I give my voice to God. Not to others, that they may strangle it, or keep it as a canary in a golden cage, green and lovely and tame. So that it never learns to fly, beyond imaginations, that it has brown string wrapped around its feet. Tethered to its culture. Frustrated as it bangs into the glass of friends and strangers expectations.
Nor will I keep it as a fat dove that sits inside my head and sings in introspection in an auditorium for one. In a tangled echo chamber with 1000 crisscrossed strings, as a cacophonous host of misplayed violins. In the lacquered nest of my mind. Keep my voice in the vault of myself? I will not keep my voice there, no.
There is a battle ground for each voice. To stifle, to strangle, to silence, to maime. To douse, to drown, to insult as strange. Yes the battle is there.
But this is my prayer for my voice. For our voices. That we would speak up and be a mouthpiece for the Holy Spirit. So that our lips spill out with long silk ribbons. And the linen of peace may extend from where we stand to where our words roost and land. That though we may arrive with knocked knees under the weight of stigma. Our voices will gush like waters through the desert sand. Will hang like tapestry in grey places, will float like lanterns over desolated ravines, will be an arctic fire for souls that are purple with cold. So we declare it, so it shall be. Because that is the power of the tongue, and the word, and the force of the voice. So, in Jesus name, let it be.
©2021 Tendayi Sutherland
