Langston Hughes, "Let America be America Again"

Written in 1936.

~ Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed —
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.

O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again! ~

Langston Hughes, "Let America be America Again"

Mario Powell, S.J.: Until you grow close to our suffering ... there can be no Easter for America

PLEASE PLEASE read all of this on the jump, it's so important, and it's not just "religiosity," it's pure Hippy Jesus stuff, it's good, hard-core, people helping people save the world stuff. Mario Powell, S.J., the president of Brooklyn Jesuit Prep is going through it: 

<< // As a 38-year-old black Jesuit priest, this is a familiar smell for me. It stinks. Its smell and the reactions it provokes in black Americans is impossible to avoid. It is a strange and bitter fruit. //

... After the death of yet another black man [Psalm 13] are my words as well. The psalmist is angry, questioning why God has not acted. Yet in days of old, the stench of sin filled the nostrils of God. God smelled it, tasted it. As of old, it is again today.

... But there is something new to me in this experience. It is the fear I feel not just for myself or for black Americans in general, but for the 80 young black children who are students at the middle school I have been asked to lead: Brooklyn Jesuit Prep. I fear what this summer has in store for them and other black children of central Brooklyn. I fear that without summer jobs or camps, and faced with over-policing, more black youths will have encounters with police—encounters that often do not end well for people who look like them.

... And let me be clear: This is Christianity. This sharing in the experience of others is what it is to be one body in Christ. I am not inventing this. Here are Pope Francis’ words: “Christian doctrine...is alive,” he insists. “[It] knows being unsettled, enlivened.” This means Christianity has flesh, breath, a face. In the pope’s words, Christianity “has a body that moves and grows, it has a soft flesh: It is called Jesus Christ.”

It is also called George Floyd and Sandra Bland and Trayvon Martin.

It is the soft flesh of these black bodies that America must grow close to. It is Jesus in the soft flesh of the black and brown children at Brooklyn Jesuit Prep and schools all across this land that this country must come to know ...

...Until you grow close to our suffering, until it fills your eyes and ears, your minds and hearts, until you jump up on the cross with black Americans, there can be no Easter for America//>

Senator Kamal Harris: This is that moment in time

i love her i love her i love her i love her. Full transcript here, but do take the jump and listen to her live. Golly, I think she's the goods.

<< In the last couple of days I've been saying America is raw right now, her wounds are exposed.

The reality of it is that the life of a black person in America historically, and even most recently with Mr. Floyd, has never been treated as fully human, and it is time that we come to terms with the fact that America has never fully addressed The Systemic Racism that has existed in our country.

That's just a fact. And so the people protesting on the street are protesting, understanding that we have yet to fulfill that promise of equal justice under the law.

And there is a pain that is present that is being expressed in their constitutional right to march and to shout.

Like Senator Booker, I am a child of parents who marched and shouted in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. I would not be here as only the second black woman elected to the United States Senate were it not for those folks who marched and shouted for justice. I would literally not be here were it not for those folks who took to the streets.

My parents had their stories of how the police were turned on the marchers, but they still marched. And it was their march that laid the path for me to be here today, to speak at this moment, and to speak to this moment and as a former prosecutor; a profession I chose because I, also growing up the way I did, knew how law enforcement had a long history of enforcing laws indiscriminately, and often based on race and racism.

That's why I chose to become a prosecutor, and I can say with full certainty that it is time that the leaders in this United States Senate, and this United States Congress, take action to reform a criminal justice system that for far too long has been informed by Systemic Racism, and by racial bias.

It is time that we say that
bad cops are bad for good cops.

It is time that we say that one should not be subjected to the indignity of being told to get on your knees and put your hands behind your head simply because you are Walking While Black … and it happens every day in America.

There's not a black man I know, be he a relative, a friend, or a co-worker or colleague, who has not been the subject of some form of racial discrimination at the hands of law enforcement … not one I know … and I'm talking about people at every level of life including people who graduated Harvard, and Stanford, and, you name it … and the only thing that is common among them is that the color of their skin is black.

That's why the people are marching in the streets … and the reality is that racism in America is bad for everyone! Racism Is Bad For Everyone. Racism against black folks and Latinos and Asians and our Native brothers and sisters, it's Bad For Everyone.

So this is a moment in time where we have to address this … and we have to address it, sadly, in the context of a pandemic that has also laid bare long-standing disparities in our public health system, in our education system, in our economy, based on race …

This is happening at a moment in time where we have a so-called Commander-in-Chief who also has the title of President of the United States who, I promise you, will never speak the words “Black Lives Matter” …

Well they do …

So this is a moment in time where this co-equal branch of government has a responsibility to stand for the principles of those words that are etched in that marble building across the street: Equal Justice Under Law, and to do it in a number of ways, understanding that the policing issue is the tip of the iceberg … it is underneath it … it's also these issues of long-standing racial disparities based on housing, based on education, based on public health, but right now … this is the moment in time to address the issue of policing …

And so the package of bills that Senator Booker and I and so many of our colleagues are pulling together is specifically to address that, because it must be addressed. It is a pervasive issue, and it's thirty years after Rodney King …

And the chants, and the marches, and the songs are about the same issue that we were marching for back when my parents did in the 60s, and when we did after Rodney King 30 years ago, so now is the time to act.

