Elijah McClain and Ahmaud Arbery

March on Washington Meditation / 1963-2013

Listen Live today from Washington, D.C.  Just heard Shirley Caesar and others singing "How I Got Over".

Working on a poem and maybe a painting: Mahalia's Voice / Buddha's Hands / Ayin

In the past few days, I came across this painting by Augustus Tack. I haven't been drawing or painting at all and am reminded of what is missing in my life. I remember seeing this painting years ago (maybe in in a book when I was back in college in the the 1980s, maybe when I was in Washington, D.C. in 1982) and wishing I had painted it.

For the last few months, I've been working on a poem about my childhood experience of being astonished by hearingMahalia Jackson sing on the television sometime between 1954 and 1957, and an image that came to me recently of the emptiness held in the Buddha's hands as he sits in meditation, as well as the concept of Ayin, the "experience of nothingness" (Rabbi Tirzah Firestone). I haven't written anything down, but the images and experiences continue to speak to me.

"THE VOICE OF MAHALIA JACKSON CAME THROUGH THE ETHER" (VAN MORRISON)

Sometime between 1954 and 1956, which was the year that I turned 7 years old, I was playing quietly in the living room of my family's rented home in Taft, California. The television was on, but I wasn't paying attention to it until I heard a powerful voice that moved my young heart and soul. I looked up, and there was Mahalia Jackson on the small black-and-white screen. Unforgettable.

"It is easy to be independent when you've got money. But to be independent when you haven't got a thing -- that's the Lord's test."
(Mahalia Jackson)