Black and Blue

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How strange we are when judging color 

so angry
about black or white.
Doesn't matter
if it is a dress or human flesh.

See the dress,
one snapshot.
Decide.
No, you already have.

Is it a trick of the light or years of learning how to see the world?

Over the senseless noise

the voices of wisdom 

with sense of human things

point to the truth,

teach you how you see

(remind you if you knew and just forgot the facts

in the fleeting moment you were asked

to make a color judgment).

To see black and blue, your eyes must filter light 

that is too strong.

Sometimes our color bias is so strong we can't filter the light,

can't see anything but white

and the gold that goes with it.

See the child,

one split-second.

Decide.

No, you already have.

See again with new eyes, new sense of how you see.

Do you filter darkness

through a preference for light?

You insist on innocence. It isn't

that you think darkness doesn't exist,

but like a person pushed aside in haste

you just
didn't see it there.

Or you did see darkness

and even though it was unarmed

somehow it scared you.

You insist until you convince others
to see things your way
not to see the black and blue.

Did you know we can see the world differently?

And if it's possible to teach ourselves to see
the same dress in a new color scheme
then it's possible to teach ourselves to see
the schemes of color bias.
Filter the too-white world through eyes that know better
and see the bruises on colored bodies.
See the black and blue.

---

Written by Kimberley Fais on 2/26/15, the 3rd anniversary of Trayvon Martin's death

The Last Day Lament

I led this prayer on the last day of our worship course (the day that we sang all the hymns that the students had written, hence the thematic transition at the end).

Source

A Seminary Psalm: The Last Day Lament

O God of Time, infinitely and intimately ours,
We are students and faculty facing the end of another semester;
Some of us the end of our journey at Drew.

We are buried beneath literal and digital stacks of paperwork,
Crunching out reports, and recuperating from computer crashes.
We are following guidelines and looking toward deadlines
And yet, despite so many straightforward lines,
We lose ourselves in a whirlwind of expectations.

O God of Grace, whose Book of Life has no column for grades,
We are students and faculty facing constant measurement:
Our mistakes and retakes, our credits and diplomas.
Our publish-or-perish publications, our tenure and evaluations.
We see A's and B's and C's and I's, NR's, and Z's,
And we wonder what they say about us;
About our learning and about our teaching.
We absorb letters on transcripts
As though they spell who we are and what we do.
But our identity is in You, O God:
You call us Beloved.
And our purpose is in You, O God:
You call us to Live, to Learn, and to Love.

Deliver us, O God!
Deliver us from the finality of our finals,
The pressure of our presentations,
The stress of our tests,
And the insidious voice inside us
Insisting that we've come to Drew
For any other reward or reason
Than the one for which You've led us here.

And thank You, God of Song,
That in the midst of our reading and writing,
We can claim this sacred time and space
To give You glory and praise.
Let all that we are and do be a song to You!

Amen.