Week 16: Sunday Service Announcements

The walls are trembling. Do you hear them? The trumpet is sounding. Do you feel it? Jericho is falling.

Smile through the pain, time heals and keep your faith.

Normalize how hard it is sometimes to keep the faith smiling through the pain because it feels like time is only prolonging the healing.

We have conditioned one another for generations to accept the abuse and torture to keep the peace. What if we all woke up from the daze that peace is outside of ourselves?

We sit in church, a place we should be able to show up as ourselves, masked in our old and broken identities.

We hold on to the people who hurt us and let go of the ones who trigger change for the better proving that we don’t want to heal.

We are addicted to the pain and the suffering.

We create it when it’s not there.

We thrive off operating in survival mode because that is the only level we have mastered.

We sing our songs and fake a smile when deep down we might crash out if we see one more Black person treated as three-fourths of a human…one more time.

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Writing the Walls of Jericho Down

Katz Llale

Brothers and sisters, I greet you not just as writers, but as messengers. As those who have been called to the sacred task of seeing what others cannot yet see and speaking it into existence. For when the world was formless and void, it was the Word that shaped it. And so it is with us.

As writers, our work is not small. We are the architects of worlds yet to come, even when the present world trembles under the weight of its own destruction. Long before nations rose, it was writers who imagined them. Long before chains broke, it was writers who penned the visions of freedom. It is writers who saw chains fall away while everything around them was still shackled.

With every stroke of the pen, we are not merely writers, but instruments—divine vessels of vision. We do not write to amuse; we write to usher in change, to reflect the essence of God upon the earth.

We are, in many ways, the prophets of our time, holding within us the reckoning of our generation. Like the biblical seers who proclaimed the coming of a New Jerusalem, we announce the dawn of a world not yet realized, a world still waiting to be written into being.

Because writing is an otherworldly pursuit. To write is to draw out the essence of God and reflect it back to the world. That is why we marvel at words—why there are some words that feel like we are coming undone—bringing us to the end of ourselves.

“Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.”

—Exodus 33:20

When we write, we are drawing near to that Holy face. We cannot write and remain unchanged; something within us must die, something within this broken world must fall away. We cannot write and expect the forces of oppression to remain. We cannot write and injustice stands. Because to see the face of God is to witness the end of all that stands against His kingdom.

Our words, then, are like the trumpet sounds that brought the walls of Jericho down. These walls—whether they be oppression, injustice, inequality, or the very systems that uphold brokenness—must fall. Just as the walls of Jericho crumbled at the sound of the trumpet, so too must these forces collapse under the weight of truth spoken through our words.

Jericho is not just a place—it is the stronghold of all that resists God's justice. It is the place where the powerful cling to their fortresses while the oppressed stand on the outside, awaiting deliverance. And we, with our pens as trumpets, write until those walls fall down. We write not in vain but in the assured hope that God’s justice is imminent, that every word of liberation, of truth, and of freedom calls the dawn of a new world.

Because as we stand here, the world is on fire. The devastation is all around us, in every corner of the globe. War, man-induced catastrophes, inequality, and the erosion of human dignity. But even amidst this fire, we write. We write because we believe in the power of words to change the course of history. We write to fan the flames of revolution. To announce that, even in the face of crumbling systems, something new can be born. Will be born.

“The writer cannot expect to be excused from the task of re-education and regeneration that must be done. In fact, he should march right in front”

—Chinua Achebe

So I charge you today, my fellow writers, my fellow prophets, keep writing. Keep proclaiming. Keep believing that your words, your holy utterances, are the sound of Jericho’s end. For we are not simply speaking into the void; we are speaking life into the dry bones of this world. We are declaring to the powers that be: you may stand for now, but your days are numbered. With each word, with each sentence, we are pulling down strongholds, breaking chains, and writing the world into liberation.

The walls are trembling. Do you hear them? The trumpet is sounding. Do you feel it?

Jericho is falling.

Your fellow writer in arms,

Katz

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Noticing How I Feel Here.

Najah Amatullah

rage
agony
abandonment
injustice

I have been in a group meditation and Dharma practice for about four months. Many Buddhists believe that we have all we need in our bodies. It always takes me a long time to see the effects of practices like yoga and meditation. Recently, the group discussed my trigger topic: loneliness. But I handled it so well because… SURPRISE! Stillness works; I had the soothing and regulation in my body.

We have all heard the James Baldwin quote.

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost all of the time”

Baldwin et al., 1961, p. 205

Baldwin moved around the world in order to temporarily take the pressure off of BEING in this country. I also feel rage about it all. But the anger for me is always a mask for some brand of sadness.

I grew up around a lot of yt people. I’m a safe and palatable Black person (it doesn’t save me from being an intelligent and outspoken, aka smart-mouthed, woman, but we’ll return to feminism later). My sadness is rooted in the way I have always seen them as human, I have allowed them to be round, to have flaws as well as virtue, to grow and change and adapt. I am heartbroken by the adult nuanced understanding that my individual grace for all humans is a pebble sliding down the mountain of a world where colonizers overtly offend the humanity of the Indigenous and then normalize new societies around that offense.

I was firmly in my woke protest era before I moved to Guatemala. I only went to one rally, but I regularly used my online platforms to advocate on behalf of Black and Brown students’ implied-but-never-funded right to a free public education. I didn’t have childcare so I only had my social media to amplify the cause of Julius Jones. And at the last minute, I allowed my empathy and faith to outrank my fear of judgment and being too late. I used my generational gift of intercession to publicly appeal to all the gods for justice on Jones’s behalf.

