The Miraculous Part 6
January 23, 2026
The Miraculous Part 6
A miraculous thing happened to me today at my floor class at the City Recreation center. Taught by a gifted African American woman, this Zumba class primarily uses a mixture of jazz and blues called Southern Soul. Most of the people in the class are African American. We, the participants, have bonded.
I have been attending this particular class for over a year, and until today, I had never experienced such a miraculous state of consciousness. Others may have experienced such a miracle in their own way, but because it happened in my soul, it was indeed a miracle for me.
The miracle I am about to tell you is a bit odd, so hold your hat. While doing the cardio-dancing, I saw each of my African American classmates as an enslaved person. I saw them in threadbare clothes torn from heavy work, worn overalls, and scarred bare feet and hands.
And in each face, I saw the glow I always see in them. I said to myself, “I am dancing with people from the same flesh and blood as their enslaved ancestors.” In those terrible times, the enslaved had music and dancing that lifted their spirits even in impossible conditions. But in those days, my ancestors were not dressed in tatters; they wore proper clothes. They received wages, had their own homes, and were free to do whatever they wished and go wherever they pleased.
My great-grandfather was a Confederate soldier who fought for a government whose mission was to keep people enslaved. I am his flesh and blood. He, his family, and his peers would never have danced with enslaved people like I was doing now. I pictured myself in a Confederate uniform. There I was, a rebel soldier dancing with the enslaved.
Yet all of us in the class, regardless of our ancestry, were laughing, sweating, and moving in shared joy.
Our class could not have happened during our country’s dark period of enslavement of other human beings. It could not have met in the era of Jim Crow laws or in the decades thereafter, until a few short years ago, when, because of the civil rights movement, the collective shifted….
Something broke free, and now, by law, everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Considering we began with a society that owned and lynched African Americans at will, without any justice, we have come a long way. That is miraculous. But in our society, we still regard people unlike ourselves, as “others” by relegating them to the substrata of humanity.
One day, hopefully, we will evolve to the point where we never denigrate or exclude those whose cultures, religions, and skin tones are different from ours. For one miraculous moment, I experienced an otherworldly state that put me in touch with a deeper level of awareness I had never before known.
Prayer:
Dear God, I ask for redemption for us all who have overtly or silently oppressed and extinguished another child of yours. Amen
