Healing by Adam Dyer (#Poetry #blacklivesmatter #lent)

I was recently asked to reflect on the idea of “healing” as it relates to issues around race in the United States by a group of white religious leaders. My reaction was immediate and powerful.  I was actually offended by the question coming from someone in a place of privilege.  Not at all to say that whites do not have the need for healing or salvation and reconciliation, but rather it was because there was this underlying sense that the wounds that we carry as a culture are something that can be fixed, like a cold or a sprained ankle.  The request spoke to me of how disconnected and fractured the experiences of people are here in the United States because of the color of their skin.

My experience of violence and oppression is not limited to my lifetime alone.  My experience comes from generation of trauma.  The experience of black people in the US is one of ongoing and long standing punishment under a system that was designed to see us as less than fully human.  This piece is, therefore not just about the generations of physical pain, but also about recognizing that because I and other blacks are fully human, we have histories.  The white scholars may not put them on the par of the white Presidents or “explorers,” but it is a rich history that I refuse to let anyone forget, no matter how painful it might be for them to listen to because of their own culpability.  We own our history, we own our pain; do not let the dominant culture co-opt or erase that history.  It is what makes us invincible.

• Adam Dyer, Winter 2015

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Healing

Don’t speak to me of “healing” racism,

Or “wounded souls” or the “painful hurt”

Until you are willing to look at my skin

And see the whip marks on my great-great-grandmother Laury’s body.

Don’t speak to me of “values”

Or “justice” or “righting the wrongs”

Until you are able to feel the heartache of my great grandfather Graham

Whose own father was sold before he could know him.

Don’t speak to me of “equity”

Or “opportunity” or the “common good”

Until you are able to hear the fear in my grandmother Mae’s voice

Arriving in New York at 16 in her first real pair of shoes.

Don’t speak to me of “passion”

Or “longing” or “standing on the side of love”

Until you know the shame of my mother Edwina

Whose teachers made an example of her body

Calling the beautiful curve of her lower back primitive.

Don’t speak to me of “together”

Or “understanding” or “empathy”

Until you know my rage at being denied work by a white woman

Who said I don’t act black or masculine enough.

You want to speak of “healing”

But the pain you are trying to heal has no real name.

This “pain” you speak of has no story;

Like your tepid desire to actually make change,

It is anonymous, vague…empty.

Don’t speak to me of “healing”

For, I heal the second I am ripped apart.

My wounds self-suture,

And like the clever creature I am,

I just grow new legs to outrun the pain even faster.

It is something I have had to practice as long as my ancestors have known you,

And that seems like an eternity.

So, don’t speak to me of “healing”

Because you cannot know what healing means

Until you have known what it means to be hurt.

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Adam Dyer is a graduate of Princeton University where he concentrated in Creative Writing and Music.  He is currently the Intern Minister at First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego and a student at the Pacific School of Religion.  Previously he has been on the adjunct faculty at the Starr King School for the Ministry where he taught “In Your Hands: Spirituality, Language and Ethics of Touch. Read more of  Adam’s work on his blog https://spirituwellness.wordpress.com