This Used to Be – Part 3

Part III: Rise – Ancestors, Reverence, and Resurrection

This is the final part of the 3-part series titled This Used to Be. These reflections emerged over Good Friday and Easter Sunday, 2025, as a prayer and a call to remember, I you missed Parts I and II, we invite you to begin there.

Just when the grief felt thick again—when the remembering pressed against my chest like too much to hold—I called out for divine help.  

I knew the best I could do was surrender it completely to God.

And what came flooding to me were thoughts of my ancestors.
Because I knew.

Because I know.
They are here.
Not just in memory.
But WITH me.
Beside me.  Behind me.  Before me.  Beneath me.  All around and through me.
Guiding me and this walk.

They all are—my ancestors by blood,  by love, by story, by memory and through spirit.
They are the ones pushing me to speak, to write, to remember.
They are my bridge steadying me.

They are the net below that catches me and buoys me back up when my knees give way.

They hold space for me.
They are the rhythm in my breath and my north star.   They remind me to pause, breathe, and keep going.

They are food for my soul. 

And just when I thought that was the only message for the day,
a tiny delivery robot rolled by.
Waving a red flag.
With a heart on it.

And I smiled.
Because this is how the sacred shows up sometimes—
In symbols.
In whispers.
In moments that make you pause and say, “Okay. I hear you. I see you. I’m listening.”

So yes, this path is heavy.
it is also holy.
And I am not walking it alone.

To the ancestors whose names I know and the ones whose names I may not ever know, yet  carry with me—
Thank you.
I feel you.
I honor you.
And I will always remember you.

Marcus Garvey’s church once stood on that corner in Overtown.
A sacred place.
A beacon.
Bombed by the KKK.

But now…
Now the erasure wears a suit.
It signs contracts.
It smiles in photographs and talks about the importance of history when the cameras are on.
And sometimes, it carries the same lineage as those being displaced.

Garvey was sold out by his own people.
For rice.

And Overtown—
This sacred, storied, still-breathing place—
She, too, is being sold.
Piece by piece.
Parcel by parcel.
For the modern-day equivalent of rice.

Maybe a contract.
A grant.
A chance to sit at a table where ultimately we are still being served last.

And it’s sad.
Not just because it’s happening.
But because the betrayal feels so familiar.

Sometimes the disease of supremacy doesn’t wear a white hood.
Sometimes, it shows up in a boardroom.
Sometimes, it signs development deals.
And sometimes—
the disease of supremacy gets dressed up in confused Black and brown bodies that don’t even realize the trauma they have internalized. The realities Dr. Joy  Degruy names. 

And that’s even harder to make sense of…
Even harder to grieve.

Because how do you mourn a betrayal that looks like your pastor?
Or your cousin?
Or you?

I don’t know. 

Still, I name it.
Still, I grieve it.
Because pretending it doesn’t hurt… doesn’t help us heal.

The legacy Garvey tried to protect—
the pride, the sovereignty, the self-determination—
it’s being paved over.
Literally.

Yet we remember.
And we speak.
And we stay soft even in our sorrow.
Because someone has to hold the line between sacred memory and selfish gain.

Perhaps you will remember with me…?

As I was sitting with the weight of all of this—
I looked up and saw a pickup truck making a beeline toward Overtown.
There was a skeleton in the back.

It crossed the railroad tracks,
passed the wall that once honored Marcus Garvey and the Black Madonna and child—
the same wall now silenced in gray.
And it came to a stop
right next to the bridge that used to boldly declare “Historic Overtown.”
Even that has been whitewashed now.

The symbolism was too loud to ignore.
Too exact to be coincidence.
It felt like Death itself had been invited in—driven in—Crossing Overtown, unchecked.
And still, I remembered.

Still, I choose to speak the names.
To bow my head in reverence for all who came before.

Because I know—
everything I do in this moment has the power to heal seven generations before me,
and bless seven generations yet to come.

So I breathe.
I write.
I remember.
I speak.
And I love…
More and more and more.

I keep showing up—
like the women who rose early on Resurrection Sunday,
hands still trembling from the grief of Good Friday,
carrying frankincense, myrrh, hyssop, and aloe.
Not just to honor the dead,
but to chase away what tried to destroy us.
To bless what still breathes.
To protect what’s sacred.
To cover the land in holy fragrance when no one else thought it mattered.

They didn’t come expecting a miracle.
They came because the only thing love demanded was presence.
Because reverence doesn’t ever have to wait for certainty.

And that’s what I do.
I walk these streets with memory in one hand,
and hope in the other.
I pray and rub balm on broken places.
I light the incense of our ancestors and let it rise.
I speak life over what they are consistently trying to bury.
I whisper prayers over painted-over walls and obliterated buildings.
And I believe—

that somewhere between crucifixion and resurrection,
between bulldozers and butterflies,
something holy still rises.

And maybe, just maybe, there is no coincidence in the fact that Easter Sunday this year—April 20, 2025—is also the day that Purvis Young took his final breath fifteen years ago. The same artist who painted horses racing across the sky and buildings that double as tombstones, whose brush told truths no one wanted to name. His life marked by vision. His death now lined up with resurrection.

What more prophetic offering could we be given on this holyday?