Rosa Parks left us an un-payable
debt:  A Pathway to Freedom.
Legacy secure, work unfinished,
this Freedom Fighter passed.

When God simply asked her to surrender,
her soul had said, “Yes!”  “Seems like
it all started happening, when I stopped
talking,”  she said.  And so she sat quietly

in that Montgomery bus, so she could
feel the Spirit and do the right thing.
“If I perish, I perish,” she thought.
Servant-leader, giver, mentor,

she was a light to challenge the darkness.
And now we gather while yet we live. We
honor her at this her Home-going.  The defiance
that made her holy brought her to the place from

which she went quietly Home, leaving
us behind as her living memorial,
to be known by our works.  “God uses
the available, grounded in Something larger,”

said the Preacher.  “Turn our mourning into
living, into something love-based.”  And if we
believe that honoring our elders is the first
Commandment with Promise,

we’ll heed unto the Preacher’s words:
We’ll follow freedom’s un-
selfish path, hailing her as our (nation’s)
Mother Parks, before “we meet her

on the Other Side.”