Mantra: “Free to be wholly.  Every breath a prayer.”

Pauli Murray grew up in Durham, North Carolina down the street from where we are recording these meditations for you!  Pauli Murray wrote the literal guide book for Civil Rights law as the first person to document every discriminatory law in every state in the US.  Pauli Murray railed against the boundaries of a whites only admission policy at UNC Chapel Hill, became the first Black woman ordained as an Episcopal priest and left a legacy holistic change that we are still trying to live up to today.  Our original meditation for Pauli Murray excerpted a poem from Dark Testament, but today’s mantra draws on two of Murray’s sermons about gender and divinity. Pauli Murray envisioned the freedom in the world and in the church to understand ourselves in the image of a God that is beyond gender binaries.  So as we repeat “Free to be wholly.  Every breath a prayer,” know that you are whole and holy beyond all categories just as you are.

P.S.  If you are still thinking about Pauli Murray’s BRILLIANCE head to our Mobile Homecoming Live page to see the Sunday Service we did at Pauli’s elementary school in 2019 featuring sermons and poetry by Black Queer and Trans Pauli Murray Legacy Bearers in North Carolina!  mobilehomecoming.org/live

Pauli Murray Service Up Until: June 1