A Dream

Last night I had a dream
that I was walking down Uhuru Street
and two little black boys and two little white boys
followed each other to the crest of a shallow hill,
put their stick in the earth, and proclaimed this land
a holding of Spain.
They were conquistadors,
mainly because they liked the pointy hats

(and if history is a making,
and if games are a making,
can we not unmake some of the tears of history
merely through play?).

My heart was with those boys,
as my heart is with all those who fight
to free themselves of history—
even while history is the inevitable
mother-in-law we live with.

Wewe unatoka wapi?
Anishinaabe na gedow?
…these bits of words that I know do not show me the world,
give me no insight into the blood that unites us all.
Genetics tells us that we are all related, that race is a myth,
but after all, are we not ruled by our myths?
History is a myth, too, you know.

No starry-eyed dewdrops for me,
no glasses tinted rose:
I know that the wrenching pain of history—
the shed blood of my ancestors and yours,
the thousand wounds I inflicted on you
and the thousand injustices you served upon me—
are not to be thrown aside by mere words
or by a song proclaiming peace, no matter
how lovely the song itself may be.
We must take action, and sometimes we must tell our ancestors,
the dancing spirits whose blood flows through our veins,
the breath of whose wind whisks the shadows from under our eyes,
No: I love you, but I will not carry on your fight.
And we must be as good as our word,
if it means death.

On Sunday mornings when the sky is a vault of blue
and the eagle soaring in it seems to soar with my soul,
or when a white blanket of snow has baptized the earth
and the grey sky would depress a stouter spirit,
I eat the body of Christ and I drink His blood.
It is body and blood that was sacrificed,
I believe,
not just for me and not just for the church, but for all people.
Like the woman who with shadowed eyes
turned away from me that cold spring night,
a refusal to accept love does not mean that love does not exist,
just as her refusal to see the light of the stars
makes them no less bright.
I am called to love everyone:
not just those I like and find easy to love,
but those that I disagree with,
those that I hate,
those who spit in my face and claw at my eyes.
I am especially called to love them.
I am called to love homosexuals, Democrats, Republicans,
Libertarian Anarchists, Marxists, Vikings fans.

My heart is with the rebels of Libya, with the college students of Iran.
My heart is with all those who feel judged, who feel alone, who feel
that out of the depths their cries have fallen upon deaf ears.
If the Arab Spring has taught us anything, it is that hate only holds
people for so long: that soon, there are those who will stand up to its hold,
whether it means torture, whether it means death.

I cannot love all those I should; I cannot take the pain of the whole world on my shoulders,
I cannot redeem it all; I cannot take the pain even of my friends from them onto myself,
though often I wish I could.

So I send up this prayer from the eagle soaring the heights of my soul,
past the eagle soaring the summit of heaven,
past the stars and reverberating out of time
to the muchmaligned God in whom I believe:

Lord, redeem the lonely, justify the lost, take our burdens from us;
and for all those who struggle, all those who die to redeem history of its hate,
save them too, and give our feet swiftness to run from the devils that dog our heels.
And when we fail, when we fall, arm us with flaming swords
and build us the wings to fly.