The dream deferred life continues
My intense post election sadness
Langston Hughes asked, what happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
A dream is akin to hope. Scripture tells us in Proverbs 13:12, hope deferred makes the heart sick but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. Heart sickness is something I know a little too well. After a couple of bouts with unrequited love, I told myself that I never wanted to feel heart sickness again. Though I don’t know that it is completely avoidable. The heart wants what the heart wants. Any prolonged longing is bound to be felt as some degree of heart sickness. No one chooses for their hope to be deferred. It just happens. As such, in my view, it’s not really avoidable.
I haven’t been able to pinpoint exactly how I feel about the 2024 presidential election results. On a macro-level, I’ve been able to find the words to accurately express my perspective. However, on a micro-level, on a personal level, I’ve been searching for the words. Sorrow seems to be the overarching emotion. No matter which angle I look at the situation from, sorrow is very much in the mix of emotions that I feel. When I turn more inward, I shudder at the potential for my life, hopes and dreams becoming collateral damage in this colossal electoral blunder. Make no mistake about it, I don’t shudder merely at the thought. I shudder at the very serious and very realistic possibilities that I won’t come through this time in history unscathed.
Certainly, I’m not the only one that felt the terrible body blow that the election results delivered. I’m certainly not the only one still reeling from it. What’s not clear to me, however, is how many see the pending fallout as an abstraction. What’s not clear to me is who else sees how their personal lives will be adversely impacted. What’s not clear to me is who all has really internalized how much of a regression this is. What’s not clear to me is who believes that in fairly short order, their hopes and dreams might very well be relegated to deferred status tossed into the TBD pile with no indication of ever being revisited as a priority.
Sounds dreadful and dramatic, right?
Well if you know me then you know I’m not one to flourish. I don’t traffic in hyperbole and exaggeration. My personality type does default to being fatalistic, meaning I tend to look at all possible outcomes both good and bad. Not really in an effort to change my fate, but to not be devastated should the worst case present itself. I’ve said previously that decatastrophizing was a go-to tactic of mine to alleviate fear and anxiety.
As much as we like to say things have not changed, we cannot deny the progress we have experienced as a nation. We progressed to a point that me and my generation have been fortunate enough to live out our ancestors’ dreams. We progressed enough for me to believe that if I were to grab hold to a clear vision for my life and pursue it that I could find success. We progressed to a point that I’m not supposed to fathom my vision contending with draconian governmental forces.
Regression was not on my bingo card and now the idea of it, actually the likelihood of it, has thrown me emotionally and spiritually off-balance. While I’ve been searching and listening, I have yet to hear a word that steadies my spirit, focuses my faith and makes me feel strong. At the same time, I must make note of the fact that yet to hear does not mean I will never hear or receive that type of word. Like I said many are still reeling including those we turn to for hope in times of despair. It may take a good minute for them to receive what thus saith the Lord.
It’s just that I was hoping that I would experience a repeat of what happened to me spiritually after the 2016 presidential election. In that first week, I felt such heaviness that I found my way to Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, looking to a receive a word and Rev. Otis Moss III did not disappoint. The heaviness was lifted and I left the sanctuary feeling fine. This time around I looked to Trinity again. Only this time via YouTube live stream.
*the sermon starts around the 1-hour mark
This time around Rev. Moss delivered a word that resonated with me, but I wouldn’t describe it as strengthening. I would describe it as sobering. He subtitled his sermon, There is still an assignment for the brokenhearted. He talked about being called in spite of, because of, and in memory of. In spite of circumstances, because of our faith, and in memory of our ancestors.
The call on my life, the vision, the hope, the dream is not contingent upon any opposition. However the potential staunch opposition I may now face requires an elevation of my faith to pursue the vision I believe God gave me. We may now be entering a time that requires the faith that Dr. King both articulated and embodied, you can kill the dreamer but not the dream. Our ancestors embodied that type of faith serving as examples that me and my generation can persist likewise. Their dreams were deferred to future generations. My dream may be deferred just the same. The prospect of it all breaks my heart just like it broke theirs. Yet we are called anyhow.
Like I said, a very sobering word. Perhaps at this stage in our collective grief, this is the only resolve we can muster. I’m very much still processing and I pray that in the next two months before the new regime is installed that I move from sober to strong. For now though, I’m letting my sadness and even my anger be known for it is all I that feel when I think about this horrendous decision and all that it portends. As much as I want to feel something else, I don’t.
I’ve sat in solemn reflection these past two weeks. I thought about how in the past I grappled with possibly being ahead of my time and accordingly my dream being deferred. I was able to come to grips with that and move forward in faith anyhow. So simply having my hope deferred is not what’s upsetting. What I find unforgivable is being considered ahead of my time because someone else rolled back the clock. What I find unforgivable is the fact that this impending doom was very much preventable.
Preventable yet also predictable. Mark Twain says history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes. I opened this piece with Langston Hughes and I’ll let him rhyme us out, as he poetically reminds us that for as long as the dreams of Americans like me remain deferred, the dream of America also remains deferred.
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!Onward, even with a broken heart, and Harmonious Balance, my friends!
Johanna
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“What I find unforgivable is being considered ahead of my time because someone else rolled back the clock. What I find unforgivable is the fact that this impending doom was very much preventable. Preventable yet also predictable.”
Wow, ahead of my time because they turned back the clock. Still sitting and processing with you. Thanks for this.