What will I tell my child?

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What will I tell my child about this moment in time?

When we sit at the kitchen table 10, 20, 30 years from now, will shame stain my recollections as it does now? Will I fully convey the impotence, anger, and grief I felt? Will tension still constrict my bruised consciousness?

Where will tribalism stand? How about a two-party political system? Will my child understand the significance of truth and -- god willing -- not only be able to recognize it, but convey it?

Will the world be safer, letting us sigh in relief and laugh away the bogeyman from the safety of our warm home? Or will the world be worse, justifying my child's disappointment, blame, or -- god forbid -- fear?

Will I look my child in the eye and tell them with full faith and great pride that good women and men stood up to combat the abject wrong? Better yet, will I be able to count myself among that group?

On days like today, when old wounds reopen in the face of blatant, unapologetic hypocrisy; when people of integrity in our highest offices seem but a Pollyanna-ish dream; when the country's fevered news cycle compounds hysteria; when the September rains fall, fall, fall (to commiserate with tears, or to drown a scorched earth?) -- on days like today, I feel my unaware, unborn child stir within me, and I know in my deepest heart that I can not yet answer them to either of our satisfaction.

Thus, I am sobered. Emboldened. Terrified. A will in search of a way. (Or is it the other way around?) My path to the kitchen table is murky, but the goal itself is blindingly clear: to stand right in the eyes of God and all God's children.


Prayer #327: Back to the Light

Stand with the victim, the assaulted, the sneered-at, the spat-upon. Call out the hypocrites and liars in every rank. Don't just cleanse the temple -- burn it to the ground, and with it all who defy Your mandate to love. To love, to trust, to exalt, to truly and fully see. And I pray that my own defiance of Your great mandate lessens every day, that my heart opens its miserly, self-protective grip and admits Your power -- the only force that can sway our broken humanity back to the side of light.

Amen.