A word from Dr. Catherine Meeks (originally posted to social media on May 17, 2020).

These days for me are just like yours, some of them are far better than others. Today is a better day. So I want to share out of that space with you this morning.

I have been thinking about Dr. Vincent Harding, historian, speechwriter for Dr. King and all around holy man and his vision of us  “building up a new world in this country.” These thoughts have been accompanied by my writing and thinking about reparations and all of these thoughts are contextualized by this Covid-19 era and what seems to be a new wave of white violence against African Americans.

We constructed this country on the premise of white skin supremacy which was an unsustainable and indefensible premise. Then we partnered that racism with materialism and militarism as the methodology for achieving the goal of keeping white men in power. This way of looking at reality has led us to today.

We are morally bankrupt as a nation. We have thirty million of our sisters and brothers without work. There are food lines being formed in cities across the land because people do not have money or food. There does not really seem to be a plan to speak to that situation in any systematic manner. We still have thousands who are sick with Covid-19 and the prediction is that it will not subside soon. The predictions are that more than fifty to sixty thousand more of us will die by August from this virus and the people who are supposed to be looking out for the common welfare are acting as if that is not really any reason to be alarmed. We hear them saying “well if some folks have to die for the sake of saving the economy, that is just the sacrifice that has to be made.” Really! I wonder which ones of their family members they are prepared to sacrifice.

We are hearing more about individual white men, the group among us that is the most frightened about the possibility of building a new world, taking it upon themselves to use violence against African Americans and other people of color. The home invasions by rogue police officers, the killing of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor are just some of the recent examples. I imagine that there are others that we just don’t know about yet.

This country is a wreck! And we who have faith, we who have the capacity to lament, to grieve and to dive into this wreck with a ” hell no” attitude about accepting it as a final answer, have to stand up to be counted.

We have got,” To Build Up A New World” where regard for all life is practiced and materialism, racism and militarism are not the rule.

Come all of you who are faithful and let’s build up a new world.

Follow Dr. Meeks on Facebook here.