O holy night?
so, i was reflecting on our fourth and final PAAC advent installment: love and found myself mindlessly singing along to o holy night…
long lay the world in sin and error pining,
till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.
a thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
for yonder breaks a new and glorious morrrn,
faaaall…. on your knees
hmm….
on this new and glorious morn,
those lyrics just echoed back like:
totaaaal depravvittyyyyy
o, total! depravity!!!!
o, KNIGHT! DIVINE!
o, knight, commmee save meeee
from total depravityyyy—
/over the world a star is sweetly gleaming
here come the wise men from the ORIENNT LANNND?.........
behold your KING
BEFORE HIM LOWLY BENNNNDDD /
//CHAIINS SHALL HE BREAAK FOR
THE SLAVE IS OUR BROTHER?????
oooo, holyyyyy— fuuuck
are we still singing about the orient?
did white christians sing this lyric
about slavery for hundreds of years?
in the words of my 2018 beloved,
Shuri, daughter of T’Chaka,
don’t scare me like that, colonizer!
…and that’s how o holy night was pulled from our installment of love.
INSTEAD,
here’s a rewriting of the magnificat for our day by Ophelia Hu Kinney
and a version of madonna and child
for a better version type in “Joann H Lee” into Facebook
but for this one,
please check back at the end of eternity.
i am still reconstructing the face of Christ
And in the home of the Senator, Mary said:
I adore you, my Heavenly Mama.
My soul is laden with joy,
And it swings to the sound of Her name,
For She has chosen me - a teenager, a rebel, a small-town girl.
You know that the lineages of our people are written by men,
And yet from now on,
All generations will call me blessed.
For our Mama has shown Her might.
Her essence is sacred.
Like a steady rain, Mama is merciful and gentle from generation to generation.
She has shown strength with her arm;She has scattered the proud with the back of her hand.
She has dragged the powerful from their thrones by their starched shirt collars,
And she will raise up the poor that they've preyed upon - the children, the elders, the students, the hopeless.
She has held in her hand and crushed the peddlers of white supremacy,
And she will heal the millennia of wounds upon Her Black, Native, Latinx, Asian, and Pacific Islander children.
She has confounded the plans of the ableists,
And She will favor the minds and the bodies of Her disabled beloveds.
She has brought the insatiable demon of capitalism to heel,
And She will whisper between our heartstrings the possibility for something new.
She has ordered transphobia and homophobia to lay in their grave,
And She will liberate her trans and queer children.
She has shown preference for the most marginalized,
The most restless, the most hungry, the most ready,
As she always does, and as is in her nature.
According to the promise She made to our ancestors,
To Abraham, to Sarah, and to their descendants in flesh and in spirit forever.