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Prayer for Mother Africa's Children

A Prayer for Mother Africa’s Children

 I pray to Thee, Almighty God, for children of Mother Africa—

Those cast into this barren land, now destitute in demons’ hands.

My people—Africa’s lost clan—the humans who first roamed the earth...

            Who reigned as kings and queens with wealth in civilizations that they built.

            Whose monuments and noble shrines encompassed cultures, far and wide;

            Whose towering, spiraling pyramids even now confound the Western mind.

My people, who as noble slaves, built this nation—phase to phase.

            Armed with wisdom of their past; great expertise, these slaves relayed;

            Yet, their own blood, and sweat, and tears... were the rewards this nation paid.

My people, who, now, find our race indigent, dispossessed, victimized...

            Devoid of knowledge, wisdom, and even the truth of ourselves, our heritage....

We know NOT who we are:

We know NOT our innate power, potential, people-hood...

We meander aimlessly in this hostile nation...

            Our minds, hearts, psyches, souls...stolen...stripped from our beings;

            Our self-esteems, self-direction, self-motivation... virtually, nonexistent;

            Our personal assets...miniscule—

--white wealth ...20 times the value of black wealth;

--95% of the millions of acres of land our ancestors owned...         

Reverted to whites, based on white people’s laws.

We are an impoverished, programmed, powerless, helpless, hopeless people;

            In the midst of a vast sea of people with varying sensibilities—

            Most ...who carry within their psyches their own distorted

            Notions of who we are, ranging from

Good will, ambivalence, and paranoia;

To benign neglect and ingrained prejudices;

To white superiority complexes;

                        To conservative ideologies and Tea Party sensibilities;

From White Nationalism to actively pursuing initiatives to undermine black

Black people’s abilities.

I pray for my people’s perilous predicament: We know NOT who we are!

However, You know who we are, Lord—

We are your people—the children of Mother Africa.

We lost our way in the midst of this demon-infested nation;

But we are still your children, Lord; we are still the beautiful, brilliant,

Awesomely gifted children of Mother Africa.

 

Lord, you know how this nation deceived our people—

            They stole us from our homeland against our wills;

            They entrapped us, shackled and bound us in chains...

packed us, like sardines in a can, and crammed us

in the bellies of ships, where we smoldered in filth and stench...

in abject abominable circumstances for months.

And, Lord, when we finally arrived, barely alive, on the shores of America;

            They put us on auction blocks and began

inspecting us as if we were animals.

 

And then, Lord, they started separating us—

brothers from sisters, husbands from wives, mothers from children...

We had never known such heartache and misery and agony...

Then, they threw us into slavery,

            Made us live in barn-like shacks... like animals,

                        And eat left-over scraps, slop... from their tables;

They forced us to build this entire nation—to dig the ditches and trenches,

clear the forests, build roads and railroads, cultivate and harvest the land—

We built this nation’s total infrastructure.

            For over 200 years, this nation refused to pay my people one dime

                        For our diligent... relentless... tedious... work;

And even now, black wealth is virtually nothing, compared to white wealth.

Lord you know how they whipped, and flogged, and beat us;

            How they maimed, castrated and hanged us—brutally tortured us;

Even now, our prisons are overcrowded with mostly black inmates.

You know how they raped and impregnated our women and little girls,

            Then made slaves out of their own interracial children.

You know how they killed our spirits—our self-esteem and self-worth—

They even made some of us ashamed of being Mother Africa’s children—

To this very 21^st century!

Lord, you know how they cheated us— thwarted our attempts at progress,

            Denied us opportunities, in the name of the “sanctity of segregation...”

Lord, you know how hard they worked us for no pay...

 

            How the robbed us in all respects—

                        Educationally, mentally, psychologically, spiritually, economically...

They robbed us of our innate genius—of the truth about our own people-hood.

Lord, they stole everything we had—even our sanity and sense of self!

It was like having our very souls snatched—like raw, blood-curdling flesh—

From our bodies

By day and night, sheer torture and terror have been our plight over 400 years.

We have been injured so badly, Lord, that we know NOT who we are;

We come to you as your very own people, Lord, pleading, praying for mercy.

 

Teach us the lessons of Mother Africa all over again.

Impart into our spirits your Truth, wisdom, and direction...one more time, Lord.

Enable us to regain the capacity to be the beings you created us to be.

We are lost...struggling amidst a state of affliction, loss, devastation....

Have mercy on us, Lord. 

We pray for these blessings in Jesus’ name.  Amen.

 

By Theressa G. Wesley

6-15-13, 12:02 a.m.