Vigil for Sikh Temple Mass Shooting in Wisconsin
The week before the Wisconsin Sikh Temple Mass Shooting in 2012, I had turned 43 years old. Never had I ever heard of a Sikh. Never had I ever even scarcely known about their temples or their culture. Never would I ever have believed that they existed in someplace as ordinary as Oak Creek, Wisconsin.
I learned from news reports that the Sikhs were a peaceful people who believed in the One Divine Being who created us all to be equally divine saint-soldiers. I also learned that although the news called their place of worship a temple, it’s really called a gurdwara. Back then, lazy white-coated tongues translated even sacred things to suit their palates.
What I now know is that had I not been so busy that summer with newly-wedded family-blending and mothering, serving at my church, having my morning dog-eared for quiet time and my evenings with a neighborhood women’s bible study (Beth Moore’s James), I would’ve been welcomed by the Sikhs, who welcome everyone—even White Supremacists—to come and pray with them:
One Universal Creator God. The Name Is Truth. Creative Being Personified. No Fear. No Hatred. Image Of The Undying, Beyond Birth, Self-Existent. By Guru's Grace…
That summer, I memorized the whole book of James from the Message translation:
Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors…
I could go on.
Vigil for Trayvon Martin
On February 24, 2012, I bought my kid a classic, grey peacoat from Old Navy that they hated.
It didn’t matter to my kid that the very next day Trayvon Martin was shot to death by a concerned neighbor while wearing a hoodie and “looking suspicious.”
I knew but didn’t want know that the reason I picked the color grey was because it felt safer than pink or purple. Less conspicuous. Besides, a classic wool peacoat was always going to be more respectable than a nylon puffer jacket.
We lived in Texas, and the kid was right when they protested, “I don’t need a coat! It’s like seventy degrees outside!” But they were also wrong. I knew but didn’t want to know that I didn’t buy the coat to keep them warm. I bought it to keep them safe by making them appear educated, assimilated and well-looked after should they ever need to look harmless and innocent at first sight, at a moment’s glance in the distance of a bullet.
On July 18, 2012, two days before The Dark Knight Shooting in Aurora, Colorado, we landed in Chicago for a two week vacation. We stayed four nights with friends in the West Loop near Greektown and then the rest of the time in my old hood with my sister-in-law and her family who did not approve of our splitting time with non-blood relatives and even blood ones. The kids were disappointed that Max stayed with their daddy. Family <insert SMH 🤦🏾♀️>. Am I Right? You can’t live with them and you can’t visit. Good thing that we’re all Marvel fans.
Sandy Hook Vigil
Two days after the Sandy Hook Shooting, Max refused to perform in their Holiday flute recital. Private lessons for the sake of privacy, I guess. We’d been so looking forward to sending a clip of them being what my mother would’ve called “highfalutin” to friends, family, and acquaintances—but nope.
Instead, we sent out Peanuts Christmas cards to the non-believers and Dayspring Christmas cards with the footprint of baby Jesus to the believers. I’m somewhat certain that the Sunday after the Sandy Hook Shooting, right before service, our church had a moment of silence. Maybe we offered up our thoughts and prayers.
My mother never liked corporate prayers. Always prayed in bed with a prayer cloth over her head. All my life I never heard her pray. Only witnessed her head levitating beneath a silk tabernacle of her own making.
On the same day that Max kept their flute on their lap while all the other children played us a festive little holiday jingle, President Obama attended a Sandy Hook vigil. He offered these words:
To all the families, first responders, to the community of Newtown, clergy, guests – Scripture tells us: “Do not lose heart…”
Had my mother Nada still been with us, she would’ve added that the Bible also says, “Enter into thy closet… shut thy door, pray to thy Father.”
Vigil for Mother Emanuel AME
Monday, April 15, 2013, I woke up at 6am in Austin TX, a couple hours before the Boston Marathon began. I took my standard hour-long run on my regular route in my neighborhood. Was home by 7. Showered and dressed by 7:30. I dropped off Simon at work. Got Max to school no later than 9. Went to my VIP (Veritas in Prayer) meeting. Kiki’d and prayed for a couple of hours. Stopped at HEB. Stopped at Target. Back home by 12:30 or so. Took out the dog. Tidied up the last bits of confetti from Max’s 11th birthday celebration the day before. Around 2 o’clock, got a VIP group text: Pray for Boston.
Beginning in the spring of 2014, we became a serial foster family: Katalia, 6 years old; Kayden & Piper, 1 year old each; Jackson, a newborn, just days old; Jasmine, another newborn, just weeks old; Justin, 2 years old; Xaia & Riley, 12 years old each; Denise, 12 years old. Eric, Lily and Michael, 10, 7 and 2 years old, respectively.
No one could tell the difference between our blended-family kid and our fostered kids. We were such a success.
