As we welcome you, our readers, and all of our students back for another season, we can't help but be filled with excitement at all 2010 has in store!! There are many changes we anticipate, including some site amendments and some new conversation partners. We're also looking forward to celebrating with you events in the Duke and Durham communities, as the Spring is filled with much to reflect over culturally and spiritually.
As such, we guide you here to the MLK, Jr. Day Events that will be held on our campus: http://mlk.duke.edu
We also announce that we will be opening our call for submissions later in the Spring, and we are very excited to expand our virtual community here in that way!
Lastly, as we enter each day with newness, we take a moment to recall from whence we have come, and the faithfulness of a God who has brought us thus far. We leave you with the lyrics to the Black National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing, and ask that you meditate closely on their meaning in ways we might overlook when singing from memory. And, we thank you, for traveling the Stony Roads that have brought us thus far, but will continue to lead our paths to the places of promise and hope where we venture.
With grace and peace,
Lift Every Voice and sing till earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of liberty
Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea
Sing a song, full of the faith that the dark past has taught us
Sing a song, full of the hope that the present has brought us
Facing the rising sum of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won
Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod
felt in the days when hope unborn had died
yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet
come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come, over a way that which tears has been watered
We have come, treading out path through the blood of the slaughtered
Out of the gloomy past, till now we stand at last,
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast!
GOD of our weary years, GOD of our silent tears
Thou Who has brought us thus far on the way
Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light
Keep us for-e-ver in the path we pray!
Lest our feet, stray from the places our GOD where me met thee
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world we forget Thee
Shadowed beneath thy hand, may we forever stand
True to our God, True to our native land!
