I just need to stop, just for a moment, to move my soul back from bailouts, handouts, heartache, and setbacks. I hope you will not mind if I hold tight to the thought of the 5th. of November, that we will all remember, and that will be for reasons that my ancestors, contrary to what I used to think, did see.

They did see reason in the times of tears and pain. When troubles ran down like rain upon a river of lies and human perfidy, yeah, I could not allow myself, as an AfricanAmerican woman, to think on it too deeply for too long, because despair can paralyze. But they also knew that balance is inexorable, as do we all. Rev. Dr. King reminded us '...we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream...' And so, I humbly submit, in this time of choosing leadership that is the mirror of ourselves, the American 'we' can gain our strength to fight from the certainty of our new Jubilee, and remembering that we are gathered here and everywhere, and work with all of our hearts to bring about that great good getting up, on the fifth of November, in the morning.


Let us let the poet take us to the river:

I've known rivers:
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
   flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
   went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
   bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.


The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Langston Hughes