Happy Fourth of July everyone! The celebration started with fireworks on Juneteenth and ends with fireworks tonight. Hope you all can join us!
Category: Freedom
Opal’s Farm 4th of July Celebration
Hey Opal’s Farm Volunteers! This is just a reminder that Sunday is almost here. That means our 4th of July festivities at the farm will begin at 6 PM. Opal’s Farm is one of the best places in Fort Worth to watch the Fort Worth 4th fireworks show. We have a 360-degree view of the other fireworks displays all around Fort Worth.
The area around our “barn” is being prepared to host the 4th with cold drinks, hamburgers, hot dogs, and grilled fresh veggies (from the farm of course!) for all our volunteers and friends of the farm. Many of our neighbors will be there as well.
You don’t have to be a volunteer to come out and join us. Food and drinks are free for all our volunteers in appreciation of the incredible job they do every day at Opal’s Farm.
We’ve been celebrating freedom since Juneteenth (A FEDERAL HOLIDAY, y’all) and the 4th of July party well be the culmination of a very special, historic time for all of us.
This is a come-and-go affair so please come by even if you can’t stay the evening. We’d love to see you!
If you can’t come, then please feel free to help Opal’s Farm by going to www.unityunlimited.org and donating on the Opal’s Farm page.
“It was the beautiful presence of authoritative Black bodies that made [the Emancipation Proclamation] real. These Black soldiers, like Christ, gave flesh to the emancipating spoken words.”- Jayne Marie Smith
Extra Special Juneteenth (Thank you Ms. Opal!)
The Juneteenth Festival this weekend will be a special celebration, both here in Fort Worth and nationally. A signing ceremony in the East Wing of the White House made Juneteenth, the 19th of June, a National Holiday. Words cannot express the joy and pride I felt as I watched President Biden sign the bill and hand a pen to our beloved Ms. Opal. Many prayers have been answered. Let the celebration begin!
Tuesday, the Senate unanimously passed the bill and sent it over to the House where it passed with bipartisan support on Wednesday. I’m at Opal’s Farm all day so I didn’t here of the passage until last night’s 10 o’clock news. I never call anyone after 10:00 PM (I was taught a call after 10:00 better involve blood or it was completely socially unacceptable), but I had to call Ms. Opal right away. “You did it”, I cried.
“No, WE did it”, she said. “There have been so many people along the way who made this happen”.
I wouldn’t have expected any other answer. That’s the kind of person she is. I’ve learned much about true humility from Ms. Opal, but she earned the title “Mother of Juneteenth” from her many years of persistence and dedication to a vision. Many others worked to make this day a reality, but it was a “little old lady in white tennis shoes that gets in everybody’s business” (her description, not mine) that blazed the path forward.
She personifies Juneteenth. That’s why the holiday has come to mean so much to me. Her constant reminder that “no one’s free until we all are free” echoes through all we do at Unity Unlimited, Inc. and Opal’s Farm. I’m amazed and proud I get to be a part of it all.
I’ve had the honor and privilege of serving as the Farm Manager for Opal’s Farm for the last three years. I’ve listened to the stories and the history that I never knew. One story has always stood out. On Juneteenth, 1929, when she was only twelve years old, her family home was burned down by a white mob upset by a Black family moving into their neighborhood. I’d heard the story through media reports, but it was Ms. Opal who told me the one detail that had the greatest impact on me. She told me she decided that day so long ago “that I was going to hate what they did, but I wasn’t going to hate them” (the white mob).
That a twelve-year-old girl could have that spirit of love and forgiveness was astonishing to me. It makes perfect sense when you see her today. I’ve learned more about loving and forgiving others in the last three years than I did in the previous fifty!
Ms. Opal, I’m so proud to be a small, small part of your journey. Thank you for all you have done – not just for me, but for all of us. I’ve prayed diligently for this day. To see you honored in the East Wing of the White House by President Biden, Vice-President Harris, and so many members of Congress was the
was an honor to know, love, and be loved by you. It still doesn’t make my heart swell as much as when you said you were my grandmother too!
That being said…
Opal’s Farm will not be a Cowtown Farmers Market this weekend. We’ll be with Unity Unlimited, Inc., Ms. Opal, and hundreds of others for an extra special and one-of-a-kind celebration. Please join us at 10:00 AM for our walk with Ms. Opal from Evans Plaza to the Tarrant County Courthouse. The celebration continues with the I Am Juneteenth Festival at Panther Island Pavilion beginning at 3:00 PM and followed by fireworks at 9 PM. What a better way to begin celebrating freedom for us all.
The Urgency of Now
When is it time Lord?
For Your will to be done on Earth as it is in heaven.
When is it time Lord?
For us to be one as You and Your Son are one.
When is it time Lord?
To believe the Red Letters in Your book and act like it.
We said it was time when a young lady stayed in her bus seat because she was tired.
That your will could be done on Earth as it is in heaven.
We said it was time when thousands gathered on a hot August day to share a dream,
That we could be one as You and Your Son are one.
We said it was time over and over and over again,
But we still don’t believe the Red Letters in Your book.
The Red Letters are just too idealistic, too unreal,
No one can do that,
Why, you’d have to be a white Jesus.
‘Cause it’s just too hard to believe,
A brown-skinned Palestinian Jew…
If we really believed them, we’d be cut to the very core of our being…
Our sin would be laid bare,
And we might have to change,
And who in the world wants to do that.
“Ignorance is bliss”, so goes the old saying.
And we’re a blissful lot.
We hide behind our stained-glass windows,
and under our steeples,
and talk about how God loves us all,
except He loves some more than others.
You can tell by the color of their skin…
(as if blessings are determined by color)
We all worship You, Father, but “they” need to worship over there,
Maybe it’s just so white folks won’t have to look at themselves.
I don’t know Abba.
I don’t even pretend to understand anymore.
It’s our prayer that…
Pictures of a white man on a black man’s neck have opened our eyes,
Screams of “I can’t breathe” have opened our ears.
We can’t be blind.
We can’t be deaf.
But some of us still choose to be…
I know the time is coming.
when Your will is done on Earth as it is in heaven.
I know the time is coming,
when we will be one as You and the Son are one.
I know the time is coming,
When the words of Your Son shine as bright as the sun in our lives
When people will know of Your love by our love.
When men are “no longer judged by the color of their skin,
But the content of their character”.
I know the time is coming,
it’s long overdue.
To be silent is to be complicit.
It hurts too much to be quiet.
The time is now Father.
My time is now.
gregoryjoel.com 