by Rev. Joseph Santos-Lyons, Community Minister
As People of Color in Unitarian Universalism, we live at the meeting place of memory and becoming—where grief, love, faith, and resilience continue to shape our collective liberation. In preparing for our Fall Caucus, Stages of Liberation – From Youth Fire to Elder Wisdom, I am deeply moved by the reflections shared by our members: Ronnie Boyd, Miss Beverly Horton, Rev. Latifah Griffin, Rumni Saha, Tania Marquez, Kay’te Ingram, Adebusola Adereti, Rev. Justin Almeida, Diana Chappell and Derail Holcomb. Each testimony carries a spark of spiritual truth—revealing how we pray, care, question, and grow through every stage of life. Together they remind us that liberation is not only our goal, but our daily practice: to love more deeply, to listen across generations, and to live our faith with courage and tenderness.
Below, we share their reflections as offerings for the journey.
Changing through Prayer
Grief is one of those things that sneaks up on you. It finds its way into your thoughts, feelings, morning breakfast, or afternoon daydream. It comes in the quiet times when the chatter in your brain slows down with your heart beat and evens out your breath. The exhale feels like pushing out all the hopes and dreams you ever had and giving them back to the universe. Loss sucks. I turn to prayer. In prayer, we find divine understanding. I long to understand your absence. Prayer opens me up to God’s perspective, and in her presence things change. I change. I am changing through prayer.
Ronnie Boyd
Photo by Jamie Thrower, Grief & Death Doula
Recently, I resigned myself to the notion that I am an elder. Rev. Joseph asked me to share my “wisdom,” and increasingly, siblings in our POC UU community are addressing me as “Miss Beverly” (or even “Auntie”). That seals it. I am an elder. So, these are the words of wisdom I offer:
Find the stories of your ancestors–both of origin and of choice–that give you strength to face (these) difficult times. Create and hold fast to your own stories, stories that celebrate your courage and resilience, stories that tell the tale of how you have overcome.
Miss Beverly
The Rhythm of Liberation
There is a rhythm to liberation.
First, young people must behave in the likeness of fire…. fire burns away illusion and fear; it dares to speak the bold truth when silence feels safer. It begins here.
Over time, fire becomes a flickering flame of light…steady, enduring, and guiding. That is the wisdom of our elders: those who have carried the torch through storms and still find ways to laugh, to love, to teach.
In the BIPOC community, we live within both realms, the fire and the light. We are the living bridge between the ancestors who dreamed of freedom and the descendants who will inherit it. Our task is to listen deeply to one another: youth to elders, elders to youth, and all of us to the Spirit that keeps calling us toward wholeness.
Because liberation is not a destination. It’s a sacred conversation across generations, a remembering of who we are, and a recommitment to who we’re still becoming.
We must keep the rhythm going…
Rev. Latifah Griffin
On Becoming a Minister
Between What Was and What Will Be
Five years of preparation
A lifetime in the making
All poured into a soul-baring packet.
The Panel gathered, daunting and kind
And spoke its verdict.
So here I am, in the in-between
Unsure what path will unfurl
In this Rube Goldberg’s Machine of Ministry.
But one thing I know
I am not who I was.
Gratitude threads through me
For what has been
And for the becoming
But most of all for this faith (and the faithful)
Sometimes stumbling
Sometimes late to its own promise
Yet always showing up.
Rumni Saha
On Caretaking
Love’s apprentice
It was around 3 am when I found myself sobbing by the edge of my bed; unable to contain the exhaustion, the fear, and the pain of seeing my mother so sick, of being reminded of our vulnerability and our mortality. I had spent the last many days running from work to keeping watch over my mother, navigating difficult conversations, and processing all the information coming to us from the medical team. It was just and necessary that the gates of tears would open to let them flow freely, washing me with cleansing water, bathing my doubts, my uncertainties and my pain on their race away from my eyes.
