Simone Weil once wrote that “To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.”
In this guest poem below, Drew Henriksen explores what it means to be rooted and uprooted. His writing brings theological witness to the changing neighborhoods of his home of Atlanta. In this Advent season, we prepare for the Christ-child to become rooted in community among us. However, Christ arrives at the margins, in the precarious places where communities have been uprooted and scattered.
If you would like to explore the history and change in the neighborhoods Drew mentions in this poem, check out the difference in how the Old Fourth Ward is described here compared to here. To make sense of that example, I turn to Drew’s words:
Black Friday
By Drew Henriksen
It is a lesser known fact
of Christianity,
the babies attacked
by Herod Antipas of Galilee
are re-membered, and sung dearly to,
just three days aft'
the God - child was to be wrapped
the day after
Christmas Eve.
Cemetery, the ground shakes
Carrie Steele hums from her grave, a simple song.
One for every brave orphaned flower
which sang a troubled tune
or a warm Christmas hymn
under a scarlet summer moon.
But we haven’t even reached October,
And Christ has not called us to forget -
In Cabbagetown they boil over.
In Oakland they re-live.
The monarch's words -
birth, success, potential, regret
don't even taste right
Much less express
the slow malcontent
of an even, slower, decay.
Herod, in his property management,
forgot Death is twirling around us,
hiding in the grass
Nine no, TEN, layers deep!
spinning uncontrollably
Friday night.
(Here indulge me now in a quick aside.
Do you think Herod lived longer
because his 40-odd-years as king,
whining, and waxing, and complaining?
Hah!
He had simply died that much,
Those 40-odd-years.)
The children, the children, the children!
They are the blessing of Christmas -
for they had only died 2 years
And if Herod had not been a part of the gentry,
sent to sanitize, to watch over birth, success, potential, regret
he would have known that King [Jr.'s] can be born in the Old Fourth,
He might have dreamed of Christmas -
Might without Sword.
Don't you see, don't you see it? Christ is the children!
He died three, and without,
we are all wasting, wasting
wasting away.