Let Us Pray

Hopes and Dreams

“Like a long, lonely stream, I keep running toward a dream

movin’ on, movin’ on.

Like a branch on a tree, I keep reaching to be free,

movin’ on, movin’ on…”

Stevie Wonder (“A Place in the Sun”)

          I remember when Stevie Wonder was on American Bandstand almost sixty years ago. Known then as “Little Stevie Wonder,” he was just a kid and already a phenomenon. He wrote “A Place in the Sun,” in 1966, after civil rights had been legislated for African Americans; schools had integrated, and we thought that was the end of the hard times for black people. We were dead wrong. Every time there is another news report of an unarmed black man shot dead for doing normal things, we plunge a knife into the heart of our national image: “the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

          Something I read a few years ago, said, “When we say the word ‘American,’ we mean ‘white people.’ Everyone else has a hyphen.” Why I had never thought of that, I don’t know, but it says so much. Two months ago, a young man named Ahmaud Arbery was killed by neighborhood vigilantes in Atlanta. He was simply jogging. He was only the most recent in a long line of young black men murdered for no other reason than being black and therefore under suspicion. Being a mother of sons myself, that breaks my heart.

          Racism is an American tragedy, a living legacy of slavery, and a festering wound on our collective soul. It needs to end. It would give me great joy to see it laid to rest in my lifetime. We are way past saying I’m sorry. It’s hollow and inexcusable. We who are white in America need to follow the way of John the Baptist—repent and cleanse our hearts of this terrible disease.

We have witnessed progress toward equality, but it did not go nearly far enough. It did not take much to scrape the scab off and draw blood again. Electing a black man President in 2008, opened a hell-pit, and put on full display just how close to the surface our racism is. Perhaps this happened so that we could stop denying it and find ways to truly heal.

Here is my prayer: Let the blood of Ahmaud Arbery be the last spilled, and his legacy be true freedom and inclusion for his brothers and sisters. And most of all, may America at last find “our place in the sun, where there’s hope for everyone.”

                                        In the Spirit,

                                                      Jane