I slept a bit more that morning and with the new day came a new realization, love was the only answer to our circumstances. It was love who had called me, and my siblings, into this in between terrain where we were now being initiated into this role of caregivers. Love was still the answer, but I did not know how so I allowed my broken open heart to lead the way. I went to the store, gathered the ingredients, and came home to start preparing a meal for my mother who was not enjoying the food she was getting at the rehab facility. I prayed to the garlic and the cinnamon, I prayed to the oregano, the chilies and tomatoes. I prayed over the boiling water and to the milk. I invited the medicine they had to offer my mom.
Love has been teaching me to show up differently for my mom; one day I feel strong and help her get out of bed, the next I’m massaging her back. I play music when I notice she’s getting bored, and bring her a meal with the flavors her mouth remembers and that make her feel closer to home. In this season of caregiving, I have been reminded that I am still an apprentice of love and loving.
Rev. Tania Marquez
Time has come where youth heart are ablaze. Their eyes cry for the hugs community. Crossroads transitions alone navigating world. World big people taught to be perceived small . Loss is not uncanny as life changes navigating requires the hug, love, and grace of community that reminds us that their shame has become our testimony
Kay’te Ingram
Time has come where youth hearts are ablaze, their eyes crying for the hug of community. What has sustained me is faith, faith as I’ve come to understand it for myself. These days, I read and reflect, searching for truth that isn’t watered down or reshaped by history. That shift has changed how I walk. My guide has been words that call me back to love and humanity. The blessing is vision, an enlightened understanding; the challenge is the weight of it. My encouragement is simple: believe in what you believe with all your heart while holding fast.
Adebusola Adereti
Holding Hands
In hospital rooms and at bedsides,
I have held a thousand dying hands.
Said a thousand prayers foreign and known;
in the names of Jesus, Allah, Goddess,
there are so many names
and faces of the Sacred Mundane.
They are all welcome as I am reminded;
I contain multitudes.
I can do this
every day.
Because my Faith centers a Love
big enough for all weary hearts.
An ancestor gave me this prayer:
“When Death comes, may Death find you truly alive.”
Spirit of Life Come Unto Me!
There is always another hand to hold.
Rev. Justin Almeida
God, I Think
I think I like the way your words become flesh
How your voice and tone, divides the darkness from the light
The way your hands write the song of psalms across creation
As if we were tablets of stone
A guide, or a law written just for us.
Even in a pregnant pause — like Selah;
the nothingness still lingers heavy, holy
pinpricks of silence that open the world, to hear you
to feel you.
It’s prophetic, mostly,
the cunning way you say my name,
like Ezekiel hearing dry bones rattle,
you make the deadness in me alive again.
like Lazarus rising at a whisper.
Arise
I bet this is how creation was formed:
with a word that caused an explosion, BANG
a breath, filled with tones and colors
a rumble deep as thunder,
a storm of stars breaking open the void.
I like the way you taste;
like milk and honey,
like rain after famine.
I find I crave you daily, every moment, i need you
searching the temple of every room,
tracing altars in ordinary places,
finding no shame, only joy
a cup that runneth over.
a peace that your presence provides; which always puts me to rest.
Derail Holcomb
THE RHYTHM OF JUSTICE
At 17, while visiting with family in Brooklyn, NY, I joined the Black Panther Party. Returning to Virginia, the local BPP chapter deemed me “minister of education”. With Mao’s Red Book in hand, and with rejection of my mother’s Christian beliefs – I often declared “Religion as the Opium of the People” .
The Rhythm of Social Justice remained the beat to which I marched – as I participated in the anti- apartheid movement, the prisoners support movement, against the death penalty, youth gun violence, domestic violence, police brutality, for women’s right; and served as a village folklorist .
Today, my spiritual journey and commitment to social justice has led me to (CVUU) Coastal Virginia Unitarian Universalist- at a time in history when this living tradition is called to Widen The Circle of Concern.
Diana Chappell
