Chains on the Headstone - March 16, 2023

Even in death, not all is lost.

Sometimes the view of others continues to dictate a person’s fate long after they are gone. I saw this for myself in a Black cemetery in St. Augustine. A sign explained that carved chains on a headstone indicated the person had been born a slave.

That truth is real. We cannot ignore the fact that people were stolen, brought here, enslaved, and born into slavery. And yet, just over a hundred years later, so few people are willing to fully acknowledge the human-rights violations our forefathers enacted in both the formation and the maintenance of this country.

In some ways, I feel that I, too, will be buried with chains engraved upon my own headstone.

Not because I was born a slave in the literal sense, but because my bloodline still carries the mark of force, settlement, colonialism, power, order, and domination. I did not choose the actions of my forefathers, yet I live in a body and lineage shaped by them. So the question becomes:

How can I use what was handed to me by my bloodline... not to repeat history, but to redirect it?

How can I use that same inherited capacity for order, action, and influence in service of restoring human rights rather than violating them?

After walking through the forgotten, naturally weathered Black cemetery, I noticed a second cemetery next door... Lincoln and I kept, orderly, preserved. As I drove through it, I saw no gravestones marked with chains. When I found the groundskeeper, I asked him about the separation.

He explained that in 1886 the Federation established that cemetery. He told me about other burial grounds in the area too, including mass graves left behind from times when people were exterminated in the name of what some called “progress.”

As he spoke, I felt my heart beating in my chest with a strange and sober clarity:

These people are not the only slaves.

The white men, too, became victims of their own hands. Now they all lie here in rows, silently waiting for the ones they loved to come remember them.

In death, so much is forgotten.

It takes time for reality to catch up with progress. It takes time for a nation to admit that many of our grandparents were raised by cultures shaped by slave owners, crusaders, settlers, and men who believed God had appointed them to shape history at the expense of other human beings. It takes time to name the systems of violence that were disguised as order, religion, civilization, and advancement.

And I sit with the awareness of how far things have gone while these so-called slaves lie silently in the earth, as though asking:

Have you come to save us? Have you come to make things right?

That question stops me.

Because it reminds me of all the moments in my life when I tried to be a savior... when I tried to save the living from the destructive timelines I could see taking their light away.

But this feels different.

This is not about saving the living from themselves. This is about standing for the dead... for those who suffered human-rights violations so severe that even in burial they were marked by bondage.

This is about witnessing what happened and refusing to let history remain spiritually unexamined.

At the deepest level, I understand that my soul was guided to this moment to witness a simple truth:

It only takes one person with passion and an idea to change the way the world sees itself.

So today, I pray for the souls still wandering and waiting, still pining and praying, that they... and we... may receive recognition for our humanness beyond the categories that divided us.

Beyond slave and slave owner. Beyond native and settler .Beyond those who had and those who had not. Beyond royalty and poverty. Beyond the loud and the voiceless. Beyond status, role, inheritance, and shame.

I pray that we may align our intentions with our actions.

I pray for acceptanc... not acceptance that excuses what happened, but the kind that fully acknowledges it so that healing may begin. I pray for consciousness that leads to peace. Peace that leads to consideration. Consideration that leads to conversation. Conversation that leads to internal reckoning. And from that reckoning, a passion for progress and a redefinition of human rights.

Today, I pray for a deeper awareness of what it means to be human.

Today, I pray for remembrance.

Today, I pray for peace among men.

The Beautiful Story Never Told, Jo He and Mai Taeo

"I awake in a new town with my windows frosted and my pup offering kisses."