All Of Us Going Forward Without Denying The Past AND The Present

A friend emailed me a link to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfZPl4CFEUc&t=6040s

I don't have HBO and may not have heard about this otherwise.  A quick check with our public library shows that it is available there on DVD.  Maybe some of you have seen this already, given that it was released in 2019.  I just finished watching it.

I'm grateful to diverse friends who bring to my attention what needs to be brought to my attention.

At the end of the documentary, Sweet Honey in the Rock sings "We'll Never Turn Back."  With a little googling I found that Mavis Staples featured it on an album released in 2007.

I found the following quote here about "We"ll Never Turn Back."

"One of the symbolic songs of the civil rights movement in the USA, interpreted by many artists starting from The SNCC Freedom Singers, through Sweet Honey in the Rock and Barbara Dane. However, I preferred to attribute it to Mavis Staples for the recent, very intense interpretation of hers in the 2007 eponymous album." 

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A local young woman:

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How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be? -- Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

Stephen Biko

"Ella's Song" / A bird in the stormy sky to the east

High in the sky is a bird:

Papoose / Martin Luther King's Birthday 2017 / Alberta Williams King / Dream Variations / Women's March 2017

Around 4 a.m., I awoke, and the word "papoose" came to me, along with a surprising sensation of being loved, cared for, and protected, no matter what danger threatens.  I went back to sleep.  When I woke up again, I realized that today is the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Just now I found this:

"Also, little known is that in the 1963 March on Washington there was a sizable Native American contingent, including many from South Dakota. Moreover, the civil rights movement inspired the Native American rights movement of the 1960s and many of its leaders. In fact, the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) was patterned after the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund."

and this where Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote about his mother, Alberta Williams King.

"My mother confronted the age-old problem of the Negro parent in America: how to explain discrimination and segregation to a small child. She taught me that I should feel a sense of "somebodiness" but that on the other hand I had to go out and face a system that stared me in the face every day saying you are "less than," you are "not equal to." She told me about slavery and how it ended with the Civil War. She tried to explain the divided system of the South—the segregated schools, restaurants, theaters, housing; the white and colored signs on drinking fountains, waiting rooms, lavatories—as a social condition rather than a natural order. She made it clear that she opposed this system and that I must never allow it to make me feel inferior. Then she said the words that almost every Negro hears before he can yet understand the injustice that makes them necessary: "You are as good as anyone." At this time Mother had no idea that the little boy in her arms would years later be involved in a struggle against the system she was speaking of."

"Nothing lights a fire like a dream deferred."

Papoose.  A child.  Something lovingly made, in which a child is kept safe.  All children.  All people.  Loved, cared for, and protected.  We carry the dream as if it were a beloved child. 

Women's March on Washington

They have their own thoughts (Kahlil Gibran)

"We are Americans. We do the improbable. We beat great odds. We rally together to meet whatever challenge stands in our way. That's what we've always done -- and it's what we must do now. For the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, we must end the age of oil in our time."

Barack Obama
August 4, 2008
Lansing, Michigan

(Note: I placed the italics. I hadn't realized that Barack Obama had made this statement. -- am)

When my parents married in 1948, one of their wedding gifts was a copy of The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran. When I was a child, I used to look at the mysterious ethereal illustrations and wonder about the book. When I was in high school, I finally read the book from cover to cover and was surprised to find how clearly it spoke to me and my questions about life. After a disagreement with my mother, I asked my mother if I could read to her something that was important to me. We went out on the back porch and I read "ON CHILDREN" to her. I believe she understood that I didn't belong to her in the way I had before.

The lines that spoke clearest to me then were:

"Your children are not your children,
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself."

and:

"You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you."

I must admit now that I was angry at my mother and thought that if she wouldn't listen to me, she would at least listen to the words of Kahlil Gibran.

Today the lines that touch me most are:

"For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams."

Although I'm old enough to be a great-grandmother, I have no children. Still, I can appreciate that there are two generations beyond mine whose souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, where those of my generation cannot visit, not even in our dreams. Will our generation's children, grand-children and great-grandchildren see the end of the age of oil in their time?

May it be so.

Thanks to Zhoen for posting "On Children" at her blog and inspiring my post.