That summer, I was months in the thick of fostering, thinking myself a bonafide trauma expert, when Eric Garner was choked to death by the state. He was 43. Michael Brown was shot to death by the State. He was 18. That October, Laquan McDonald was shot to death by the state. He was 17. Tamir Rice was shot to death by the State. He was 12.
No one knew the difference between innocent and threatening. No one could tell the difference between a real gun and a toy one. No one could tell the difference between a Black boy and a Black man.
And no one could explain to me the difference between family trauma and institutional trauma. But, I’d soon learn.
Vigil for Freddie Gray
In the spring of 2015, exactly a month before Walter Scott was shot to death by the State, we welcomed Denise into our family. Well, we welcomed her into a three months trial period required before adopting. By the time Freddie Gray was mauled to death by the State, she was placed with another family. And in between those bookends, we sang Amazing Grace with President Obama over the nine Black souls whose bodies were shot the death by fellow “prayer warrior” Dylan Roof.
I now knew that the difference between family trauma and institutional trauma was paper thin.
In June 2015, we stopped fostering. Over the phone, the head of the foster agency tearfully asked us, “So you’re just gonna through her away?” But my mother-in-law told us, “God is not in chaos.” We believed her.
In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. The Earth was chaos and empty and darkness on the faces of the depths and the Spirit of God hovered on the faces of the waters.
And God said, “The light shall be”, and the light was.
But wait… in all that chaos, did we miss the light?
A month later, in an empty cell, Sandra Bland was terrorized to death by the State. Chaos. Empty. Darkness. I prayed, “Let there be light.”
University of Virginia Vigil for Heather Heyer
June 12, 2016, fear loaded a gun, entered the Pulse nightclub and shot 49 people to death.
Chaos. Empty. Darkness. I prayed, “Let there be light.”
A month later, the State shot Alton Sterling to death. Two days later, the State shot Philando Castile to death.
Chaos. Empty. Darkness. I prayed, “Let there be light.”
On August 16, 2016, at a campaign rally in Michigan, Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, addressed “the Blacks”…
“You’re living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed.”
He then sincerely asked, “What the hell do you have to lose?”
The first August of his presidency, hundreds of “very fine people” donned khakis, white polo shirts, and swastikas for the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville. They carried weapons and tiki torches while singing Dixie and chanting, “Jews will not replace us,” and “The South will rise again.”
Chaos. Empty. Darkness. I prayed, “Let there be light.”
Vigil in Parkland, Florida
On January 24, 2018, I posted my first Instagram post for Black Coffee with White Friends. The image was these black words on ivory:
He told his mother all about his adventure while she took off his wet socks. And he thought and thought and thought about them. – Ezra Jack Keats, The Snowy Day
The caption read:
Then the mother of the murdered boy rose, turned to you, and said, “You exist. You matter. You have value. You have every right to wear your hoodie, to play your music as loud as you want. You have every right to be you. And no one should deter you from being you. You have to be you. And you can never be afraid to be you. – Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
On Valentine’s Day in 2018, 14 kids (babies really) and 3 adults were shot to death in Parkland, Florida, by a 24 year-old shooter with a manifesto. Back when he was in high school, he scrawled a swastika and the words "I hate n*ggers”onto his backpack. He told people in a chat group, “I think I am going to kill people.” In 2017, he left a comment on a YouTube video that said, “I’m fucking going to be a professional school shooter.” His Instagram profile picture shows him wearing a Make America Great Again baseball hat.
Chaos. Empty. Darkness. I prayed, “Let there be light.”
The day after St. Patrick’s Day, the State shot Stephon Clark to death, 6 bullets dead in the back.
Chaos. Empty. Darkness. I prayed, “Let there be light.”
On September 6, 2018, a neighbor walked into Botham Jean’s apartment and shot him to death. That morning, I posted an image of charcoal words on ivory:
Relativity teaches us the connection between the different description of one and the same reality. – Albert Einstein
Swipe. Another image, ivory words on charcoal:
At the center of Being
Said the blackman,
All is tangential.
Even this laughter,
even your tears.Raymond Patterson, Twenty-Six Ways of Looking at a Blackman: Number XXVI
The caption read: 2 thinkers with 2 different stories—1 white, 1 black—2 different narratives reaching the same conclusion: All matter is perspective.
Interfaith Vigil for Tree of Life Synagogue
Fifty-one days later, I posted white words on black:
May there be
abundant peace
from heaven,
and life, for us
and for all Israel;
and say, Amen.
from The Mourner’s Kaddish
Swipe—and you’ ll find the same prayer in Hebrew, black on ivory.
Caption: Peace, blessings and healing for The Tree of Life Congregation and the city of Pittsburgh. May we who stand as witnesses fiercely and courageously flood this hate with love – abundant and overflowing love. Impossible, radical love.
A year later, on October 12th 2019, Atatiana Jefferson was shot to death by the State. I posted the image of a black square with the caption:
For me, the news of Atatiana Jefferson’s murder feels a little darker and a little tighter than this black square.
