady cocktail of red and blue flashing lights by the side of some road to nowhere but heartache.

i cried for the way my sister and i erupted in political clash on the july 5th celebration of beading on the screened in porch after champagne meant to celebrate her 50th birthday.

i cried for the way she demanded that she loved me and demeaned me in front of her family, muttering under her breath that maybe i should leave right after i’d arrived.

i cried for not leaving when her husband disrespected me so--me, the mother of black children, telling me how well we treat black people in this country.

i cried for staying.

i cried for not leaving.

i cried for loving my mother so much and not wanting to bring this drama to her home.

i cried for not being able to just relax into being with her, caring for her, celebrating our love for one another in the sweet way we eventually settled into after all the noise of the real world had fallen into just-get-through-it rhythms of steering away from truths too terrifyingly real to tell.

i cried for every fucking t2020 sign i counted on the way from her house to kansas city on the journeys down and up and back and up again to the airport that eventually delivered me to the way station filled with folks not properly socially distanced and the masked and unmasked ones of us in this humanity who still insist on the supremacy of their rights to be white.

omfg.

i cried myself to sleep and woke to see the beauty i live in and started the film again and again.

i wanted just to watch it with the discipline of just watching it the first time through.

the second time i took notes and imagined the script i might write for my beloved actor to embody this american nobility that has just left us--imagining, with grandiosity, something worthy of both the actor and the legend.

i wrote songs and imagined storylines and then stopped so i could hear the words he spoke when he was still in his embodiment.

the film starts with his silence.

the film starts with the collages of the artist expressed emotions moving through the silent announcements of who did what to make this record that tries to encapsulate the record of a man who picked cotton

and applied to go to college

and reached out to dr. king to make it so,

and loved his mother and his father and his siblings and his chickens

all the days of his life,

and collected art at the urging of his wife,

even more holy and brilliant and reverent and non-violent than he,

and raised a son,

and walked alongside a man who loved him--

a black man who loved him

and attended him

and kept him safe

and demonstrated the beauty of his service in these screenshots of what it is,

what it was,

what it will forever be

to have had the role of protector

as a black man for a black man that walked among us

who saw to our

collective

salvation.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

though the preacher turned congressman

after garnering the attention of dr. king

and gaining what confidence comes

after losing all fear

after being beaten in the head

and bloodied in the streets

and being arrested and thrown in jail

some 45 times on the way to racial equality

in these united states,

this man is one of the reasons

america

still

has

a soul.

it has one.

this america we inherit from john lewis

and dr. king

and malcolm x

and fannie lou hamer

and rosa parks

and barack obama

and michelle obama

and the obama girls

and the dreams

Still american

that come alive with the return of the house

to the democrats

who come with all their garb

and get-on-with-it

courage

to demand

what has always been true--

that god,

herself,

created everybody's babies

to be equally endowed on this earth

with a brain

and a heart

and a truth

and a conviction

and a courage

and an allowance of time

to make their highest and best use of

while getting to walk among the siblings

of all shapes and sizes and colors

and convictions

in the grandiosity of earth

and air

and fire

and water

and a sky blanket

that

covers

them

all.

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

i watch for the third time, then let myself open this box to type out this truth--this big truth welling up inside me as all of those things i've been given--the body, the mind, the heart, the courage, the truth to tell in its moments--and to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em and know when to walk away and know when to run and know where to count what money i have collected for whatever future i live long enough to live into and to keep living into my hand and foot games of dealing one or the other as my mom keeps shuffling the cards.

we are here in this now.

i am here in this now.

i am the in the indebted gratitude i have and hold for them both--

my mother and john lewis

and all the civil rights movement

has given me to be white with.

i am at the mercy

of the ignorance that shares my skin--

that's all suited up in military garb

and running away from the naked,

open

legs

of the white woman

in the streets of oregon,

daring the assholes

who are thinking it politic

to take the protesters off the streets

in unmarked cars

and to do the unthinkable to them

just for the audacity

of showing up in oregon

to say, to speak, to demand, to remind,

to encourage folks to remember

that black lives matter.

black lives matter.

black lives matter to me.

black lives.

children's lives.

women's lives.

