Scripture: Psalm 51:1-12
Artistic Centering: Movement for Black Futures, “An Ode to Freedom Summer”
To the future generations,
As I write this, our world is over a year into the COVID-19 pandemic. Though there are signs that we will soon be out of it, to date our nation alone has lost over 520 thousand people to this disease. What’s more, many of us are still reeling from actions earlier this year, by those who would rather destroy democracy than have you participate in it. There is much more that we are fighting. But these two realities, alone, reveal the inequities, injustices, and abuses that remain despite decades of “progress.”
This is not the world we want to leave you. So I celebrate the successes of the past year. More and more people, it seems, have been moved to tear down the physical and metaphorical monuments to our oppression.
Still, as I think about what it would mean for me, in particular, to be a good ancestor, I am aware of the inner work this requires, as well. I am praying with the psalmist, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.” This is my prayer, because there are some monuments yet to be torn down within me. Monuments to patriarchy, sexism, and heteronormativity. Monuments, even, to my own pain and trauma. I am working to remove them—for myself, first—but also for you.
A friend once reminded me that the generations and the world they will inhabit comes from inside of us. So I want these things purged from me, because I do not want you living in the world they represent. One interpretation of that Psalm connects a cleansed heart to the ability to walk, with integrity, along the paths of justice. I believe, more and more, that the two must go hand in hand if this world is ever to be made whole.
Broken people build broken movements. I am sorry if you are still living with the wreckage of ours. Yet, you must face its impact on you—for your own liberation. And for the sake of the generations to follow you.
With love,
An Ancestor
Reflection Questions:
- What do you think it means to be a good ancestor?
- What “monuments of the heart” remain in you? What are you doing/will you commit to doing to remove them?
- How is our generation working to build a world in which future generations can thrive? Where are we failing?
*This piece was first published on March 18, 2021 as part of the Good Neighbor Movement’s, “Black Lent” devotional series. The series brought together Black writers, pastors, theologians, mystics, activists, and artists to reflect on the season of Lent through their individual experiences as Black people in America.
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