[Quiet Thoughts] Grief Again

Reblogged

Black. Bunched. Mass. Mom.

Photo: I have spent a lot of energy nursing my transplanted daisies to health over the last 2 weeks. Here one has popped. Just the faintest bit of joy on what was otherwise an excruciating day.

I have been thinking about how to write this post since yesterday morning, when I turned on the news and learned about the massacre in Charleston. I considered my feelings, consulted the much more eloquent words of my favorite thinkers and writers…

and I’ve sat down to write this post multiple times. Sometimes by long hand, sometimes in my word processor…

I keep coming up empty.

I’ve started a draft by writing about my fear: Is there no sacred place for Blackness, no safe place? Then I chastised myself, throwing the paper away. If you give into the fear, Kyra, the terrorist wins. Don’t give him your fear. Don’t feed him with your…

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Time to Come Together

Like the rest of America, I am devastated by the hatred incarnate that erupted to take the lives of these nine wonderful people in the church in the historic old Charleston church.  To think a man could spend an hour in prayer with people who’d embraced him, before turning on them, later saying, he almost backed out several times, but knew if he didn’t do this no one else would.  Would to God his heart had been more touched by their goodness and acceptance than the hatred he’d learned.  It’s time we all realized we are one.

In Memoriam (#Charlestonshooting)

Reblogged from Arms Akimbo

ArmsaKimbo Blog

Darkness and Light

Obsidian night
stretching into day
light drowned in tears.

Fleeting flashes
bright sparks of hatred
snuffing out souls.

Real people
not abstractions.
Speak their names.

Cynthia Hurd
54 years old.
Beloved librarian.

Innocents communing
in the bosom of “Mother Emanuel”
eagerly studying God’s word.

Susie Jackson
87 years old.
Church trustee and former choir member.

What kind of person sits
steeped in a nuclear winter
waiting to mow people down?

Ethel Lee Lance
70 years old.
Matriarch of her family.

What kind of society
raises its children to execrate
with such extreme exuberance?

Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor
49 years old.
An angelic voice and soul.

What makes a young man
so afraid
of people celebrating God?

The Honorable Rev. Clementa Pinckney
41 years old.
A beacon of hope and life.

What turns fear
into hate
into a shooting spree?

Tywanza Sanders
26 years old.
Took the bullet meant…

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