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where wisdom gathers, poetry unfolds and divine light is sparked…

Tag: when the world leaves us shattered

July 8, 2016

and God weeps…

garden weeps

we weep, too.

even the garden this morning is wet with tears.

but the dawn came. and the wren still sings.

and, soon, once i brace myself, i will begin again to watch the news. all night, i worried. you can forget, in the crevices of night, how dark it is. but then, when dawn’s light begins to trickle in, when you begin to stir, and thoughts pick up at the end of the ellipses where you left them, you begin to shudder once again. you can’t quite catch your breath.

the world, you fear, is a whirling cauldron of hatred. you wanted to believe this globe has seen the worst. but you are wise enough to know that you’re a fool to hold such cockamamie notions.

we have jobs to do, each one of us. each one who holds a candle, holds a flame, we cannot let the light go out. can’t let love — and hope — and all those things we pray for, we cannot let them extinguish. we cannot be witness to the last burning ember.

late last night, just before we toddled off to sleep, we heard the latest horrors. snipers in dallas. policemen dead. a peaceful protest shattered. dealey plaza. parkland memorial hospital. the echoes of history swept across the screen. i remember being little, very little, watching scenes from dallas play across another screen. it scared me then. it scares me now. then, i had a papa whose big broad chest harbored me. back then, someone tucked me into bed. told me to say my prayers.

last night, after hours staring at the screen, when at last i drifted off to sleep, the man i love held my hand. the last words i heard before the silence drew me under were the ones he whispered in his prayer: “this world needs your light.”

i’d been soaked in sadness all day long, long before the horror from dallas poured across my screen. the news these days is non-stop reel of horrors. we are privy now to a broad swath of unspeakable sorrows. in one single frame of daylight, we watched men die — bleed to death and moan right before our eyes. and before that i’d been reading of rallies where hateful words are spewed. “hang the bitch.” “kill the bitch.” words so vile i can’t even bring myself to type them. such is the language that flows inside what’s framed as political rally. sounds like halls of hate to me. sounds like someone’s tapped into something redolent of sin, the last thread of civility has been snapped. and all hell is breaking loose. is oozing out, the great metastasis of evil.

and then, news of rooftop snipers. officers down. sirens wail. over and over, we hear the cacophony of rapid-fire weaponry. “something of a national emergency,” the tv anchor told us as the clock struck midnight. “civil war,” the headlines shout this morning (i just peeked).

so, we can follow our first instinct: run and hide, cower in the corner.

but then we might consider a second impulse: get up, and brace ourselves. imagine we’re the front line in a pacifist campaign to not let the evil win. because the truth is, we are the front line. each and every one of us. we’re the ones who hold the flame, who keep it burning. who decide in each and every interaction that we’re not giving in. we’re not spewing one syllable of hate. and — here’s a hard one — we’re not backing away when we’re witness to what’s ugly.

we arm ourselves with the same old equation of love that’s ever been. the one espoused by every holy pilgrim everywhere. flame by flame, we gather light. we counter the narrative of hate by stockpiling ones of love, of courage in the face of assault. we enlist a company of  kindred spirits. we embolden each other to not give up. do not surrender.

just this morning, i’m meeting a friend whose lifework is literally curing cancer. she spends her days bent over a laboratory station, keeping watch on chemical equations that fuel pharmaceutical weaponry that just might belittle cancer. there is reason for hope from her lab, she tells me, though it’s not yet clear whether it’s breast or ovarian cancer that will most certainly run into the wall they’re erecting. either one is fine by me.

that’s how i begin my emboldening, that’s how i don’t give up. i gather saints, one by one. i gather stories, deep breathe their notes of courage. i witness tenderness. i try mightily to embody any wisp of it. i pray. i watch. i weep. i dry my tears, dry the tears of those i love. and then i get to work.

the God i love is weeping. i woke up to a world drenched in all God’s tears.

how will you keep the flame burning, even in the darkness?

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June 19, 2015

again and again, our hearts shattered by the echo of the gunshot

church massacre

the morning light spilled across the front pages, across faces bowed and streaked in tears. it didn’t take long till my own tears were added to the morning’s misery. a “lone wolf,” a man who sat for an hour near a pastor leading bible study, in a historic charleston, south carolina church, pulled out a pistol, and, one by one, took aim and fired, riddled the prayerful, felled nine lives, including the church pastor, a revered state senator.

i’d come downstairs in this quiet old house to write of something else, but i picked up the news pages off the stoop, and there it was in all three papers: “deadly church attack;” “scene of carnage has long history of pain, pride and dignity;” “loner held in church killings.” sadly, only in chicago was the story “below the fold,” meaning it got second billing to something else, and in this case the “else” was a silver trophy for men in ice skates.

because i’ve spent more time away from screens in recent days, i’d not heard the news in the wake of its happening. i found out the old-fashioned way: reading the news after it had been gathered, laid out, printed and delivered to my door step. it hit me no less hard for the time delay between occurrence and finding out. in fact, it might have hit me harder, for i absorbed it in the sacred silent cloak of dawn. alone in my kitchen, i pored over the images, the words.

once again, our hearts are shattered by the ravages of mad folk and guns fired.

once again, my first response was to shudder, to find myself in goosebumps, followed swiftly by fury, followed by the image of a single candle flame burning in the dark: we can only light this world, we can only trigger change, by living each and every act of each and every day with as much deep down love, as much empathy towards whomever is in our path, as we can possibly muster.

that the echo of the gunshot rang out and ricocheted off the walls of a historic black church, a church with deepest roots in the march for justice that is the civil rights movement in america, only sickens me more.

i turn back to the image of the woman whose face is streaked in tears.

sometimes in the wake of awfulness like this, i feel the urge to take my children by the hand and huddle with my arms round their shoulders, to keep them safe in a world where the walls between sanity and insanity feel too permeable. where i don’t know who will barge into my grocery store or my children’s school, or my synagogue, for God’s sake, or my church, and ignite the ugliness, the horror.

mostly, i shake that off, and inhale a second breath, one that grounds me more firmly than ever, one that roots me in the deepest conviction and takes me back to the words of my beloved dorothy day: “little by little;” it is only through our little acts of courage, our little acts of love that we stand half a chance of mounting forces that might wither the ugliness, the horror, that intends to roll our way.

on the days when the world’s news rattles me, and it rattles me often, i am left with so very little in my counter-campaign. i have a heart, and i have words. i have imagination, too, thank God. and in my imagination right now, i am traveling to the side of the woman streaked in tears. i am holding her hand, and wrapping my arm around her shoulder. i am dabbing her tears, and i am breathing a promise: i will love more wildly today. i will scatter seeds of all that is good and gentle and heart-opening. yes, even here at my old kitchen table. i will start with love, the fiercest force i know. the one that, like a bullet, can penetrate the heart. can open it. can settle in and make for a peaceable kingdom after all.

where will you begin? 

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