Leader Schumer, I thank you for your leadership of our caucus, and your leadership as a great American leader on an issue that has too long plagued us, and that we have the power to address. Thank you.>> 

https://youtu.be/-viWdBhkCv0

A revolution has many lanes - be kind to yourself.

Angela Davis: We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.

<< You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world.

And you have to do it all the time.

We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.

I feel that if we don't take seriously the ways in which racism is embedded in structures of institutions, if we assume that there must be an identifiable racist who is the perpetrator, then we won't ever succeed in eradicating racism. In a racist society, which this is, make no mistake, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist. “Radical” simply means “grasping things at the root”.

I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.

And I don't think we have any alternative other than remaining optimistic. Optimism is an absolute necessity, even if it's only “optimism of the will”, as Gramsci said, and “pessimism of the intellect”. It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism.

Sometimes we have to do the work even though we don't yet see a glimmer on the horizon that it's actually going to be possible.

The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what's that? The freedom to starve?

Anyway I don't think we can rely on governments, regardless of who is in power, to do the work that only mass movements can do. ― Angela Y. Davis, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle >>

"We all need to develop skills for listening to a larger culture"

Morning Prayer – Easter VI – St. John’s Los Angeles



THIS right here ... it's just so obvious, so simple, and so beautifully shared:

<< [Paul]  was able to say those things because he listened. He had the gift of listening ... to where those folks were at, and to where their culture was at, and to what their needs were, and he knew that then and now people grope for God.

People are looking for God. People are hungry for God. But there are things that keep them away. I think sometimes a lack of listening keeps people away, and I think we need to cultivate that gift of "listening."

I want to tell you something that I've been really thinking about this last week or so, and it was a failure on my part to listen. I didn't listen, and I made assumptions, and got out my playbook about what I thought somebody was, or what there wasn't, I didn't listen to what that person's longing was.

And of course, our connections these days are all online, and this was on Facebook, and someone had presented this picture of a man protesting the closures, the lockdowns, in Newport Beach. He had a sign that said, "GODAMMIT I NEED A HAIRCUT !" Of course, this is the Internet, and he was taken to task on this person's page, and my response was just that FACEPALM emoji, and then someone whom I know well, who knows me well, said, "You need to LISTEN. Look at the picture again. You need to listen."

I looked at the picture again, obviously I'm "looking," but I'm also "listening," what is that man trying to tell me. She said, "What do you see in the man's face?" And to be honest? I didn't even see his face, I looked at his sign. What I saw ... was fear. What I saw, at the bottom of the picture, was two little children that were wrapped around his knees. My friend said to me, "Could it be possible that if you really listened to this man you could hear what he was really saying? It's not about his haircut. Well, maybe he's not vulnerable enough to say, or afraid to say, is that, 'I am afraid. How am I going to pay for my life. Suppose I lose everything, how will I pay to feed my children. I'm afraid.'"

She said, "That might be what he's saying there, because he looks like he's afraid. It made me think about how I listen to people. What am I listening for?

Paul was able to bring the Good News of a Gospel to people because he listened to where they were at. He could have just jumped in and said, "Get rid of all these idols! This is ridiculous ! You're doing it all wrong ! I'm going to knock all these things down !" No one would have heard him ! Not many people did. At the end of this passage we're told that a couple of people decided to follow him; not the whole town. He's in the marketplace, the whole place is there, but a couple of people followed him.

People who were hungry seeking knowledge, people hungry seeking connection and relationship, seeking the Good News of The Living God. Groping for God.

I think at this time in our life, in this country, we're filled with people groping for God, groping for meaning, groping for relationship, groping for hope. Because sometimes it feels hopeless. If you are a seeker, not a church-goer, and you're watching this? You need to know that Church People don't have all the answers; we're also groping for God. But our relationship with The Living Lord gives us hope, but we still grasp for meaning.

Last week we had a wonderful service, and it was lovely; it was Mother's Day and the people of St. John's loved it, we worked hard on it. A couple of days in? There were 700 people who viewed that service. We would have NEVER had 700 people, ever ever ever at St. John's, so that tells me  there are people out there hungry for Good News.

