Tourniquets: A Lamentation
I originally wrote this piece in 2018 for a night of lamentation. In this women-only space, we cried out to God through music, confession, and communion. As I watch and read about a 14-year-old child slammed repeatedly on the street by an officer of the “peace,” and a man hunted down and shot to death for jogging while black, my soul cries out. This lamentation I wrote for the event fills the horrified silence of my soul.
Don't silence me
As if my words are a redundancy
A useless appendage on an otherwise sleek body
I am a member
God said so
You might not recognize me
But I was created to be here
Cut the tourniquets from my neck
My tongue
And you'll see color return
You'll recognize the sound
Of this lamentation
It's ancient
“Black lives matter”
Is just a remix of
“Let my people go”
Offensive phrases to pharaohs, already free
The chants of freedom to those who languish in chains
Moses took a knee in pharaoh’s court
Pleading to end the oppression
Egypt just wanted to see him turn staffs into snakes
Egypt needed pyramids more than Jews’ lives to matter
This country was built on genocide, rape, and slavery
After ripping bodies from home, country, language, dignity
The masters of manifest destiny ripped the pages of Exodus from the Bible
Censoring God himself
This is our inheritance
We have “black” churches today because white churches built a wall in the 1700s
How can you worship, then rape
How can you worship, then whip
How can you breed your sister
How can you dismember your brother's son
The neat answer: segregate and dehumanize
This is America’s inheritance
The chickens that roost in the walls of manifest destiny
The legacy of destroying the image of God for mammon
The strange fruit of unconfessed sin
Seeking neat answers instead of godly ones and then naming that godless solution “Christian.”
Remember when Americans expended their bloodlust with a Pittsburgh pogrom
They cratered the head of an elderly black man in front of his grandbaby
Americans are salivating as they continue to rip bodies of huddled masses yearning to breathe free
The most fortified American border is a color line
We make bricks from our own blood, hair, and bones as America calls for more walls
Segregate and dehumanize should not be the policy of a Christian nation
Yet here we are
300 years later
My lamentation is this: I know nothing will change I know that comfort is too sensuous an idol
So many have been carefully indoctrinated to tighten the tourniquet on my tongue
To segregate and dehumanize my words along with my body
I know that many of my brothers and sisters refuse to even see me much less protect me
I fight for a dream deferred
and it makes my heart sick
Yet, I still cry out
My God
You see us here, hurting
You make ways out of no way
LET YOUR PEOPLE GO
Create a way out of no way for this blood-sodden land
Remove the stone from hardened hearts
Let all your people go
The children dehumanized, and
The children beguiled by the kingdoms of this world
HOW LONG?
How long before the plagues come
The rivers run with blood
The firstborn are no more
The blood of the Lamb sits smeared on our segregated doors
Is that why death violates sanctity
Bullet-ridden Bible studies at Mother Emmanuel
Pogroms at the Tree of Life
White-supremacy dusting chalk outlines of the fallen
Unnecessary tourniquets cutting off healthy members
I wonder, did the enslaved Jews think You had long forsaken them
Did they believe you tied the tourniquet that cut them off
Hundreds of years before
Are you God with us as we are murdered and abused and cast off
Are you God with us when we are called lazy criminal animals thugs illegals instead of bearers of Your image
The scoffing the condescension
The false accusations the plotting
The scourging and state-sanctioned execution
My people find a kinship
In Your suffering
We also look like you
You said, “this is my body, broken for you”
And my brothers and sisters waste your sacrifice
Finger paint with your blood
Cram your limbs into bricks to build the very wall you abolished
I know you are close to me, as I sit brokenhearted and crushed in spirit
Silent as a weaned child
I need you to speak:
“Let there be life”
Resurrection
Make all things new
Starting with Your mangled Body
Turn your blood into the wine of gladness
Turn your body into the bread of life
Make the two, one. Not conformed to this world.
Transformed.
Not assimilated.
Surrendered.
Contrite
Repentant
Forgiving and forgiven
Repaired
Reconciled
Holy
Washed clean
Altogether human
All together celebrating Your image in us and in other people
Storming the gates of hell with You
Free to worship
Every one of us
Free
Exorcise the demons
Make the unclean spirits of this age flee in terror
Fill your Body with the Holy Spirit
And a fire in our bones
And please
Remove
These tourniquets
Let your wonder-working blood flow freely
Nourishing us all