Two bits of verse which lifted my spirits on this dark day. First, Cornelius Eady's poem for the inauguration of Mayor Mamdani, "Proof":
You have to imagine it.
Who said you were too dark?
Too Large, too Queer, Too Loud?
Who said you were too poor, too strange, too fat?
You have to imagine it.
Who said you must keep quiet?
Who heard your story then rolled their eyes?
Who tried to change your name to invisible?
You've got to imagine.
Who heard your name and refused to pronounce it?
Who checked their watch and said not now?
James Baldwin wrote 'the place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it.'
New York, city of invention,
Roiling town, refresher
And re-newer,
New York, city of the real,
Where the canyons
Whisper in a hundred
Tongues,
New York,
Where your lucky self
Waits for your
Arrival,
Where there is always soil
For your root.
This is our time.
The taste of us, the spice of us, the hollers and the rhythms and the beats of us and the echo of our ancestors who made certain we know who we are.
City of insistence, city of resistance.
You have to imagine an army that wins without firing a bullet.
A joy that wears down the rock of no.
Up from insults, up from blocked doors, up from trick bags, up from fear, up from shame, up form the way it was done before.
You have to imagine that space they said wasn't yours.
That time they said you'd never own.
The invisible city lit on its way.
This moment is our proof.
And our rector's version of José Luis Casal's "Immigrant's Creed":
We believe in Almighty God, who guided the people in exile and exodus, the God of the prophets Joseph in Egypt, and Daniel in Babylon, and Mohammed in Medina, the God of foreigners and immigrants.
We believe in Jesus Christ, a displaced Galilean, who was born away from his people and his home, who fled his country with his parents when his life was in danger.
When he returned to his own country he suffered under the oppression of Pontius Pilate, the servant of imperial power.
Jesus was persecuted, beaten, tortured, and unjustly condemned to death.
But on the third day Jesus rose from the dead, not as a scorned foreigner but to offer us citizenship in God’s kingdom.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the eternal immigrant from God’s kingdom among us, who speaks all languages, lives in all countries, and reunites all races.
We believe that the Church is the secure home for refugees, travelers, and all believers.
We believe that the communion of saints begins when we accept the diversity of the saints.
We believe in forgiveness, which makes us all equal before God, and in reconciliation, which heals our brokenness.
We believe that, in the Resurrection, God unites us as one people, in which all are distinct, and all are alike at the same time.
We believe in life eternal, in which no one will be a foreigner, but all will be citizens of the kingdom where God reigns forever and ever.
