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Queries - Virtual Worship for White Friends Confronting Racism

Resources for newcomers:

What happens in Quaker worship?

White Friends Confronting Racism Worship Guide

What are queries?

2/8/2024 Queries

Cornell West: “Justice is what love looks like in public...“

Queries

In my own life, how does love compel me in my work for Justice?

In the places where love and justice are separate, what separates them? How can I bridge that separation?

Th[e]] poem [below] is by Helen Morgan Brooks (1904-1989), a Quaker and a poet from the Philadelphia region. Brooks was born in Reading, Pennsylvania and worked as a dietician and educator throughout her adult life. At the age of 52 she became a member of Arch Street meeting in Philadelphia, and served on several boards and committees of local Friends organizations, including Pendle Hill and Friends Journal.

Double chain

Portray her as you will.

If you see a black Queen's grace,

a slattern or a wench

beneath the pale yellow of her face,

try to conjure from your mind

the will and soul to learn

this strange alchemy of her race.

If you of one continuous strain

of tranquil thought and blood

Back through 100 years or more,

would call once to that strange

god-made protoplasm,

that lithe body that walks with measured tread;

those eyes that see, the ears that hear,

the tongue that speaks your language

or some other God-like nations;

who reads and learns, who lives and loves;

Who sickens as you do and dies;

she never will be free,

but bound fast with iron bands,

or, stranger still,

with chains of heritage

to the songs of her soul,

the soul of an ancestral slave

that makes her in the dead of night

morn in softly to herself;

I am bound I am bound can't be free

Soul save yourself and then save me

I am bound and can't be free

How often have you called back down to her,

when deep, the soul still cries aloud:

I am climbing Jacob’s ladder Ladder Ladder

I am climbing Jacob’s Ladder,

​​2/8/2024 Queries

2/8/2024 Queries