This Land

Black History Month Celebration 2021. (The text of the poem is copied below)

Many of us sat in our homes and watched the Inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

At that inauguration...

we heard a song by Woody Guthrie...

“This land is your land and this land is my land

From California to the New York island

From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters.This land was made for you and me”

This song

This anthem

is both divinely true and mortally incorrect.

1.) It’s true because we know all things came into being through capital H, Him (John 1:3)

All things... The sun that illuminates, The Moon that reveals, The Sea that breathes new life, The Land that provides.

2.) It’s true because we know “by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible...” (Colossians 1:15)

All things.... the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea, the animals that roam the earth

3.) It’s true because we know “we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do...”(Ephesians 2:10)

All things.... Humans... people...who by the Grace and Favor of God paved the way for you and I to be here today. People who are continually paving the road into our today and into our tomorrow ....

To inhabit , to dwell , to be

This land was made for you and me

This song is both divinely true and mortally incorrect.

1.) Incorrect because we live in a country that has stolen land, displaced people from their land, and refuses to give people adequate provisions and conditions to remain on this land

2.) Incorrect because we live on a land that from its inception has devalued an disregarded Black life

3.) incorrect because we live on a land that only tolerates the intolerable and boasts in its intolerance

So as we Celebrate Black History

celebrate our Blackness in the Present

and Celebrate Our Black Futures....

what do we say about This Land, Our Land ?

This Land ....It may not be our final home, but it is our now.

And in our Now... we will know Justice

A justice that swells and spreads to farthest and darkest corner. Amen

In our now... we will know Equity & Equality. May it fractal out , in complex patterns, fitting the needs of the many and not just the few. Amen

In our now.... we will know love. A love that knows no shame or end. Love that spreads like water into every crack, corner and crevice. Amen.

In our now may we know Joy. A joy that lifts our spirits, soothes our minds, and saturates our hearts

I know it doesn’t always seem possible or feel achievable. I know we can’t always see the horizon, see the dawn of the new day.

But we serve a God who has already overcome the impossible

A God who is not bound by the limited imagination of Man.

In this land... through our activism, through through our gifts, through our talents, through our prayers and through our praise ... may we continue to shift, mold and shape the land.

As we’ve always done, till we make our journey home. Amen.