Attending the Dedication of Equal Justice Initiative's National Monument Sculpture Park
Joined by fellow Thistle Farmers and Champions of Love justice leaders, we spent Juneteenth at the Equal Justice Initiative's dedication of the National Monument to Freedom Sculpture Park in Montgomery, Alabama.
Moments and images are popping up like heated kernels of corn!
The first moment was the opening musical piece performed by Anthony McGill, first clarinet in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
Standing in front of the Freedom Wall, Anthony started to play his solo to an outdoor audience just as the Montgomery train rolled by with a blaring horn.
The lesser of us might have stopped playing.
How can a clarinet compete with a train whistle warning? Somehow when the the two were juxtaposed it filled me with hope.
We are mostly small clarinets trying to make some noise in a world of loud trains.
Our job is to keep playing and know that it is made more stunning because it is heroic.
The second moment came when I was standing in front of bronze sculptures of a family working in a cotton field. Real cotton boles were used on each sculpture. An accompanying sign talked about the use of cotton in slavery.
I love using cotton for knitting and as I stood before the sculpture I wondered how something so beautiful could be so destructive.
Humanity takes gifts of creation like cotton and turns them into war machines of oppression.
I would love to feel what it might be like to take the cotton from a small patch and spin it into something kind and gentle. I thought of Gandhi who used spinning cotton to free a nation.
We can use the gifts offered by God to both enslave and free brothers and sisters.
Justice is an ecosystem that encompasses all that we hold dear and in turn offers the world love.
-- Becca Stevens
Originally published 6/24/22