Love, Power, and Possibility

Scripture: Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16; Exodus 5:10-23; Acts 7:30-34

Song: Turntables by Janelle Monáe

Poem: “Gather the Bones” by Sofia Betancourt from BLUU Notes: An Anthology of Love, Justice, and Liberation, Amin, Takiyah and Mykal Slack, eds. (2021)

For the ancestors whose funeral prayers I sang under

the full moon

that night in Cuba by the water

What would it mean to sanctify you,

to dredge your fractured body

from the embrace of too-hard seas?

To gather the bones, child.

The bones.

Gather the bones, child,

for in them lies history,

voices long tortured,

nameless and forgotten,

their ancestral strength beyond measure.

Search for powdered traces, child,

left swirling in deep waters,

identities patterned like the

spore print of a mushroom,

like the fungal flower traces of the dead.

Speak the truth, child.

Our people came to rest

on the bottoms of oceans,

an amassed revolution of

skeletal fragments.

Where would your bones lie,

dragged bleeding and betrayed

chained to the bottoms of ships,

plotting freedom through the

blessed, dark, watery deep?

Could you find them today?

Or would you too whisper

words on the winds

calling to yourself in renewed flesh,

On strange lands, with peculiar words

calling to collect the tiniest bones?

To gather fragments littering beaches

of too-expensive resorts,

where those same sailors sun themselves,

towels spread on crumbled bodies,

to darken their own skins.

Do you recognize yourself

walking the sands at sunset?

Does your soul cry out on the winds to

gather the bones, child?

Gather the bones.

Image: “No Justice, No Peace” by Gemynii

Meditation:

There [continue to be] specifically anti-trans bills proposed in statehouses across the country to cement into state law mistreatment of and hatred for transgender people. Transgender children and their families have been particularly targeted.

Children…who are already navigating shifts in schooling and social interaction without the necessary tools to manage it emotionally or spiritually. And they are targeting the people who are already fiercely loving these children through the weight of harassment and misunderstanding, sleep-deprivation, and the impacts of a pandemic on their health and ability to receive a safe and quality education.

As a Black, Trans person, who has spent the better part of nearly 20 years learning and relearning how to love myself into being and build a life that I feel safely held and thriving in, even ONE of these bills throws me off my equilibrium. Not because I expect everyone around me to suddenly do their work and value my life as much as I do. (That would be nice.) But because it just confirms for me over and over again just how cruel humans can be to one another, without ceasing. And it hurts. It makes my head and heart ache, and I feel the weight of this cruelty in my bones and in my Spirit every day that I’m alive.

I do not believe the Psalmist in chapter 91 that there is nothing to fear in this world. There are too many people waking up every morning with “do harm” on their agenda. There are too many of us succumbing to the weight of that harm. And there’s nothing wrong with being fearful of what we know lies around the corner and accepting the call to fight those fear mongering forces.

Perhaps this is why I have long stopped believing in a god who is external from me, from an abstract deity, making pronouncements and decisions about my life that have nothing to do with the truest and best parts of me. I do believe God is speaking through these bible passages, but a message that so many people still don’t quite get. In both Exodus and Acts, because God is simultaneously Love, Power, and Possibility, there is also Love, Power, and Possibility within each of us as beings of divine substance. Moses has what is needed within himself, if only he would believe it…if only he would not be swayed by the people’s unbelief. In the 34th verse of the 17th chapter of Acts, God does say, “I’VE come to help them. So get YOURSELF ready.”

We need to trust and believe the contours of our own hearts and minds and bodies to do the next right thing. Because God is… Because Divine Essence is within us, through the power of the Spirit, the Universe, and the Ancestors. All of it lays the groundwork for who we can become and how we move through this world where we are all not yet free and have never been. May we all continue to search and search for that Divine Essence and remember. Remember that we have always been here and what God and our ancestors offer us will keep growing us and keep changing the world.

Ase.

Reflection Questions:

1. Where do you find Love, Power, and Possibility in your faith and in your connections to humanity, the earth, the ancestors, and other energetic forces in your life?

2. What tables need turning in your life to discover more Love, more Power, and more Possibility?

The Call:

Now, go turn them!

About the Author:

Rev. Mykal O'Neal Slack (he/him/his) is both the Community Minister for Worship & Spiritual Care for Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism, and also one of the co-founders of the Transforming Hearts Collective.

Stay connected to Mykal

Email: mykal@blacklivesuu.org

Website: www.BlackLivesUU.org

FB: Mykal Slack

IG: @revmyke4lyfe

These Black Lent devotionals were originally curated by IG: goodneighbormovement.