I am looking for a Black God,
a god of gods,
who knows suffering and does not want me to be afraid.
For a god who loves to dance,
who is the rhythm in me.
A God who has seen the blood
and believes in revolt,
who has walked into 1st
and 2nd
and 3rd
worlds and wants to count higher
to heavens where people can live.
A god who has been institutionalized
and longs to break free,
to be liberated, to run.
I am looking for a god who sits on the bus
like front seats,
like long days,
like the masses in public transportation,
and who drives down the street
to a righteous revolution
that passes up no one’s stop.
For a god who knows a broader definition
of divination
and sees it as a black woman
who has visions,
seeing a god of a universe of a people
on a continuum, visions of a god
who sees her blackness in it all
and loves her for it.
I am looking for a god
who created light, only to illuminate their darkness.
A god who is Them and Us and We
and is not divided by He and She
but sits in a loving embrace.
I want a Jesus of slavery,
the God Sojourner would call she,
a Christ who became chattel
the Lord of David in battle.
I want a god who comes to Sunday dinners
to eat soul food and knows how to make
nourishment from the scraps.
A god who knows my black pain and won’t let
theology change it to something else,
but gives a black religion back to me
held in dark hands.
I come to Gethsemane, knees in the dirt,
praying a spirit will come,
a spirituality that does not live in chapels
or line the pews,
but sits on the rooftops of churches
and lets the sun bake it browner
as it laughs in loud voices and knows
god laughs too.
I want a spirit
who is not a name or a word
but the wind,
moving, living, redefining,
making me a new creation.
I am looking for divinity,
a trinity,
a star in the night
leading me to revival.
For a God who could travel more than miles
but eternities
to be born as I was born,
to live as I will live.
For a God who was in the beginning
and came
and will come again.
For a God who was human,
a child, a savior, a king
in a place
where there was no room for him,
but he came anyway.