Juneteenth: The Holiness of the Holiday
Holiday-(from Old English; halig (holy) daeg (day)
This is a holy holiday.
The day they removed the chains, opened the shackles and freed us, or so they said. The day they decided to recognize that we might, after all be human.
And no, they did not have the right to declare us human, and they didn’t free us. Free was not theirs to bestow.
Free: We were created that way by the Author of freedom.
And listen we knew then what we know now, and we should celebrate
that our souls had flown beyond bondage, had never been bought or sold.
And listen, we would not be alive today if we hadn’t known that,
if that had not been in our very heartbeats, in our veins,
in the blood we sweated that was let upon their instruments.
So America freed itself, from being enslavers,
from believing they had a right to buy and sell human flesh.
So yes, holy is the fact that they decided it was wrong to own a person who was, oh, by the way, human; so holy it is that they realized the horror of chaining and abusing and selling people, and what it was doing to themselves.
and that admission is holy.
So yes, we knew then what we know now, that our souls could fly free, and that’s really what they fear, the haters, because so many of us know the truth.
We emancipated ourselves from the slavery of self-lies.
And when people do that they can never belong to anyone, and they are unstoppable, and that too is holy. 157 years ago America started on a journey toward being human, to free itself from non-human behavior, and yes, that is a holy thing, to emancipate one’s soul from hatred; that is holy work.
And so yes, it was holy and heavenly freedom to drop the chains, and hallelujah for that liberation from hell, (even if they could only go so far as saying we were 3/5 of a person) and yes we should celebrate that our bodies are now free to be what the soul knows to be true, (even if a woman’s body is still at risk).
And yes, we should celebrate that there were some folks who wanted to be liberated more than they wanted to enslave us, and for that we say hallelujah as well.
And so holy now is the prayer that those folks who are still caught in the dream of white supremacy will wake up, will unlock their chains someday and dance the holy dance.
And that will truly be hallelujah, and amen, and a holy holiday.
© Linda Beatrice Brown
Photo Credit: 42811181 | © Michal Bednarek | Dreamstime.com