Third Wednesday of Advent
The Black Lives Matter movement and the work of Howard Thurman inspired this reflection. Yoli highly recommends this episode of the podcast “On Being,” an interview with Rev. Otis Moss III from Chicago for a stirring reflection on Howard Thurman’s life and work.
The Reflection:
“Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”
The uprisings of the Black Lives Matter movement this year have been prophetic, a leader-full movement of the people who are proclaiming their humanity and casting off the burden of Empire.
Our first reading from the book of Isaiah echoes what leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement are saying as they protest, that justice is due. Now, here, in these bodies, in this time.
I hear a resonance between what Jesus told John’s friends and what the Black Lives Matter Movement is calling for. In Luke’s Gospel, people are walking, seeing, hearing, healing. Jesus and his friends are disrupting Empire’s agenda and tending the roots of the beloved community. “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard,” he urges John’s disciples.
Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the BLM Movement was interviewed on The Daily Show in September: “Let’s stop investing all of our dollars into the police, and the criminal legal system, and let’s actually invest into human care, into human dignity and into life for human beings,” she said.
Prepare ye the way.
The call to divest from the policing of our communities is a call to care for one another in a radical way. When I read the words of the community of Isaiah, I hear the voices of people who have been enslaved and disenfranchised, who envision justice stretching to the ends of the tortured earth like gentle rain.
This vision is not at the oppressor’s convenience. These labor pains cannot and will not last much longer. Something new is happening. So, I ask you, “Are you the one who is coming to heal, to work the sacred earth and give birth to the beloved community?”
We need you. We cannot afford to wait for another.
The Practice:
You are invited to journal in response to these questions if that is helpful for you.
I invite you to take a few minutes today to sit with your ancestors. Who were they? What seeds did they cultivate? Where did they belong--what piece of earth did they call their own? Breathe in the knowledge that you are the one they were looking for, the one who was to come. Breathe out your sacredness, your wholeness. Know you too are a messiah, anointed one, give thanks for the ones who came before, who prepared the way for your coming.
Now, take a moment to consider the ones who will come after you. Maybe they’re here, maybe they’re your children, your students’ children, the descendants of the children down the street in your neighborhood. What will they say about you? Will they know they are beloved by you, who may never see them? How will they heal this world? Send them a gesture of thanks, a word of courage in their struggle. Breathe out the wisdom of a future ancestor.
