Title: Gone Water
(From the phrase, “Gone water does not mill anymore.”

by Minister Marvin K. White

1.

According to the Mayo Clinic, dehydration occurs when you use or lose more fluid than you take in. If your body doesn’t have enough water and other fluids, it cannot carry out its normal functions. And if you don’t replace lost fluids, you will get dehydrated.

The rule of thumb is, if you’re thirsty, you’re already dehydrated.

2.

“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.

The rule of thumb is, if you’re thirsting for righteousness, you’re already dehydrated from wickedness.

3.

Did you know that if you appeared as rain in your own dream, stood under yourself, spread your arms like rain barrels to catch yourself, threw your head back and looked into the eyes of yourself, opened your mouth to yourself, stuck out your tongue and caught yourself, that I would be here in tears when you awoke?

“Let us not allow Nestle to bottle and sell water while the people of Flint continue drink from contaminated pipes.”

The rule of thumb is, if you’re thirsting for freedom, you’re already dehydrated from bondage.

4.

Just cuz it throw itself at you,
A river ain’t a rock.
It foams at the mouth,
It crashes all the time,
It drinks.
But don’t expect it to apologize.
A river don’t have to bend to you.
A river won’t ever take anything back.
A river won’t ever cry for you.
A river can only cry to you.
And it never feel like it need to wait and see
What damage it done-done.

Get in the river.

A river got those hands.
A river answers everything and everybody,
With a slap.

A river comes and goes as it pleases.
Do not think that it’s supposed to stand for your foolishness.

You want your skin to be sea glass,
Smooth and pumiced,
You think that water should walk to you.
A river won’t stand for it.
A river won’t stand for nothin’.
A river, a living thing,
A river is s’posed to run.

Don’t ever tell a river nothin’ you want to hold.
A river got a big old mouth,
Talks behind your back.
Keep ocean current on everything.
A river don’t listen to no quiet storm.

Get in the river.

A river here to tell you:
You got a cousin named Katrina.
A river know somebody and some bodies
Who didn’t want to leave home
Or speak a new language or
Dance a new way or
Start thinking about passages
Not having middles.

A river remind you
Louisiana and Africa and Oakland, and Orlando,
And Puerto Rico and mamas and daddies
And abuelas, and lovers, and the Atlantic
Cry the same cry.

Get in the river.

A river is worth its salt,
Insists on naming all its girl offspring Feemah.

A river come from rivers
That ran out of Eden
Rather than being caught there.

You mustn’t be so self-absorbed.
A river ain’t a mirror.
Ain’t sposed to remind you who you are.
A river sposed to tell you to keep it movin’.
Tell you where you come from
And how its gon be one day.

A river a promise between you and
God and moon and high
And low tide and shore and safe.

A river one day gon take you to your Gilead.
Make you think about your Jordan
And how if you live long enough
You gon have to go around one,
Alongside or cross over one.

Get in the river.

A river sposed to make you
Think about the source and outpouring
And washing away and cleansed
And one day soon baptized
And making glad the
City of God,
And knowing moving with it
Called swimming and
Standing up to it called drowning.

Now is not the time back pedal,
If you insist on your secrets,
A river will be your failed bank,
Has no regard for your equity;
Sweat or otherwise.
As quickly as you have deposited it,
A river will lose it.
For the last time.

Get in the river.

Know the buoyancy of God.
Know that the first breath
When you come up
And then every time
You come up
After that
Is the break you said
Everyone gets but you.

Know for those that believeth
Know how to flow
From your bellies
Living water.

A river is a river still.
It is supposed to
And will always
Turn on you.

Get in the river.

A river know the difference
Between that sinking feeling
And being told to jump.

Between running water
And being swept away.

Between washing it all down
And learning not to argue with the moon
And the lows and the highs of its moods swings

A River knows that there is a difference between what tides you over
And a drink of Jack Daniels on the rocks.

There is a difference
When you keep your eyes open under water
And learn to see through salt tears.

There is a difference
Between floating someone a favor
And being a life preserver for someone.

There is a difference between
Someone who gets their kicks off of you
And getting pulled under by someone.

There is a difference when you know
Your swim lane and your flowchart
And that you are perfectly grouped
According to your processes and ability.

There is a difference between shedding and treading.
Between drench and foam and curl of a lip
And rip and wave and crash and being left with nothin’.
Not even a drop to wash yourself with.

There is a difference when you realize
The watercourse does not change.
That your why-existence
Is debt-ledgered into a how-column.

And despite what cruise
You thought you signed up for
You still got to find a way
To pull and push through this world,
You still got to find a way
To increase your capacity to care for our wounded,
To rebuild our lives and our communities
And to vision this world full of victories and possibilities.

Children, you still got to find a way
To be life preservers for one another,
To love another.

Because,
There is a difference when you know
“Not One Life Will Be Lost!”

There is a difference
When you have thought about jumping
This life’s ship and into the chance of the next place
Where it is not about the red-crossed blankets
To warm you to stay in this place.

There is a difference
When you know
That yes,
There will be storms.

And knowing what you were called to do
In inclement weather:
Is to poet,
And sing,
And dance,
And organize,
And revolt,
And grow,
And feed,
And dream us all to one dream.