The Larger Church has talked about things like this, and their response is, "Alright ! Let's get out there and tell 'em!" And I've been thinking:
"Well, yes, but maybe we need to LISTEN to where people are at ...
maybe the Church needs to listen like Paul listened to The Culture.
Listen to The Larger Culture.
Why are people sometimes afraid of being in church.
Why are  people sometimes thinking, 'Well, that wouldn't be for me, I wouldn't be accepted.'
Why are people sometimes thinking, "You know, well, you have to buy in to EVERYthing and there's no process, you're either in or you're out.'"

And what I'm here to say today, If you are someone who is listening to this but not a believer, not a member of any church, I welcome you in the name of Jesus Christ. If you are looking at this through a door where you're just peeking through a keyhole, I welcome you ...

and there is a place for process for belief. If you're grasping for meaning, if you're grasping for hope, there's a biblical vision of a God who is active in people's lives. A God who is a Sustainer, a Creator, a Lover, a God who conquers death for you and for me. And there's a process for that. You can belong in that community before you believe and we welcome you.

The Church needs to listen to where people are at.
The Church needs to develop, we all need to develop, skills for listening to a larger culture.
If we can develop that skill, this is our greatest hour, we can be there for people. But I wonder first to think about, What shrines to unknown gods have we set up that keep people away. What are the Have-to-Haves, the Have-to-Bes, that keep people on the other side of the door.

Are we giving people hope? Or are we giving people utter judgment.

You know, Paul tells us that we will be judged, but it's a judgment wrapped up in mercy. It's a judgment that is relational at its root.

The work of the Church at this time is listen; to listen not only to the culture that's seeking God, but to listen to where God is calling us in this particular time.

If we listen, we might hear the smashing of idols to an unknown God.

If we listen, we might realize that God is raising things up, in making old things new, that ALL people, ALL people might be drawn to Himself.

So my sisters and brothers, let us listen.
Let us listen for the voice of the Spirit whose coming upon us that will make all things new ... ALL things new ...

-> O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen. <- >>

https://youtu.be/h-cP8M6Hn1A?t=1329

Oat Pancakes

I'm sure the original recipe is lovely, it's on the jump at the bottom, but I've been working it every Sunday during The Fiasco, and I've REALLY perfected it. I'm gonna give you my tweeked recipe, and if you want The Original, you're welcomed to it at the bottom. XOXO !

INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
• 1/4 cup steel-cut oats
• 1/4 cup oat bran
• 1 cup milk, regular or non-dairy
• 1 handful of crystalized ginger, minced
• 1 TABLEspoon melted butter

• 2 large eggs, whisked before adding

• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar (or some such sweet substitute
• 2/3 cup almond flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt 
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice
• little grated orange peel if you've got it

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Whisk milk in to the oats and let it sit WHILE you

2. Melt the tablespoon of butter quickly and mix that in with the oats and let it sit WHILE you

3. Chop up your ginger and mix that in with the oats and let it sit WHILE you

4.  In a separate smaller bowl, put all the dry ingredients together and stir that around a little. Let it be.

5.  In a cup (or something), whisk your two eggs and mix that in with the oats and let it sit WHILE you

6. Turn to the dry ingredients bowl. Now listen, they're not kiddin' with this instruction:
    DO. NOT. OVER-MIX.
    You're gonna dump the dry ingredients in with the oats, and
    treat it like egg whites, gently fold that in to the mixture.
    Be easy, don't try to prove anything, and just get everything mixed together AND
    LET IT BE while you

7. Go clean your dishes. (You do this anyway, don'tcha? You clean as you go, right? so that when you're done your kitchen is clean as a whistle, right? Of course you do.)

COOKING

• NON-STICK PAN OR GRIDDLE, your best.
  Turn a high heat on underneath it, and throw some water in there.
  When that water starts to sizzle, she ready.
• HUGE SERVING SPOON, stir the batter up from the bottom, and lay a silver-dollar-sized blob around the outside of the pan. Continue until it's full (and if you've got mad spatula skills, go ahead and put one in the middle of the pan, too!
• (N.B.: The blobs are only going to get fluffy and rise, they're not going to spread.)
• Same old gag, wait until you see bubbles on the top or around the edges, then flip it, and by the time you're reached for your serving plate, it's ready

RESIST ! instructions to put butter in the pan, it's awful advice.

DO ! put a 'lil butter on the finished cakes.

DO ! find some GORGEOUS marmalade, jelly to top the butter, or let some fresh fruits fall on that stack.

and please eat them in good health and enjoy.

(p.s., the oats are good for you blood, and the fibre is good for your evacuation! WHEE !)

xoxo

THE ORIGINAL RECIPE NOTES:
"The pancakes can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 5 days or frozen for up to 2 months," but we never have them last that long. This recipe makes about a dozen silver-dollar-sized cakes.


https://www.thekitchn.com/oatmeal-pancakes-22943620