Look At God
Staff from First Unitarian Church of Portland were asked to write a weekly reflection during this time. Here’s one from me, published on December 7, 2020.
I don’t know how to talk about mystery, but I do know how to talk about God. Perhaps, for me, they are the same thing. At least, perhaps they are related.
I will now give you a peek into the ways of my people — my people being those who know or knew, understand or once understood God through the particular experiences of Black American Christianity; that ancient faith stolen from my ancestors, then perverted and forced back upon my ancestors, and now something wholly new and unique. I offer you this glimpse, even though I do not fully trust most of you with it. After all, you have not all proven to be able to handle the stories of my people well, with love and respect, and without pillaging them for cultural artifacts to wear around your necks and mouths. Still, I offer it because I know only how to speak of myself.
If you spend enough time around my people, you are bound to hear one of us proclaim, “Look at God!” Sometimes we shout it with excitement and enthusiasm. Sometimes it collapses out of our bodies with desperate relief. Sometimes it is said confidently, as though it were the most ordinary and obvious utterance possible in that moment. “Look at God,” which is to say, “This blessing was undeserved, or unexpected, or unlikely, but I needed it and it is now mine. I couldn’t have done it on my own, and I’m grateful. God be praised!”
On a telephone call with my older sister recently, she said, “I’ma tell you like I always tell you — If you didn’t have good luck, you wouldn’t have any luck at all.” I smiled when she said it because, of course, she is right. My life has not followed any conventional course, and my career is the most clear evidence of that. Nothing in my journey should have led to me being a systems administrator for a Los Angeles regional theater, or a classical singer with an international career, or a small town choir director for a big church in Portland, Oregon. I have worked very hard to get to where I am, but any person can tell you that hard work alone is insufficient, and this is before even considering the impacts of societal white supremacy.
I wonder if this is what it means to be redeemed. Leon Bridges sings in “River”, “Tip me in your smooth waters. I go in as a man with many crimes, come up for air as my sins flow down the Jordan.” There have been too many times to recall where my mistakes, my stubbornness, or my station have pinned me into a seemingly inescapable corner. Hell, I see the police every single day and am somehow still alive. By some measure of love-soaked grace, I am always offered a pass, a way out, a way forward. Baptism, if you will. Redemption. As such, “Love Lifted Me” sings in my heart and “look at God” stumbles from my throat, with daily gratitude for the mystery.
Are there times in your life when you’ve somehow made it through, and maybe shouldn’t have? Can you identify a force in your life that has aided you through moments of feeling powerless or hopeless? It is not necessary to call that God, only to express thanks however feels most true to you.
You can watch and/or hear Leon Bridges’s “River” below.