There is a difference
When we finally open our eyes
Under this water
And begin look at one another
With a presumption of innocence.
When we love one another
As if it is not only possible,
But also,
That this stroke is likely and necessary.

There is a difference
When we know who we are
Is who we want to be.

When we know that we are not tadpoles forever.

When we know that who we came to be,
Have come to be
Does not have to match
Who we were raised
Or were needed to be.

There is a difference
When we start seeing ourselves
In our own beauty standards.
When we might allow someone
Who looks like us,
Someone beautiful like us,
To be both the object of our affection
And the intended target of our love.

Can you hold my breath under this water?

There is a difference
When you know that it is love
And that it has always been about love.

There is difference
When your manhood question
Is asked and answered not by this world
But by your own meditated, prayed, learned, studied
And understood self and volition.

There is difference
When your transhood question
Is asked and answered not by this world
But by your own reconciled, accepted, and called self.

There is a difference
When you know what your “will” is
And live a life
That never makes you do anything against it.

There is a difference
Between being puddles that are stepped in
And the pools of talent, wealth, intellect, creativity,
Altruism and service that we come from.

There is a difference
Between the spaces
Where we gather, play, love and belong
That becomes expansive
And wider and more mysterious than we imagined
Because we decide to show up ready for bad weather.
We show up whole.

There is difference
When we come out of our shallow ends,
To swim from whatever is holding us back
And come out into the deepest
Of the waters most beautiful possibilities for
And of us.

There is a difference
When we shed tears that celebrates life.
When we do something brave and kind
And let somebody see it
And let our love and our bravery
And our kindness be an island For some storm soaked soul to rest on.

When we let our acts impact the universe.

There is a difference
Between being the backwash
And the backwaters
And knowing ain’t nobody powerless in this.

Even if all we got is words.
Even if all we got are bodies.
Which are as much water as ocean.
Even if all we got are prayers

There is a difference
When you know
You are no longer bound
By generational
Psycho
Social
Spiritual contracts entered
Or tricked into by ancestors
And family members
Who offered our bodies, minds
And souls as collateral for theirs.

There is a difference
In coming up for air
And getting from under.
When we know we are debt-free.
When we go from knowing nothin’
To owing nothin’.
No more of our waking or resting.
When we know our minds are not deeded
Or signed over to anyone.
When we know our minds have never been
Water rights to sign over.
That we cannot lose our minds.
That we cannot lose.
That we will no longer struggle
To make these payments.
We are free.

There is a difference
When we know
And understand the buoyancy of god
And water baptism as a way
Of breaking the waves of destructive patterns.
And moving from back stroking
To dog paddling.

Like there is a difference between
A standing prayer
And a kneeling prayer
And knowing that the way out
Is sometimes a crawlspace
And not a tall space.
There is a difference
When we forgive “them”
Because we are something so unimaginable
That they couldn’t see it.
Had never seen Africans floating on water
Or turning into fish.
Couldn’t see us.
We come.
To this shore on board
And parts of ships
We free.
We free.
We free.

“Let us not forget that Your mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens;
But Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.

Let us not seek your righteousness like a great mountain;
But like a judgment that is a great deep;

Let us know O LORD, that You preserve man and beast
And your preciousness is Your lovingkindness, O God!

Let not the children of men put their trust under
The ones who throw shade, but under the shadow of Your wings.

Let us not be hungry when we can be abundantly satisfied with the fullness of Your house.

Let us not be thirsty for disappointment, when You can give them drink from the river of Your pleasures.

Let us not be lured into the stagnate pools of capitalism,
When within You is the fountain of life;

Let us not feel around in the dark days
When in Your light we see light.

Let us not turn to fake news, false equivalencies, gas lighting, and fear mongering—
When you continue to extend Your lovingkindness to those who know You—
And Your righteousness to the upright in heart.

Let us not let them turn the sweat and the tears rolling down our cheeks into whining.

But let it water like righteousness, from the first moments of creation, through Eden, after the flood, to Mary’s water breaking, back to the source, where we return into a mighty justice stream of consciousness.

“And the rule of thumb is, if you’re thirsting for reproductive rights, you’re already dehydrated from having contraceptives and plan b’s taken away
.
The rule of thumb is, if you’re thirsting for good wine, you’re already dehydrated from the well drinks that will hang you over.

The rule of thumb is, if you’re a savior, thirsting for the fulfilment of your prophecy, you’re already dehydrated from not remembering the mother’s milk.

The rule of thumb is, Beloved, anyone may become dehydrated, but the condition is reversible.

We must monitor our spiritbodies.

We must remain faithful in the face of feeling drained.

We must rely on grace in the midst of our sluggishness, in the midst of our marital and relationship dry spells.

We must stay connected to the source when this world is threatening parch.

We must remember, the Prophet Isaiah’s rain dance, “The LORD will guide you continually, And satisfy your soul in drought, And strengthen your bones; You shall be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.”
“Let us not seek our people’s crying to make them prove that they are willing to endure pain for equality.”

The rule of thumb is, if you’re thirsting for justice, you’re already dehydrated from injustice.

“Let us not think that the rain can wash away the sin of polluting the earth for financial gain.”

The rule of thumb is, if you’re thirsting for liberation, you’re already dehydrated from oppression.

Amen