"The Resurrected," A Post for My Growing Son

Most of us were born in jungles
in environments surrounded by bounty but
devoid of some fundamental material needed to gather
all that we needed.

Our guardians gave us
what they had and
learned to use to
keep us from
falling
into ravines or
lunging
over certain cliffs
respectively.

Their experiences
taught them to build
certain homes in
certain kinds of ways
in order to teach us
certain kinds of lessons.

Their achievements and failures
were used to inspire us to
venture into new places in a
vast arena of dangers, uncertainty and
dark places.

Our guardians, the mothers and fathers and
aunts and uncles and
grandmothers and grandfathers and
church mothers and pastors,
neighbors and family friends,
whoever they were and
wherever we met them they
showed us life and life and life in
different ways.

But the greatest of our legacy lies in
our capacity to mistakenly or ridiculously
launch ourselves over unknown precipices and
live. Well,
die but live again
in a sense.

Your people,
we are not restrained by fears
as some might be.

We do not hunker down behind the rocks
at the first sound of danger;
we do not
run for shelter at the
very first signs of rain.

We are led by our instinct to
achieve certain goals, to
complete certain assignments, to
acquire certain rewards for
one reason or another.

We run according to our
purposes.

We are not easily manipulated,
and we are not threatened
out of the paths of life
we know we must run.

As a result,
we are sometimes scarred lethally
in the process of making great gains.

We have all seen death in our own ways.

Some of us have lost whole families and
seen our connections to humanity
die and revive
in the presence of
other like-minded runners.

Some of us have
pursued dreams we thought were
worth late nights,
only to find those dreams
far off the path,
and we have seen our hopes then
die and revive
upon finding our footing again.

Some of us have
found our physical health waning,
appearing reliable at some intervals and
showing itself fickle at others,
and we have watched our strengths
die and revive
surprisingly.

And some of us have literally
died and revived
as you know. 

Nevertheless,
the take away here is that
you are a descendant of the
resurrected,
and there are certain inheritances
that come with that birthright.

There are some things I can
plant directly into your hands like an
heirloom,
but there are some things you must
watch and assimilate.

The heirlooms are easy.

What you must learn is the
layout of the land and the
identities of your enemies and the
characteristics of the right paths and the
temptations that lead to the wrong ones.

What you must practice is the
pace of this race and the
ability to recoil quickly and the
ability to go on under pressure and the
ability to stand against adversity.

You need the confidence to
face down devils and
look down the throats of lions
even when you feel fear.

You need to know how to
separate truths from perceptions and
realities from emotions,
and you must never let someone convince you
to make true and eternal
what is only true in one man's eyes.

We are a people under one God with a name,
Yahweh,
and we do not do
what will not lead to
improvement in ourselves,
improvement in our families,
improvement in our communities,
improvement in our world.

We are not limited by time and space,
and we are not defined by our ages,
or our seasons of life,
or our roles,
which are all temporary.

We live to find our God-given niches,
and we take up our designs like 
life jackets in a great sea of confusion.

We are great swimmers in times when
others expect drowning because of the
blessing, because of the blessing, because of the
blessing of our Lord, a Lord for which
many have been slain,
as you well know.

It is difficult to explain to you
in a sitting
the fullness of this family
into which you have been born.

It takes so many lifetimes to understand
that we have ventured to write it all down
one life after another in
journals and poems and short stories and
oral traditions passed from runner to runner
to runner.

You are finally old enough to read and
understand some of these memoirs,
so it is right that you hear it from me first,
as you have seen it in your father,
the head of our home.

You are a part of a resurrected community.
We have been very poor, and we have been rich.
We have been happy, and we have been miserable.
We have been strong, and we have been weak.
We have been young, and we have been old,
but we have never seen ourselves forsaken and our
children have eaten well in famines.

We wear our faith proudly,
and we are not deterred from right
despite others' aggressions and depressions.

Some people will call you crazy.
Some people will call you worthless,
and you will find yourself sometimes lonely and
sometimes in great company.

You must remember the legacy of your lineage and the
connection to our Maker.

It will be difficult and you will suffer much,
but you will suffer well,
and you will make great gains because
that is what we do.

You will live and live and live,
because that is what we do.

-T. D. James-Moss