Proclamation, Arranged by Linda Rose King
Words taken from 20 years of newsletters of the Women's Theological Center
1. We women of Color,
Together and separately
With our white sisters have formed a body
Shaped by the large bones of our intelligence.
Some of us are junkies
Some of us are drunks,
Some of us are prostitutes,
Walk miles to farm the light.
Dreams pouring from our souls,
News that never makes the front page in any town.
We speak loud and fast
On Saturday mornings
We speak of terror and rape and violence
Laughing and crying in the same breath.
So good to be able to speak the truth
And not be shouted down or battered
For speaking on what pains us
For speaking, not mumbling,
or whispering, or implying,
But speaking, with the full force of our voices
Korean tongues, black and white,
North and south, liberal and conservative,
Tongues drawing from eh well of our lives,
The leavings, the choices, the crossroads,
Between hell and hope.
Tongues cutting circles in the concrete
Diving into the opening.
2. When we really get going,
flowers sprout out from our heads
And fruit hands from our lips
We bring our mistakes, our wrongs
Our everyday knowledge
To a table decorated in the spiritual
blessings of mountain women,
Moving in the sun, homeless women,
Sleeping on the street,
Rituals woven at midnight
From the warm sound of love
The deep brown earth, the sons sung
In the midst of gunfire and killing.
The songs sung by women kneading bread
With very little flour. The songs sung
During riots and wars, the songs that would
rather be poems, the songs we sing to lovers.
We are birthing liberation,
Sheltering the voices of Freedom.
3. This is not like any Church I've ever been to
Nobody here worries about whether
You're wearing socks or stockings.
We are so proud of our Radcliff sisters
And our black oral historians.
Nurses, artists, secretaries, educators, poor women.
We believe in each other and praying in our
individual tongues, we redeem one another.
4. Some call us angels on the front line.
Hot blooded razor-wired prisoners.
Naming such afflictions as the forced
removal of our children. The force-fed
fear of women loving women.
Seasoned by sadness, transformed by discovery,
We map a new universe.
5. Freed women is what we call ourselves.
Freed women, freed by our questions.
Freed women, creating miracles of our stupidity.
Freed women, freed by our senses.
Freed women, who bear the marks of crucifixion.
6. Freed women, shifting history and moving on.
Calluses on the bottom of our souls
We have bitched and moaned our way
Through the back doors and opened new doors.
We glory in resistance, defying the cancer
of anti-semitism. Crisp Sunday morning sisters
resisting the logical of racism.
Freed women, tongues like axes,
Chopping lies, splitting wood.
7. Maids and Madams are all in the same room
Our words, a tender jumble, glorious and ruby red.
Ebony naked, geography busting
Blackness, Japanese love and Jewish remembrances
Of the holocaustic chaos
Eyes, hands, mouths, and tongues
Busting the violent silence.
Filling the room with cherished dreams and burnt offerings.
8. Our rituals are magnificent
Drawing strength from the bottom of the well
We hold hands against the sting of terror
Fractured, fragile and loving life,
We mend severed connections
Conjuring up blessings.
9. We who have been children of the KKK
And Civil Rights Activists
We who have witnessed
Bombed churches and murdered children.
We are the warriors resurrecting love
Through the combined strength of our imaginations.
10. In this sacred space we work
With the symbols of belonging
Crows, hawks, seagulls, sea stars,
Candles, rocks, flowers,
Silence, singing, drumming, wailing, screaming,
Holding our hands up to the forces of life
We enter the healing plunge into the vision
Love inspired, risk-takers, truth-seekers
The fro, the afro, the halo women
Straight from Alabama,
Magna Cum Laude from Brandeis
Black and White women moving with each other
Through our divine and dramatic journeys
Traveling through a snow storm
To find the clearing.
Some of us in wheelchairs,
Some of us pushing walkers,
Some of us hopping on crutches,
All of us rising through the Spirit
Moving to the music.
All of us warriors.