Cassidy Steele Dale forecasts and contextualizes the present to equip us to make a better, kinder future…
… and one of those ways to talk about thunder so loud it brings hope.
Last week I talked about The Mother of Exiles and a few other things. Evan Hurst from The Moral High Ground kindly mentioned me (and you should read him — twice over and again on Sundays — if you don’t already) and so now there’s a few hundred more of you here.
Welcome: I’m the futurist who says things it’s too early to believe.
I talk about policy ramifications and faith and the future. I usually write about one or two of those things. But sometimes lightning strikes and you get all three.
Like this week.
So.
This week is the Democratic National Convention but I’m paying very little attention to it because Evan is there and Wonkette is there and the Washington Post and The Atlantic and PBS and NPR and probably every angel from every Wim Wenders film are there.
I have faith in them to handle talking about today. They’ll tell the deep truth. They’ve got those bases covered.
So I’m going to talk about tomorrow.
Two things are on deck to happen in the next decade.
First — and these are stories for another day — by the end of the next decade we’re going to need as many Americans as we can get. It’s mostly good news, though. But so much so that allllllllll the immigration debates of today will become moot.
Second, the day we realize that we will turn back to some words we long ago stamped in bronze and we hung on this country’s front door. And we’ll take those words seriously again. And we’ll need someone to thunder them out loud.
If we survive this year.
Now, this week I saw Raphael Warnock speak at the DNC — not just in support of Kamala Harris — but in support of being kind. Seriously: the biggest cheers he got were for the Golden Rule and for being kind to children.
In case you needed the reminder: Warnock isn’t just a United States Senator from Georgia, he’s the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the same church Martin Luther King pastored.
Raphael Warnock is going to run for president someday. And if he doesn’t, he should.
If Barack Obama’s campaign was about hope in the face of division and despair, and if Joe Biden’s was about coming out of the dark, and if Kamala Harris’ campaign is about joy in-the-burning-face-of-the-even-yet-worse, then a Raphael Warnock campaign will post-date the despair and will be about moral mission: that we should do good.
Win or lose, agree with him or not, victory wouldn’t be the point: A Warnock campaign for president would make us better people.
And the man can preach. From the pulpit he says God loves the nobodies and each of us were once nobodies and maybe we all still are. But in God and in America the nobodies are somebodies. Today, more than ever before, America must NOT just be a Christian nation — America must do much more than that: America must love who God loves. Voting is a moral act. Policy is a moral act. You are a moral actor. You can make the world better and you can make it more just. Every day. ANY day.
Tomorrow he may add: And there should be more Americans. We should call for others to come gather into our fold. Because we need the help and because some of them someday will lead us. Our greatest somebodies all started out as nobodies. So… if you’re a nobody…
But he can’t write every sermon himself. After all, writing even only one sermon a week is about enough to kill any normal pastor to begin with.
Luckily there’s some words that can help him and they’ve been sitting there in the open all this time. Right there at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Just waiting for someone again to pick them back up. Just waiting for someone again to see.
It’s Emma Lazarus’ “The New Colossus.” You know it even if you don’t. You’ll recognize it in a minute.
Lazarus kicks off contrasting the Statue of Liberty with another statue: the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the tallest statues in history and one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The old Colossus said We possess great might; the new Colossus (Lady Liberty) says Baby, true might is no longer what you think it is.
Emma Lazarus told us “The New Colossus” was a poem. And we believed her. And she’s tricked all of us for 140 years. It’s not a poem — it never was. It’s a sermon. She wrote it in 1883 and if she didn’t first get the idea while sitting in a black Baptist church on a Sunday morning then no poet ever has.
Because that “poem” sounds exactly like it’s been waiting for a black Baptist preacher to pick it up, place it on the pulpit, and to bring the thunder.
That “poem” has the cadence of gospel.
That “poem” ain’t meant to be recited all breathless-and-precious-and-prithee-and-yon; it’s meant to be shouted across the land and shouted across the sea. That “poem” is moral covering fire overhead and an invitation to the unwanted and the desperate who are fingernail-clinging onto a bad raft with their children on their backs.
That “poem” is meant to be roared like thunder so loudly it sends hope into the dark. That “poem” shouts Hang on, you are almost home and I am here and Welcome to America.
And we happen to have a black Baptist preacher capable of delivering that thunder just laying around totally under-presidented. And tomorrow is coming up fast.
So imagine that minister stumbling through and misremembering her words at 9,000 decibels over the air and across the Internet — starting out dismissive and hand-waving-away the powerful until he gets his windup wound up — first to the faraway elite and then to those clinging to the raft while he points at HER:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame with conquering limbs astride from land to land…
Here at the edge of OUR land stands a mighty woman with a torch.
Whose FLAME is IMPRISONED LIGHTNING.
HER name The Mother of Exiles.
From HER high hand glows worldwide welcome.
So YOU: the great and the powerful, you keep your pride.
SHE says:
Give ME your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
The wretched refuse of YOUR teeming shore — send THESE, your homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
SHE says: YOU WHO ARE ON THE WAY! Look to ME! Come MY way! I LIFT MY LAMP BESIDE THE GOLDEN DOOR!
And then we will gain the new mighty, the new Americans necessary to continue the great endeavor.
But.
Like I’ve said: I say things it’s too early to believe.
But if you can’t believe any of this just yet — because the screaming problems and fears of today conceal the opportunities of tomorrow — I’ll point this little bit out. And yes, I know it’s just a silly statement of absurd faith and this ain’t science to say but sometimes these days I think God’s done being subtle.
On April 3rd of this year — just a few months ago — God recharged her batteries. God refilled her imprisoned lightning. I have a hunch that she’ll be needed soon and for the next hundred years. She’ll deliver the lightning of hope and, whether you know it yet or not, you will deliver her thunder.
And you will need to roar.
Holy shit, Man, Preach!
To be fair, she's hit about 600 times a year, but I think we may just need that many reminders of who the hell we are supposed to be.