Note: This piece was originally composed as a sermon for the Unitarian Universalist Church in Houston's Spring Branch community, given on February 22, 2026. The video from this occasion is available below.
The renowned eco-philosopher and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy, who passed away last July, once wrote:
"WE ARE IN a space without a map. With the likelihood of economic collapse and climate catastrophe looming, it feels like we are on shifting ground, where old habits and old scenarios no longer apply. In Tibetan Buddhism, such a space or gap between known worlds is called a bardo. It is frightening. It is also a place of potential transformation.
As you enter the bardo, there facing you is the Buddha Akshobhya. His element is Water. He is holding a mirror, for his gift is Mirror Wisdom, reflecting everything just as it is. And the teaching of Akshobhya's mirror is this: Do not look away. Do not avert your gaze. Do not turn aside. This teaching clearly calls for radical attention and total acceptance."
Two hours east from here, south of Old San Antonio Road and east of the Brazos, on the southern portion of Polk and Tyler Counties, there is a place called the Big Thicket.
This ancient forest is said to be more than 10,000 years old. It's a mix of several ecosystems that include, but are not limited to, pine forests, swamps, savannas, and prairies. This area is home to a quarter of the bird species found in the U.S. It has hundreds of tree species and an endless number of mammals, reptiles, and plant species.
It's said to be the most ecologically diverse place in the world, and it is the biological crossroads of North America, according to The Big Thicket: An Ecological Reevaluation. Before it was officially colonized in the early 19th century, the Thicket was once home to several Native American tribes, the original stewards of the land, including Caddo, Bidai, Deadose, Atakapa, and more. Currently, the Alabama-Coushatta Tribal Reservation is located in the area.
In February, I went to the Big Thicket National Park and went walking on one of the trails. This particular trail was located in the Cypress Slough area, known for its forested swamps, which at one point were common but are now rare, because of rampant cypress tree logging and hydraulic development on some of the water systems that run through the area.
This particular trail I walked was the 15-mile-long Turkey Creek Trail. I had actually tried to visit this same trail about two years ago and had walked about a few yards before running into a giant spider web, while being attacked by mosquitoes. I decided that the ancestors didn't want me there, so I turned right around and headed back to my car.
Macy, the ecospiritualist and philosopher I mentioned earlier, had helped develop this concept called The Work That Reconnects in the 1970s. Informed by Deep Ecology, Gaia Theory, Systems thinking, Buddhist and Indigenous teachings, it emphasizes that, despite whatever limitations are in our lives, we still choose the reality we value and want to serve.
In order to move past the parts that hold us back and in order to be right with the land, Macy created the Grief Spiral. It consists of four steps:
- Grounded in gratitude
- Honor the very present pain and trauma we have
- Once we honor our pain, we see it with new eyes
- We then move forward with new insight
We move through this spiral more than once, and it just continues to repeat. It teaches us to re-frame our suffering with compassion.
The Thicket was known for its dense forests. Throughout the 19th century, Spanish colonizers lured folks to the area with land grants. It was known as a lawless land where escaped slaves and outlaws would hide because of its jungle-like forests. It's where folks sought refuge and escape.
This area of Deep East Texas—the Thicket and surrounding areas—is also home to one of the largest concentrations of settlements known as Freedom Colonies, which are mostly in rural areas. Freedom Colonies are towns and communities that were founded by freed slaves after Emancipation was announced in Galveston in 1865. Before that, we knew these places to be marooned communities. There are over 500 estimated Freedom Colonies in the state of Texas.
My grandfather's family grew up in Chester and Woodville, located in the Thicket. My grandmother's family grew up on the edge of Texas and Louisiana, only an hour away. In these areas, my family grew up on the land. They hunted hogs, deer, squirrels, and raccoons for their families to eat.
My grandmother would tell me stories of going to get well water for the day with her 12 brothers and sisters. I grew up hearing oral histories about cracklin' cornbread, red dirt for wounds, fishing for crawfish, slingshots, and toys made of sticks and straw. My grandparents both spent their formative years growing up with no electricity.
Now, they tell us grandkids not to go into those woods because of animals and ghosts, but they're mostly afraid of white militia men that haunt the forests.
Back at this trail in Cypress Slough in the Thicket, and I'm walking. It's calm. The cars were further away, and I could hear the chirps and whistles of the birds—cardinals, warblers, mockingbirds. The canopy of trees swallows me. This time, I'm not being attacked by bugs and spiders. I hear the crunch of the leaves under my feet. My shoulders are more relaxed, and I'm breathing a bit easier. As I walk, I come across a gray-wooded shack. It's small, and the swollen, decaying wood is bolted with rusty nails. At first, I'm hesitant, but something calls me to it. I walk, and I go to it.
