Hello friends! I was recently invited to share a reflection with the One Boat: International Chaplaincy for Covid Times community. My talk is called “Poetry as Prayer: Tools for Resilience in Challenging Times.” I discussed poetry as a form of prayer, as demonstrated by the Psalms, which provide a rich example of not only emotional and artistic expression, but profound and life-changing intimacy with God.
I share other examples of poetic expression as prayer (and as a way to cope with life’s challenges) and give some quick tips on how to venture into the practice.
This poem is, among several things, a celebration of Black creators in whose works we are reminded of our beauty and dignity. Their creations are our mirrors – the reflection is truth.
This Burden/This Strength (for Ahmaud) by Tiffany Nicole Fletcher
1. My sisters and I bear a strange burden: we anticipate, we push back this ghost of fear, we take in the story of the latest one and we steel ourselves— we manage the threat of a silent war. Even those who don’t believe find themselves offering supplication to the Most High to cover their sons and brothers fathers and uncles— cover my grandfather and husband, they pray. That they would not be hunted down like dogs and killed, that they would not end up martyrs because of the fears of small men.
What is survival What is eating and drinking is it having paid work is it being able to go outside at whim is it having love? How do we measure the worth of our days what is the sound of overcoming Of all of our efforts, what is it that lasts— what remains; which fiber, which thread we’ve woven cannot be torn?
Love is an element— burning, cleansing, enveloping, steadying: a force, a purifier, a solid ground. An opening, a freedom—a hope; a hope that our days will have counted for something in the end.
We are entering the eternal where communion becomes greater than consumption and we are made new again. Spring has emerged and all of Earth is singing that we are ripe for remaking. Listen, the center is forming now.
There is a calling and its pull is ancient: to mother and so be a partner with God; to be a creator of a tribe, a vessel.
Centenarian oak tree
under whose branches
many have been sheltered,
we know that our story began in you.
You,
the defier of storms,
she of sass and sharp tongue
who, though made of small frame
would put grown men in their places
if need be.
Eda. Mother. Granny.
Stander of every test of time. Strong one–
rest now.
For the first time in one hundred years
your hands will be completely silent.
Those hands that have carried babies
and grandbabies,
tended flora and coaxed beauty from the soil
hands that nurtured our Tata until his last day
hands that held hymnals, and turned pages in the Holy Book,
your hands fashioned flour and fruit into tarts to nourish us
and wove thread into lace,
cloth into dress.
Your hands made magic;
they fostered life.
And now your story continues to write itself
through us, the children of Eda:
for, we parent and we serve
we make beautiful things and
we sing songs unto the Lord
we live our faith,
we defy the odds
and we survive storms.
We are strong women
and men strong enough to love strong women.
We never give up; we always rise.
Granny, we are a whole field of oak trees now—
standing tall, we are your children,
a tribe full of overcomers.
