Season 1, Special Episode 35: Susan Cunningham, Danielle Castillejo and Chase Estes present "First Mother"

What are you doing right now? Are you eating? Listening to a podcast? Out for a run or a walk? Heading home from work? Ready to fall asleep?  Maybe you are intentionally doing something to nourish your heart, your body, your mind— your self. Maybe some combination of all of the above. I’m writing at home, not thinking about safety. Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor were doing something ordinary when they were killed. Ahmaud was out for a run, Breonna was asleep. Their lives and deaths bring to mind too many other Black Americans and people of color doing ordinary things in America while facing increasing racial injustice and fear. Almost 65 years ago Rosa Parks wanted to do something ordinary too— sit in her seat on the bus home from work. 

Despite many decades since the modern civil rights movement, more attention is needed particularly from white and privileged christian communities who have been uneducated and silent.  Remembering Rosa Parks gives us an opportunity to learn and to pay attention to both history and current events. She is relevant in both. It does not need to be Black History Month to focus on Rosa Parks. It does not need to be February. We need Rosa Parks this summer and in every season. Her voice teaches us to be more fully human, honor and love God, and all human beings as ourselves. Rosa Parks invites us to listen, stretch, to become collaborators and to work for justice for everybody.

 

FIRST MOTHER 

Roll. Roll, Rosa. Roll down, Rosa. 

Roll down where wheels roll on, Cleveland Avenue bus. 

Move. Move on, Mother. 

Move on back. Move back as this driver orders, Montgomery Police bust. 

Rosa rides the dented yellow, green and white bus home from work where she sews dignified defiance into every garment. 

Rosa Louise McCauley Parks rides. 

Sees through sound glasses in 1955, sensible dignity any day in the way she inhabits her rightful vinyl seat. 

First of December this mother is due. 

Tonight, she sits unmoved, no stopping here. 

So still, Rosa. Accepts deep breaths of arrest, receives this moment thrust 

upon her. Constant kicking, labor, pains, screaming. Undeserved delivery. Giving birth to a boy- cott, Rosa Parks, forbearing mother. 

Twelve years ago when that same bus driver pushed her off that bus, rain, not justice, rolled down. 

An ever-flowing stream 

ran over her, walking, buttoned up topcoat, soaked. What patience courage carries. The face that stops hundreds of busses, moves thousands of feet. 

Do nothing and change everything. Down the road for such a time as this, Rosa. Awaken the pastor, whose dream will preach. 

Feel an honest presence. Marchers swelling like an emotional river still. So many motherless. Stillborn, are too many children of God. 

Console, Rosa. 

Let my people roll. So far and we are not there yet. Go down, Rosa. Even so, Rosa. This is the long way home. 

Susan Cunningham ©Susan Haroutunian Cunningham 2019 

Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.