to that reality right now, which is why we pray,

that kingdom come that will be done on earth as it is in heaven,

which motivates us to do things like pursue justice

and be witnesses in the realm of justice but also to love well and to raise our children in hope that that

whatever circumstances may prevail, there is a better day coming that we're leaning into.

Yeah, I really love that, you know, in a lot of black novels, there's like this element of AfroFuturism. I'm thinking off the top of my head

Colson Whitehead's book The Underground Railroad which was also one of my cultural artifacts

from two years ago and there's this scene at the end that's so it's majestic like in the way

that it's described and in the way that it kind of resolves everything and without

giving that away I think it was just such a powerful picture of to imagine, oppressed people still need to think about a future that maybe we won't

experience ourselves but that our children can experience. It's I think important for us as we talk about legacy to think

about history as a kind of a conduit to that legacy. How important was it for slaves? How important was it for the

Jim Crow South? How important was it for our ancestors to dream? You know, from your

perspective, what's the what's the element and what's the impact of dreams as it relates to our our ancestors?

I think of you know we often think about enslavement during the period right to and into the Civil War era.

But there was a period in the Antebellum era when the Civil War was far off and people

weren't necessarily predicting a conflagration like that which would end

enslavement. And so what that means is you had people born into slavery who everywhere they looked around was slavery and there was no hope of

ending the institution, maybe you could escape, but that was remote and dangerous.

And so they had to live their entire existence saying this is most likely going to be my lot.

And I am quite sure that I am where I am today because somewhere along the line,

historically, I had a praying grandmother who envisioned a future not for herself

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