Written in loving memory and honor of my mother, Mrs. Rosa B. Porter—

whose faith taught me that every ruin still hides a root of resurrection.

To the chagrin of a nation, the East Wing of the White House—the People’s House—is being razed to the ground. A grand ballroom was once promised, a space meant for gatherings, dignity, and the dance of democracy. But now, it stands as a dinosaur to history. Poof! Whisk! Gone! All for the pomposity and pride of one man’s outsized ego.

History sighs:

We’ve seen this before.

The Temple of Judaism has endured several destructions over the last three millennia—each one tugging at the collective heart and pathos of a people tossed aside like a rag used to sop up the world’s waste. But, "ah me", the waste we see now —how verdant it once appeared, how envied by the nations—and yet, behold, its greenery runs red, sanguine with the blood that drips arrhythmically from the piercings of our  hearts.

And we, the people, this people—those whom Curtis Mayfield referred to as “darker than blue”—we understand. We know why, and how, sixty-six years later, Miles Davis’s 'Kind of Blue' still floats in the ether—languid, unequalled, holy in its melancholy. Because blues that deep don’t fade. They ferment into wisdom.

After the third destruction of the Temple, the winds of history began to shift direction. The followers of Yahweh and Allah, it seemed, held quiet court, urging their children - of Abraham, Sarah and, yes, of Hagar, - the first person to ever name God (Gen 16:13) - toward peace. The prophets’ words echoed through the rubble: “The glory of this latter house shall be greater than the former.” (Haggai 2:9).

Yet how could Zerubbabel’s modest frame ever rival Solomon’s splendor? Never in scale, nor scope; no—but perhaps in spirit. For the Holy does not measure greatness in gold, but in faith that rises from ashes.

And so, the old makes room for the new. The pendulum must swing if time is to move at all. Rachel still weeps for her children, and her heritage is hard to find. The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved (Jeremiah 8:20).

Zora Neale Hurston knew this lament. Dust Tracks on a Road is her saga, herstory of crucifixion and resurrection—the long ache of a soul reborn through struggle and song.

And do we not hear the elegiac sigh of the Renaissance of Harlem's poet, Countee Cullen, when he muses, “And yet I consider it a curious thing / That God would make a poet Black, and bid him sing”? These, too, are temple songs—verses rising from the ruins, testifying that beauty can still be born of sorrow.

But listen—listen close. Even in the falling of nations and the razing of houses, the Spirit hums a blue note, Melvin, beneath the noise. There is still a song left to sing.

And though it sings through pain—sing it must.

Yes—"Mama, I wanna sing."

To sing "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow is Enuf,”

and for men, boys, and peoples everywhere who are called to “rage, rage against the dying of the light,”

and to sing on, even in the dry place where songs go silent.

No resurrection comes without remembering.

The scar becomes the story,

the story becomes the song,

and the song—like morning—rises.

Not in the glare of noonday brightness,

but in that tender, trembling light that promises day.

For there is "a land that is fairer than". And until that day "the Lord will make a way, Somehow!"  (Mama's favorite song)