John Lewis: Rev. James Lawson's Eulogy

Pastor, sisters and brothers,
member of the Lewis family,
that so wonderfully nurtured John and
loved, hope, courage and faith, the rest
of it...and sisters, and brothers...

Seslov Melosa, a Polish Catholic poet, sets
the tone, at least, in part for me, as John
Lewis has journeyed from the eternity of this
extraordinary, mysterious human race into the
eternity that none of us know much about. When
he wrote this poem called Meaning


When I die,
I will see the lining of the world.
The other side
beyond bird, mountain, sunset
the true meaning ready to be decoded
what never added up
would now add up.
what was incomprehensible
will become comprehended,
And if there is no lining to the world,
if a thrush on a branch is not a sign
but just a thrush on a branch
if night and day make no sense
following each other, and
on this earth, there is nothing,
but the earth, even if that is so,
there will remain a word, written by
the lips that perished, a tireless
messenger who runs and runs through
interstellar places, to revolving galaxies
and calls out, and protests and screams...

And, I submit that John and that other eternity
will be heard by us again and again,
running through the galaxies,
still proclaiming, that we the people
of the USA can one day, live up the the full
meaning that we hold these truths,
live up the the full meaning,
we the people of the USA,
in orther to perfect a more perfect union.

John Lewis practiced not the politics that we
called bi-partisan. John Lewis practiced the
politics of we the people of the USA need more
desperately than ever before: the politics of
the declaration of independence.

The politics of the preambles of the Constitution
of the United States.

I have read many of these so-called civil rights
books of the last fifty or sixty years, about the
period between 1953 and 1973. Most of the books
are wrong about John Lewis.

Most of the books are wrong about how John got
engaged in the national campaign of 1959-60. This is
the sixtieth year of the sit-in campaign which swept
into every State in the union. Largely manned by students
because we recruited students. But, put up on the map, that
the non-violent struggle began in Montgomery, Alabama was
not an accident. But as Martin Luther King Jr. called it
Christian love has power that we have never tapped, and if
we use it, we can transform, not only our own lives but we
will transform the earth in which we live.

I counted providential, what as I move into Nashville, Tennessee,
dropping out of graduate school. In Nashville, people like
Kelly M Smith and Andrew White, then Janada Hays and Hellen
Roberts, Dolores W. and John Lewis, Diane Nash, C.T Vivian,
Marion Barry, Jim Bevel, Bernard Lafayette, Paulina Night, Angela
Butler.

How all of us gathered in 1958, 59, 60, 61 and 62 in the same
city at the same time, I count as being providential. We did not
plan it. We were all led there.

Langston Hughes' Poem

I dream a world where no human
no other human will scorn
where love will burst the earth
and piece its path adorned
I dream a dream where will know
sweet freedom's way
where greed no longer saps the soul
nor Everest's light or day
a world I dream where black and white
and yellow and blue, and green and red,
and brown, whatever the race maybe
will share the bounties of the earth,
and every woman and man, boy and girl
is free, where wretchedness hangs its head
and joy like a pearl attends the need of
all humankind...