Instead of headlines like “Fort Worth police officer fatally shoots woman in her home while checking on an open front door,” I wish they read more like the truth: “Atatiana Was Just Chilling at Home When a Police Officer Looked Through Her Window and Shot Her.”
I wish I could tell you what home means to a black woman, especially a black woman who is caring for loved ones.
I wish I could explain what it’s like to come home after being a black woman all day long in a world that prefers white, thin, blonde and blue-eyed over your remarkable gifts and beauty.
I wish you knew what it felt like to cross the threshold that is yours without the white gaze dissecting your skin.
Understand that black women know how to move in a world not made for them. We were reared our whole lives to live in those friendly-fire spaces.
And we move through those days thinking of the bliss and the shelter waiting for us at home.
I wish you knew the peace that was stolen and replaced with this tightening black box of literally nowhere being safe for us any longer.
A year after that, during Black History Month 2020, two White supremacists lynched Ahmaud Arbery. Maybe I didn’t want my celebration of Blackness to be overshadowed by the violence, or maybe I grew scared, but I didn’t post anything about his murder.
A month after that, Breonna Taylor was shot to death by the State. I did not yet know her name.
May 25, 2020, Memorial Day, I posted this caption:
Memorial Day is a strange holiday for black people in our country. Like the Fourth of July, we want to have a true cause to celebrate like any other American. We love our country too, but our country has not loved us in return.
It’s like being an abused partner. It’s your abuser’s birthday and of course you’re expected to celebrate. But deep down inside, you feel that to sing and party with your abuser is to sing and party every fracture, bruise and black eye they gave you, too. To celebrate feels like consent.
I do not consent to all the lynchings and riots that occurred after every war against black soldiers returning to their country hoping this time they’d be received with open arms of gratitude. They never were. Instead, white men spat at them. Called them “boy”. Took and pilfered whatever gains they made.
Some of you will fight not to believe me. But look it up. Look up Red Summer. Look at pictures of the Tulsa Massacre. Look up the pictures of the airplanes that destroyed black life because it was thriving.
Unacknowledged by their country, black men and nurses came home from war only to face more wars.
This Memorial Day, I hold all those soldiers and all the lynched black civilian men, women and children in my heart.
That night at 8:20, the State placed a knee on George Floyd’s neck until he died. His last words were: “I can’t breath,” and “Please,” and “Mama.”
Chaos. Empty. Darkness.
Defund the Police 2020 Vigil
And I share all those years of my knowing and unknowing—all my lives before and lives after—to tell you that last week I came across a letter from a passenger of the Underground Railroad to a conductor of its rails, William Stills:
LETTER FROM HAM & EGGS, SLAVE
PETERSBURG, VA., Oct. 17th, 1860.
MR. W. STILL:—Dear Sir—I am happy to think, that the time has come when we no doubt can open our correspondence with one another again. Also I am in hopes, that these few lines may find you and family well and in the enjoyment of good health, as it leaves me and family the same. I want you to know, that I feel as much determined to work in this glorious cause, as ever I did in all of my life, and I have some very good hams on hand that I would like very much for you to have. I have nothing of interest to write about just now, only that the politics of the day is in a high rage, and I don't know of the result, therefore, I want you to be one of those wide-a-wakes as is mentioned from your section of country now-a-days. Also, if you wish to write to me, Mr. J. Brown will inform you how to direct a letter to me.
No more at present, until I hear from you; but I want you to be a wide-a-wake.
Yours in haste,
HAM & EGGS.
This year, I’ve sometimes wished for the life before. My life of prayer meetings, trips to HEB and Target, foster kids, going for runs, buying respectable pea coats with my deeper knowing sleeping peacefully beneath all these things as I watched light flickering through the storm clouds. Not always, just sometimes, I miss my ignorant, naive way of ignoring. All my thoughts and prayers a chaos of willful, empty darkness.
I did not know how to share or receive Ham & Eggs’ letter. But I know, if I should meet him in the eternal after, I want to be “a wide-a-wake.” Let there be light.
Dear hearts, I leave you and all your lives before and after with these words from Rumi:
Beware of that woeful night,
When you cry out in agony: “O God” —
Don’t sleep!
That night when Death comes to welcome you —
By the dread of that night, O weary one,
Don’t sleep!
Even stones will cry when bound
by the weight of those chains.
You are not a stone.
Remember those chains —
Don’t sleep!
Chaos.
Empty.
Darkness.
Be a wide-a-wake.
I just went through my morning worship book from Iona: and recall how saying daily, "if Christ's disciples keep silent, these stones would shout aloud. " those words grew every day in power, like yours here. Like rumi too.
Marcie. You and Octavia Butler- you break my heart in your truth telling. You rebuild my heart in your truth telling.
Fabulously written and absolutely heartbreaking.