East Texas had three major industries: lumber, railroad, and oil industries. All of these industries have impacted the social fabric of Deep East Texas, from pitting Black and Mexican communities against one another to causing ecological destruction to the region.
Black landowners in the South have collectively lost around 12 million acres of land over the past century—most of it in the 1950s due to discriminatory laws. In 1910, Black Americans owned 16 to 19 million acres of land, but by the 1990s, only 1.5 million acres actually remained under Black stewardship. That's $326 billion of wealth lost. The exact amount has yet to be calculated for Afro-Texans, who owned the largest portion of land in the country.
What we do to the land is what we also do to the people. What happens to the land is what happens to the people. We extract from the land. We extract from the people. We poison the land. We poison the people. We disconnect the people from the land. We disconnect the people from themselves.
I've written about East Texas and its violent history towards Black people. 30 percent of the state's population that was Black in the 1860s was highly concentrated in the region. There are documented assaults, and many of the crimes that went unpunished. Some of the first spectacle lynchings began in this region of Texas.
Nacogdoches, the Oldest Town in Texas, saw the complete removal of Black people who owned homes and businesses downtown happen overnight shortly after Reconstruction. One of the gruesomest massacres, known as the Slocum massacre, happened here. Over 50 unarmed black people's bodies were dumped into unmarked graves in the early 1900s with no remorse. The Great Depression would also make this violence worse.
In a 2016 analysis by the Dallas Morning News, over 90 percent of police officers in Lufkin and Nac were white. According to a 2020 ACLU report, Black folks are almost four times more likely to get arrested for weed. East Texas ranked the highest for Black folks who experienced poverty as well as racial disparity.
Imagine these issues being compounded in Texas, which has one of the worst states for childhood welfare, one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates, and the highest domestic violence rates (East Texas is home to a large majority of the state's many intimate partner violence-related killings).
I walked onto the porch of the shack. There are no windows. I'm nosey and very curious, so I open the door. Inside is this small little girl balled up and shaking. She's crying. She looks up to me, and I go in. I ask her where her parents are and if she has any family. I ask her if she's lost, and she says she doesn't know. I purposely left my phone in the car, and I'm looking around now, not knowing what to do. She's bawling, and so I just stay with her in her grief.
When she's done, I ask if she wants to go outside, and she just looks at me. I put my hand out, and she reached for me with her small hands. The inside of her hands had these bloody half moons scratched on the inside of them from how tightly she was clenching her fists. I grab her hand, and we walk outside. It takes her a minute to adjust her eyes, and we slowly begin to shuffle off the porch. As we walk, she turns around and glances at that shack one last time. She's cheerful as we walk towards the mouth of the trail where my car is.
PECAN Project is not about Material Reparations. It's about the necessary means needed to reclaim the fullest parts of ourselves. When we are able to fully be in our bodies. When we are rested and fully taken care of, then we are able to plant our feet and face all parts of ourselves and our reality.
We—myself, Briana Blueitt, Carrington Tatum, and D'Naja Reagan—are a small team of folks from or with lineal ties to Deep East Texas. We're partnering with cowboys who are the descendants of many of these Freedom Colonies that I mentioned earlier. PECAN researcher Carrington is quantifying a sample of how much wealth has been stolen from Black folks. We document contemporary and old stories to correct the record or lack thereof.
When we know our histories, we know the technologies our ancestors used, and we know what is not useful for us anymore. We move from a centered and aligned place. We use narrative because we understand that when you move someone emotionally, they, in turn, can shift their beliefs about themselves, especially the belief of their inferiority.
Me and that little girl walked that trail in silence. Listening to the birds. She looked up at the trees in awe. Her little feet shuffled while she held her head a little higher than when we first left that shack. She didn't say anything. She just observed the world around her. By the time we made it to the opening of the trail, we stopped and stood. We looked ahead for what seemed like three minutes. When I looked down, she was gone.
In my palm lay the scars of the bloody half moons I once saw on her palm.
The Thicket is only three percent of the original four million acres it once was.
We are facing the looming threat of data centers, a water crisis, and continued unsustainable development in our communities. We are tasked with remembering because we have to maintain the maps our ancestors have set forth for our survival. That also means we have to explore the ecology of ourselves along the way.
Reparations isn't about reclamation of wealth. It's about reclaiming the fullest and whole parts of ourselves. Looking at ourselves head on, accepting and grounding ourselves in gratitude, and moving from there.
Peace and love, T.D. Bailey