Staying Woke During Lent and Black History Month

I got woke

You got woke

All God's children got woke

Everybody talking 'bout woke ain't woke

We all got to be woke

Rise, wake up

We got to be woke

For the past few years I've edited a Lenten Devotional for my church. It's a work of love and joy for me -- putting out the call for submissions, nudging people to meet the deadline, gathering the submissions, proofing and editing, laying out, proofing and editing the layout, test printing, printing, distributing. Exhausting work but worth the effort.

The most difficult part of the process is Lent generally falls during Black History Month. The Devotional process generally starts in January and my mind is not focused on Black History Month, something always on my mind because for me Black History is all year. This year, the process for me started on Martin Luther King's birthday. It was actually celebrated on his birthday this year since it fell on a Monday.

In the past it has been only near the end of the process when I feel called to write something that resonates with Black History. I'm generally motivated by the abundance of submissions hesitant to make people feel anything but good. In all fairness, I think they just want people to feel better about worldly woes. Yet, looking at the whole, I often think, "Some people have forgotten that during Lent we are to travel the wilderness with Jesus."

Don't get me wrong. Some submissions evoke the bleakness and hope of that wilderness journey. And since children often submit their artwork, they offer points of innocent joy throughout the journey. Still, I wish for more reality and I find myself forcing my version of reality -- a marriage of joy and despair -- into their seemingly safe, secure, and blissful dream of reality. Is that wicked of me?

Getting to the point, I found myself this year pulling out excerpts from a paper I wrote in 2023 as my Devotional submission. It hits a couple of the themes I established this year: how I kept going despite missteps, mistakes, regrets on my faith journey. Then Black History Month arrived and all I could think about was this song: "Woke" by Sound of Blackness.  

This reminded me of a source I encountered at the beginning of my Devotional process: “Lent 2024 – From Minneapolis To Palestine: Nourishing The Rising Up Journey,” Join the Movement. United Church of Christ. Using that source, I crafted an introduction -- "Staying Woke with Jesus" -- centering on Matthew 26:36-38 and offering my church an opportunity to take a risk by opening their minds and hearts "to God’s vision of justice and compassion."

Cole Arthur Riley writes in This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us, "I don't want to make it to the promised land if it means I forget the wilderness." One person told me she was daunted by the challenge I set forth in the submission guidelines and themes. I was pleased to hear that; challenges should be difficult to deal with; they are risky after all. The submissions trickled in, telling me others may have also been daunted. As I write this, I pray I won't have to write something else besides the intro and the old paper excerpt to fill in the blanks.

Mostly, I pray that my church remembers this Lenten season the hope in the wilderness that my people and I have found: 

Through many dangers, toils and snares

I have already come;

'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,

And grace will lead me home.

"Amazing Grace"