Immigrant lives.

my life

as a woman who has loved in ways

that require a constant coming out

as both a mother of black children

and a mid-life lesbian

at peace with her faith

and her truth

and her mother

and at a detente with her exes

and her excess

and finding this second day and counting

toward a self-quarantined guideline

post travel

where i am committed to making art

and showing up on-line

and expressing what has stayed safely inside of me

as tears

and rage

and fear--

and i am letting myself cry the salt water tears

my own body makes

when too much

is too much

and you just gotta let something drip

down your face

to give you more room

to feel the truth

of what you've done.

What you’ve survived.

And who you are now because of it.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

in the film, there's a place where john lewis is holding the inaugural guidebook for barack obama's first term.

and he talks honestly about the crying.

he talks about crying for dr. king

and president kennedy

and robert kennedy

and his mother and father

and grandmother and grandfather

and great grandmother and great grandfather and he doesn't present stokely carmichael

or malcolm x

or all of the kids when he led sncc

or the names of the dead he counted as seatmates and marchers

who all added to the band of angels encouraging his every step up those stairs, across that street he used to run across,

to and through those days of legislating

after those days of protesting--

taking his place among the people

in the people's house

to do the business

of this nation.

he cries.

he talks about his crying.

and he shows, in every embodied picture in the moving one,

his love,

his commitment,

his courage,

his faith,

his truth,

his story of how and who to be

when one is chosen for a calling

of this magnitude--

the magnitude we are all called

to be our part of

in this american

corona

now.

we are all called to be our part of this american corona now.

we are all called to show up for our democracy like it is something worth showing up for.

we are all called to show up for ourselves

and our mothers

and this country

and put on a fucking facemask

and get in the streets to do our thing

for calling attention to the truth

of black lives that matter.

All black lives matter.

we are all called to be family

to one another

in ways that inspire

the deep work

of dismantling systemic racism

and the ways those belief systems

deeply rooted in an imaginary christ

can dissolve into the truth

the actual guy left us with:

love one another.

all over my mom's condo my sister has put the word of the lord as she sees it and understands it.

they are mass produced canvases from ross or walmart and bear the inscriptions of the bible verses that truly do call us to a truth we could discuss.

love one another as i have loved you--

this is a thing i take with me as truth

into every waiting room

or hospital room

or zoom meeting

or walk down the street

or protest march

or sanctuary at glide

Or airplane seat....

love one another as i have loved you.

today, i see the christ in john lewis--

and hear his call to each of us and all of us--

to defend honorably this democracy in crisis--

to walk courageously into good trouble,

necessary trouble

when one is called to do so--

and to do so at every injustice,

be it a personal one

or one done to a brother or sister in this world.

we are family--

all of us--

One human family

Complete with the ones that it's easy to be family with

and the ones that commit the sins of the skin--

the cruelties of violent action

be it verbal assault or physical.

there is this one

now

for each of us to find ourselves in--

and this one life

to make use of

while we

still

breathe.

142,877 of us no longer breathe in this american air.

covid has killed that many of us since we started counting back in march.

john lewis has gone to that throng--to speak the words given to him to take with him to that tribe on the mall in the american sky.

...not yet the 250,000 that gathered in that first march on washington in 1963 to demonstrate the appetite for freedom and equality we share--

but a significant amount of folk ready to figure out if they can say amen yet--

now that they can't say anything.

he leaves us, like all great leaders

who used their time on this earth

to change the world for the better--

he asks us to make use of the breath in our bodies, too—now that his is gone.

Here in this now we are called

We are called to this now--

to pick up his burden,

as legacy,

and show up for one another

and get this racist bullshit out of our american way forward toward a reconciliation

and non-violent truth telling

that saves the soul of this nation.

we have a soul, you know.

each of us individually and all of us collectively--

we have a human soul.

what is yours calling you to in this american corona now?

mine is asking me to play it again and again--

and so i will--

to watch and learn from the embodiment

of the beauty of an american black man

who knows what it is to live his truth

into manifest destiny.

go well, john lewis.

i loved you.

i love you.

thank you for your service to this nation

and to all of humankind.

blessings on your journey.

go well.

xoxoxooxooxoxoxoxxoxooxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxooxoxoxooxxo