We
(a poem offered at the 11.2.2024 inauguration of Brite Divinity School’s 3rd President)
Allegiance to an impractical future is baffling,
and we do not enjoy confusion.
We are tired of another’s projections
attempting to forecast our lives
towards what we know is not.
How exhausting it is
to carry foreign-feeling,
tradition-filled sentiments
but never search
the desires of our own hearts!
What do our hearts want?
Where do hearts go
if not to one another?
Are we not called to heart-hold,
soul-nurture, discover the new
- together?
We regenerate each generation;
our we-ness is always renewing.
We are just beginning to
sense what our together
moves like.
Its beauty is already stunning.
And has unleashed our truth:
We are done with transplanted projects.
We want (to be) real.
If that means calling those stubborn doctrines
what they are - “ambition statements” -
instead of “mission statements,”
so be it.
We desire honest existence.
Why not free manifestos from themselves -
and let them wander and re-form
in and out of our collective wondering?
Our garden sensibilities say:
it is most faithful
to tend our proclamations, anyway.
We embrace honesty:
that we are still doing the slow work
of learning who we actually
and already are -
and we know we sound wide.
Our tongues are multitone -
have always been split a million ways.
(You and I know)
they have always sounded
more than merely American English.
We are being re-made
from the inside out;
learning time-lessons
in real time -
forgoing the present
for a tentative future
only keeps raging colonists alive,
only makes us miss miracles.
No, we want to marvel
in our own humanities -
practice holy acclaim,
magnify our whole,
announce full recognition.
We want a slower cadence –
a watchful living,
a noticing identity.
We already know
who all is here.
And we have every intention
of being (our) whole selves.
We delight in:
rejecting projections
and mission projects,
proselytizing pressures
and rudimentary uses
of the words
“other” and “we” and “church.”
We want a spirit of truth.
Correcting postures and positions,
practices that project holiness
but breed harm – inspire us.
We do not want whiteness
and its religious legacies, anymore.
We reject colonial manuals
and patriarchal handbooks.
We refuse to wear
sexually-repressed lenses,
eat undercooked theologies,
and forgive questionable ethics.
Doctrines that are not ours do not fit us.
We have our own interpretive lenses to sharpen.
Contrary to many’s realities,
divine community can incite repair.
We pay attention to the dreams we have
when we’re awake,
and we have awoken absolutely clear:
our dreams have always been about
letting what is real dawn on us.
And we receive God’s gentle promise
of seeing a new day.
