This Christmas

This Christmas is absolutely nowhere

Manifested with a bent Advent wreath

The candles flicker through zoom

We have never been more thankful to see it

To be this wise and this young and still alive

Confused to the point of curiosity 

What will the Spirit of Christmas 2021 bring

Pour a little Florida Water

The ancestors will visit

A world so full and new and open, they built for us

We grow thin from digging their graves 

We grow fat on the fruit of their lives

And still hurting and lost without them

Grief is not a garment but a curated accessory

Mercy’s response to the human condition

Meeting us at the dry riverbed affliction 

deep calling through the rock of all ages to witch we are clinging

Our hearts kneel most of the time now

Here we find rest in prayer so we will make no petitions

There is too much to ask for and we do not know what will help

Too many of us need too much and God has already heard us

Unaware unprepared unfit unexpected unassuming and unhappy is the alarm

God's Provisions given from the lips of an infant

We are sacredly bewildered in the Omicron Desert following his cry

For Aunt NayNay

Any attempt to summarize your life is futile because your life refuses summation.

I have been loving your life so long, that it was not until you had gone that I realized that it was not my own. 

To laugh with you was to be immediately catapulted to summer, or late spring, or Christmas Day. Into a time of fulfilled promise and treasure. 

I remember your 40th birthday, and how bright your smile was. I remember because it was also the moment I realized that you could change. Bringing me to the knowledge that the rest of my world would change too. 

Without my consent or consideration, it would change. Like you, needing no permission, only promising to be there when I opened my eyes from an afternoon nap taken at the foot of your bed.

Your love showed me the sacred power of Sun Goddess and Be Ever Wonderful by EWF. Bad Boy by Luther Vandross is a hymn of celebration. The melodies and rhythms in your voice are where I learned to dance to and make a life for myself. 

So when I am lonely, and longing for music, I will listen for you in these songs. 

The only words that would do your love justice have been spoken by God to you.

A Black Confession Of Faith

I believe

The human is born loved

I believe that it is spiritually impossible to rightfully own another human’s life

I believe that in life and in death, 

We are

I am

Beloved of God

This life is beautiful because we have lived long enough to see it

 Needing never to tolerate being tolerated. 

Free Body, Soul, Mind, Spirit

Soul Love is not a rumor

We are the testimony of John. 

Those whom the Lord loved 

The bringer of song and beautiful thing

Baring eternal witness.  

I believe God raised judges to deliver us

Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer, Nat Turner, and Marsha P. Johnson

Peace of God be upon them

I believe in Prophets

Martin Luther King Jr, Bayard Rustin, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou 

Peace of God be upon them

I believe in the Preachers 

Richard Allen, C. H. Mason, James Cone, and Katie Cannon

Peace of God be upon them

So that we will never forget

So that the whole world will know

God gave these three witnesses

The Spirit of the  Ocean will forever tell the tale

It courses like the blood in our veins

The God of the great rhythm of life we call Soul

People of God

We were born of the Water

We are blessed with the Blood

We live in Spirit 

We are

I am

Free