For Juneteenth, June 19, 2026
Today, the reason for our newest Federal Holiday is still unknown in many white communities of this country (or worse: ignored, discouraged, and disparaged). Federal employees have the day off as do many state employees where it has been adopted.* So what exactly does it mean or commemorate? Let me answer first with this:
Imagine that you have been in a prison for your entire life. You were
born there. Many of your family have died there. You MUST do what your Jailer
tells you to do inside or outside from dawn to dark of night, in all kinds of
weather amid threats, serious physical punishment, or a violent
death, if you fail even for a moment. Your parents, your children, your spouse
~ if you have any ~ are sent to other prisons and you will likely never see
them again. You are fed, some more meagerly than others, and you have housing,
of a sort ~ cold, hot, damp, with rats and mice and other critters and insects
living with you crawling through your food and all over your body for the few
hours you are in that space. So if you are 90 or 50 or 30 or 15 years old or
younger you have been conditioned to be a prisoner.
Then one day, say you’re imprisoned in Texas on June 19, 1865,
this General Gordon Granger arrives to tell you and all imprisoned like
yourself, that your release from prison was ordered by President Lincoln more
than TWO YEARS ago but you are only hearing about it today. What is
your first reaction? And what comes later as you realize that it took more than
2 years for you to be released? And then what becomes of you and your
descendants who were and are hated and maligned and murdered because those who
imprisoned you, and were then forced to release you, poisoned the small minds
of others who didn’t look like you. And how do you suddenly manage your life with
no experience of an “outside life” beyond
enslavement in a manufactured prison constructed solely because the
color of your skin granted the overlords profit from your toil and extra votes
for them in national elections ?
Most of us
in many religious denominations whether church attendees or not, believe we were
created by our God, in the many colors and physical attributes of our ancestors,
from the palest pale to the darkest dark and all the hues in between. With that
we were given the free range of the various parts of this, and perhaps other
planets at some point, to develop our languages, spiritualities, and cultures
that bring great and beautiful diversities to the whole Earth. We are created
to walk together with our friends, our neighbors near and far, our sisters and
brothers of all the colors, shapes, and sizes we were given across God’s
Creation. Let us learn of and share our joys and our sorrows, our similarities
that far outnumber our differences. Let us also discover and share our
celebrations, our life traditions and rituals from the history that we have
learned from our recent and distant ancestors, and what we create in our own
time to hand across as well as down. Let us also, even in angry and despairing
times, pray for one another and especially for those spiritually and
culturally damaged by uncountable generations of teachings by those with pathological
fears of all who are unlike themselves; who intentionally invent themselves in
their own minds as chosen to be the premier race, created to subdue and denigrate
all who are not.
May we always choose to walk together with
our Creator as our Guide who Mothers and Fathers us all on every spiritual path,
and in my religious tradition with Christ our Teacher, and with the Holy Spirit
as our Grace-Filled Energy, to love one another ~ and ourselves ~ loving and
blessing each of us humans of all shapes, sizes, languages, temperaments,
cultures, and colors.
May this day and every Juneteenth, and
every day in between, remind us that we are each to guard and hold sacred the
value of our created equality and diversity in our humanity, in our humility,
and especially in our respect and appreciation for one another and in the joys
and sorrows that join us together in this life and beyond.
Click
here for more history of Juneteenth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth
*States that have adopted
Juneteenth as a State holiday:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/does-state-observe-juneteenth-paid-161119212.html
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