By Robi Rose, DLRE Director
2022 is already off to a rough start, as the Omicron variant has shifted our attention back to safety needs and as we approach two years of this pandemic. During challenging times, I often find inspiration from our children, teens, and young adults. How do we find moments of joy and hope in the midst of struggle and suffering? Can we still find time and energy to help those less fortunate than ourselves when we are already feeling so stressed? Join us for our multigenerational worship service on the 23rd to witness and be inspired by a diversity of “love letters” … as we pause to love ourselves, our friends, our families, our communities, and our precious earth.
Meanwhile, I dedicate my newsletter column turn to amplifying the incredible words of a young, black, female poet. Because holy WOW, do her words deserve to be shared far and wide! Amanda S. C. Gorman (born March 7, 1998) is an American poet and activist. Her work focuses on issues of oppression, feminism, race, and marginalization, as well as the African diaspora. Gorman was the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate. Her newest poem is intended “to honor the hardships, hurt, hope and healing of 2021 while also harkening the potential of 2022.”
“New Day’s Lyric”
May this be the day
We come together.Mourning, we come to mend,
Withered, we come to weather,Torn, we come to tend,
Battered, we come to better.Tethered by this year of yearning,
We are learning
That though we weren’t ready for this,
We have been readied by it.Steadily we vow that no matter
How we are weighed down,
We must always pave a way forward.This hope is our door, our portal.
Even if we never get back to normal,
Someday we can venture beyond it,
To leave the known and take the first steps.So let us not return to what was normal,
But reach toward what is next.What was cursed, we will cure.
What was plagued, we will prove pure.
Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree,
Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee,
Where we weren’t aware, we’re now awake;
Those moments we missed
Are now these moments we make,
The moments we meet,
And our hearts, once all together beaten,
Now all together beat.Come, look up with kindness yet,
For even solace can be sourced from sorrow.We remember, not just for the sake of yesterday,
But to take on tomorrow.We heed this old spirit,
In a new day’s lyric,
In our hearts, we hear it:For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.Be bold, sang Time this year,
Be bold, sang Time,
For when you honor yesterday,
Tomorrow ye will find.Know what we’ve fought
Need not be forgot nor for none.It defines us, binds us as one,
Come over, join this day just begun.For wherever we come together,
We will forever overcome.”