And his execution was stayed. 

It wasn’t because of me. I’m just thankful my intentions and actions were well-placed. 

When I moved to teach at a rich private “American” school in Guatemala, I knew I would not be living a “regular” person’s life. I consoled myself with the narrative that my dedication to an undervalued profession earned me some modicum of luxury. I looked to Baldwin, and Nina Simone, to assuage my guilt at leaving my life to live a life made possible by other types of colonization. Personal reparations but with a catch.

In year one, that worked just fine. I was focused on my master’s thesis, language learning, and building friendships.

But that second year was still fresh and new when I realized the disconnect occurring between my body’s connection to its ancestry and my body’s actual location. I wrote a poem called “Notes from October” about all of the different directions my empathy was being pulled. 

Las noticias
the news
the noticings
…
New lines,
might not notice
the wide expanse between them -
wider than a picket,
not as wide as a Strip.
So many less reasons to click
than a headline,
a notice,
the news.
If only I knew less,
I’d be moved to make
a closer change
in case Grandma is right
about the end of days.

a Maryland shooting at the campus of my favorite person. 

Gaza. 

I won’t open this floodgate on this post. 

And then, right there in the capital city of my temporary home was an election that seemed like “the people” would win against “the powers that be.” As is typical of those in power, there was an alleged plot to thwart an election result that was not in their favor. 

Protests in the streets

Leaders near me using the word “riot.” Me wondering if they teach some sort of class on disdain and disregard for human suffering or if people learn it through observation.

Because how was it possible that I was watching the same thing happen in Guatemala City as Trump has always done in the US? Attempts to seize power in the way of a conqueror, despite living in a “civil” society where we vote rather than taking up arms. 

How was it possible that Palestinians begging for land, because land is life, is the same as Mayan Guatemalans begging for their vote to count so they can move forward in a “civil” society without further destroying their land? 

And from a distance, every protest rally looks the same: a crowd of humans trying to appeal for mercy and justice with one voice.

Black Lives Matter
Pride
March on Washington
sit ins 
Suffragettes

I ran, but I couldn’t escape. It’s like empathy hurts more the further it has to travel. I thought the opposite would be true, that I would watch home on the screen and feel my empathy reach out while my safe, calm body soothed it. 

In fact, I experienced empathy on the land where I was, empathy for the land between the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee, empathy for the US East Coast, and also OklaHOMEa and elsewhere. I really just felt ungrounded. Rootless.

It has all come back to me and I’m noticing in myself, a pattern of escapism and dissociation. This pattern is not selfishness; it’s a poor attempt at self-preservation. It’s fight or flight, moment to moment, fleeing from the feelings until I have sat down without my daughter, without my students, and carved out a place for myself to fight. It’s mismanagement of my empathy and sensitivity.

This fleeing is a delay, where a shield is a tool. The avoidance is a bandaid, without healing or protection. 

And these last two weeks, I didn’t engage in the last-minute calls to intercede for Marcellus Williams because I am tired of throwing pebbles at mountains. I have not yet figured out how to operate a bulldozer. I cannot do that with my simply what I carry in my body.

So here I am, back in Oklahoma, in the thick of election season, and my nerves remember where they were a year ago. They know the memories are coming. The compound trauma of a thousand papercuts and a hundred small flesh wounds. 

ungrounded empathy
lost
loss
bracing
pent up energy

So I sat down in a Zoom call yesterday, and in my car and at my laptop this morning and allowed the tears to come. I sharpened my most effective offensive weapon, my ability to tell the story as true as I know it, and I took a few practice swings.

I haven’t finished grieving the change in my plans. My first set of roots are in Houston. On an alternate timeline, I’d be living there, teaching high school ELA. On this timeline, I’m living in my grandmother’s house in the city I wanted to leave,
and my time belongs to me,
and another Black man was incarcerated then killed,
and we are celebrating the hertitage and legacy of spiritual resistance and protection, 
and I am trying to stop fleeing, 
and I am descended from those who fought back, 
and poetry always heals at least a little, 
and October can be so busy but I’m demanding that there be rest.

I want to tell you so much more.

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Prayer Hotline

I pray your most audacious ancestors come to the front to guide and support you.

I pray you fill your cup before filling up everyone else’s.

I pray in those moments you want to give up your most courageous ancestors stand by your side and aid in the hard work that needs to be done for you to make it through this liminal space.

I pray as you lean more into following your heart your most loving ancestors nurture and soften your hard shell.

I pray you feel worthy of the life you desire, and believe it.

I pray you realize you are worth it.

I pray you set yourself free from the shackles you placed on yourself.

I pray you find peace within yourself and stop depending on the world to give it to you.

I pray you take the first step towards your desires.

I pray you make having grace for yourself a non-negotiable regimen.

I pray for you when I pray for me, I love you.

Amen.

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If you missed the announcement last week, Sunday Dinner: Soul Food newsletter series will publish on First Sundays to fill our spirits right before we meet for Writers Circle.

The intention behind

btheglitch

’s creative idea was to spark conversation like we would at the dinner table for Sunday Dinner, but with the

BlackStack

spin to it. I’m so pleased with the way the series has started and I look forward to witnessing this series develop over the next few months.