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