If you grew up like me perhaps your ism was a trap you didn’t see.
Perhaps it was in the air we can breathe in the news man on TV. Maybe
It was the laugh at a joke, the cast of a vote
It’s the hand that shakes yours in the church vestibule
The gravity that chains you to the earth terrestrial.
It’s hidden in the majority history we learned, the institutions we served,
Implicit in our education and health, our generational wealth,
Unbidden in how we read God’s word to justify
Our silence through centuries of oppression of violence.
But what if I told you that all that stuff that Jesus said
About neighbor love and let Your Kingdom come
He actually meant it though?
Not just the parts that protect our pride our rights our status quo.
Would you reject or resent it? Or let me finish? Three minutes? Go.
Now that I have your attention, let me mention
That there’s no such thing as a Christian nation
And where we’re at today is a culmination,
From the doctrine of discovery and the myth of meritocracy
Through lifetimes of redlines and segregation
Lynching and mass incarceration.
And if we need convincing of the plain truth that “I can’t breathe”
Is the strange fruit from that tree of slavery,
Before we check the spec in a brother’s eye,
We have got to transform, make another try
To get our platform out of our own.
And could I get an Amen if I were to weigh in?
Don’t get triggered congregation,
But the God we put our faith in
Is way bigger than the politics of polarization.
And do black lives really matter
To our denominations of red-blooded good Samaritans
If we preach a white-lie, silver-spoon Golden rule American
Dream that’s green with greed and grieves those in need?
I know it’s a drag but understand
We inherited a gospel that was colonized and colorized
By the flags and empires of man
And as I unfurl the fact from the fiction
I’m coming to find the contradictions
In these lines and scars that won’t heal
From the stripes and stars that won’t deal
With the unraveling myths and unflattering rips
In our old-glory story.
Yet as I face up to my upbringing
I still find hope in the uprising of our Christ King.
So we’ve got work to do, me and you,
Uprooting weeds planting seeds.
Let us open a brand new beginning
Join me in lamenting, repenting, apologizing
For the sinning of our faith tradition.
Let’s talk less and listen
More. Defend and amplify the brave voices of people of color.
Upend the systems and structures
that legitimize our unspoken isms, our broken conditions.
May we share a just vision where there is no “Other”
Only sister and brother.
God, let our eyes recognize
Your sacred image brimming inside every human being
Let Your light shine beautifully
In a prism of a thousand shades.
Let Your will be done in a hundred every-day decisions:
Let us stand in unity for your mercy and redemption.
Let our hands work faithfully to bless those who are hurting.
Let our words fluently call forth the best in humanity.
This we pray: Today may
We come wide awake to celebrate a kinder ruckus
Calibrate to a higher compass, your true-north justice.
Cultivate the wonder of a wilder grace. Elevate
Love not hate love not hate love not hate.
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Credits
Director and Words: Don McCaleb
Director of Photography and Edit: Skylar Ogren
Second Camera: Merritt Ogren
Graphics: Wes Williams
Production: Bruce Elliot