Wednesday
This past Juneteenth I was flipping through channels and caught MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell quoting James Weldon Johnson’s “Creation.” It was a moving application of poetry to this important moment in time.
Mitchell was referring to George Floyd’s plaintive cry “I can’t breathe” before he was suffocated by Minneapolis police. Johnson’s poem, she said, reminds us that the breath of life is sacred:
Up from the bed of the river God scooped the clay; And by the bank of the river He kneeled him down; And there the great God Almighty Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky, Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night, Who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand; This great God, Like a mammy bending over her baby, Kneeled down in the dust Toiling over a lump of clay Till he shaped it in is his own image; Then into it he blew the breath of life, And man became a living soul. Amen. Amen.
Contrast these two images: On the one hand, God kneels down in the dust and toils over his creation like an African American mother bending over her baby. On the other, Derek Chauvin kneels on Floyd’s neck, cutting off his breath as he cries out for his mother.
I love the poet’s awe at how the same deity that created the cosmos would expend such care over a a single living soul. This god who is not afraid to get his hands dirty is one that Johnson’s African American audience can relate to. In the eyes of God, black lives matter.
