12/26/2020

My Dear Friend & POTUS, DJT,

            I’m thinking about music this morning. After watching Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom recently, her thoughts about the blues as “life’s way of talking” & “a way of understanding life” make me think I need to follow my leading to learn to play the ukulele so I can sing my way to enlightenment.

            I’m also dwelling on Nashville. The RV blew up about 2.5 miles from Jubilee Hall, home to the Fisk Jubilee singers of 1871.  W E B Du Bois wrote about the Songs of Sorrow that they shared with the world in 1871 as bearing “heart–touching witness… the music of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment; they tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways.”

The bombing seems to be the “Mourning Christmas” that Rev. William Barber wrote about in the Guardian. He argued that Jesus was born amidst rampant inequality, so profound that the poor folk refused to be consoled. He suggested, “If we are faithful to the story of the one whose light “shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it…we will cry until our tears flow together into a river of justice that rolls down like mighty waters and an ever-flowing stream.”

            Perhaps just the right melody will help you to get through your sorrow over the election results, so you can bring some hope to the folks who are suffering now, especially those in TN who have been literally shaken to the core by this violence. We need you to step up & make it clear how our unemployed brethren are going to make ends meet for the next few months. We need you to use your bully pulpit to get people to do what they can to stop the spread of CV. We need you to show your Christianity by forgiving those who you feel have trespassed against you.

            The days are getting longer so it’s time to end the mourning & begin the healing so we can rejoice once again at the beauty of the earth & the love that binds us together.        

            BYBS,