Fields of Hope

Thursday, February 3, 2022

My desk. Chicago, Illinois (Feb 2022)

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INVOCATION

Drench us with hope, oh God. 

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PRESENTATION  

On my desk, there’s an orange ceramic vase shaped like the bodice of a woman. I keep a bouquet of cotton blossoms in it so that it looks like an orange-glazed woman whose entire head is a full afro made of clouds.

This isn’t me romanticizing cotton, as a lot of Americans do. This is a reminder that I have ancestors—the women in the fields, the women in the big house, the women breeding babies for labor—who, I believe, are watching me. They keep me honest. I want nothing more than to make them proud.

A vase filled with cotton isn’t an extraordinary story about hope. Not really. But for me, this unique design choice is very personal. 

In her book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, writer Isabel Wilkerson tells the story of Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, who after her cousin was nearly beat to death, migrated to Chicago in 1937 with her sharecropping husband. Here’s a passage about her childhood in Mississippi: 

Before she was big enough to see over the cotton, Ida Mae followed her father out to the field. He gave her a flour sack to keep her occupied, and she tagged behind him and gathered cotton bolls even though what little she brought in was not of much use. It turned out she had no talent whatsoever for the field and didn’t like the chore of picking. But her father was always out there, and picking gave her time with him.

Before reading this passage, I never thought about picking cotton as a “talent”. Her words made me wonder about all the missed talent and all of the “deferred” dreams that never were reaped because they were never allowed to be sowed. And yet, here was this glimmer of hope – the memory of being beside her father in the fields, a seed sown and reaped in love. 

The crown of cotton on my desk isn’t a symbol of hope so much as it is a reminder that it’s rather audacious that I can sit at my beautiful desk, in my beautiful home on the Southside of Chicago, perhaps only a couple of miles away from Ida Mae Brandon Gladney’s post-migration home, and I can write to my heart’s content about blossoms of hope. 

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LITANY

From the cotton fields of Mississippi, we cried out to you. 
From the reeds of sugar cane, we cried out to you.

Along the endless desperate miles of the Great Migration, we searched for hope.
Along the tumultuous years of Jim Crow’s oppression from shore to shore, we searched for hope. 

Inside our desolation, you met us. 
Inside our despair, you met us. 

Our hope then, now, and forever is within you. 

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EXHORTATION

James 5:7-8, The Passion Translation 

Meanwhile, [children] we must be patient and filled with expectation as we wait for the appearing of the [Sovereign Creator]. Think about the farmer who has to patiently wait for the earth’s harvest as it ripens because of the early and latter rains. So you also, keep your hopes high and be patient, for the presence of the [Creator] is drawing closer.

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BENEDICTION 

May we remember to hope despite our history – but not without it.