This image is of Peggy (R), then a 19 year-old SNCC member, next to future civil rights icon, Dr. Dorothy Cotton (L), after a 1962 church burning in Georgia—the state that Peggy's great-great grandparents, William & Ellen Craft, famously escaped from slavery nearly 115 years earlier...
MY
WEEKLY
WORD
9.5.20
Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely
Dr. Dorothy Cotton
So, there have been yet more ongoing and verified revelations that this administration has no bottom, including the latest denigration of active duty military, veterans, KIAs, MIAs and POWs (even as a non-violence activist, I'd never unequivocally state they are "suckers" and "losers", especially since my father was a WWII vet and my husband, Earnie, served in the U.S. Army). But despite the daily onslaught of this administration's lies and incompetence, I want you all to continue holding on to hope, because if we had hope as young college SNCC students in the South during the '60s under constant and real threats of death, you can--you MUST--absolutely have hope, too...
HEART. HARVEST. HOPE.
by Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely
Some, like the weeds they are, continue to twist their crooked paths
pushing, burrowing into the collective consciousness
desperately seeking to tunnel into our hearts.
Hearts though contain hope; a brilliance that refuses to be extinguished or snuffed out.
The heart is more often courageous and will not be contained or fooled.
The heart remains steadfast on its insistent journey.
The heart parts the weeds in its determination to love.
Love does not always emerge initially.
Sometimes it lingers, waiting, will not be rushed.
Other times it bursts forth and explodes in its zeal to harbor and gather up all the hatred
and neutralize the ignorance.
Patience…cry these loving, hopeful hearts…do not despair
It is the harvest season.
In this September heat we are planting bold expectations, kernels yet to ripen.
Let us permit this season of death to be buried.
We do not always see the fruits in their budding, hidden as they may be, but some of us are
seasoned planters...
urban farmers...
descendants of this earth...
this hostile land we toiled
and we know that waiting brings an anxious expectation
that the fields are birthing their seeds from within.
Great God, let us soon witness this new harvest!
We pray that it yields a bountiful, hopeful crop,
ripe with a healing justice for all
that will flourish amidst the rocky, rotting soil that has covered our land,
lo these nearly four years.
Let us expect a new blooming
Gather in a great Heart-Harvest of Hope.
© 2020 Peggy Trotter Dammond Preacely. All rights reserved.