It is Tuesday morning after the debacle in IOWA. We don’t know the caucus results yet, but the delay and the mistrust after the screw up with the data transmission hurts the potential frontrunners and helps the laggers. Make of that what you will. More frighteningly, it has given rise to tons of conspiracy theories, and adds worry to scenarios where technology is all we have in the election – not the paper trail that is still there to count in IA. Most frighteningly, the voter turnout, by the information we have at this time, was not as high as expected. If that translates into the general election, we have reason to be fearful. Clouds hanging over us.

Sunday morning’s walk at the riverfront took place with the clouds coming in. Or going out, who knows in this crazy weather world anymore.

The mood expressed by the graffiti was dark as well.

Some fearful:

Some angry.

Knowing how I could go home to a dry house, a filled pantry, a privileged life, made me feel ashamed while thinking about the youth or whoever it is who express their rage and fear for us to see, mostly unheard. Watching the homeless shuffle along the Esplanade, trying to keep warm, caused a sense of continued helplessness.

Thinking about how many people I know who feel for those who suffer, but also increasingly express compassion fatigue, when they deal with the detritus or the shootings at night or the dangers of garbage fires. There was a moment there, on that walk, where I just longed for peace. For all. Which is, of course, unobtainable without justice. So we must be allies in the struggle. Thoughts just in time for the beginning of Black History Month as well.

Here is a text poem by Jamaican born Claudia Rankine, echoing the sentiment,

from Don’t Let Me Be Lonely

By Claudia Rankine

Mahalia Jackson is a genius. Or Mahalia Jackson has genius. The man I am with is trying to make a distinction. I am uncomfortable with his need to make this distinction because his inquiry begins to approach subtle shades of racism, classism, or sexism. It is hard to know which. Mahalia Jackson never finished the eighth grade, or Mahalia’s genius is based on the collision of her voice with her spirituality. True spirituality is its own force. I am not sure how to respond to all this. I change the subject instead.

We have just seen George Wein’s documentary, Louis Armstrong at Newport, 1971. In the auditorium a room full of strangers listened to Mahalia Jackson sing “Let There Be Peace on Earth” and stood up and gave a standing ovation to a movie screen. Her clarity of vision crosses thirty years to address intimately each of us. It is as if her voice has always been dormant within us, waiting to be awakened, even though “it had to go through its own lack of answers, through terrifying silence, (and) through the thousand darknesses of murderous speech.”

Perhaps Mahalia, like Paul Celan, has already lived all our lives for us. Perhaps that is the definition of genius. Hegel says, “Each man hopes and believes he is better than the world which is his, but the man who is better merely expresses this same world better than the others.” Mahalia Jackson sings as if it is the last thing she intends to do. And even though the lyrics of the song are, “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me,” I am hearing, Let it begin in me.

Let us be uplifted.