Eagerly walking with their teachers to a day at the local playground.
Ready for fun.
Ready for freedom.
On the move.
Ready to be kids.
Tugs at my heart brought my run through the middle & high school parking lot.
Examining the full parking lot, I prayed for teachers, staff & students.
Reflecting on their lives.
Requesting protection and safety
On them, over them, around them.
Realizing I have no idea what they need.
The track is where I
End up. To
Rage and
Rest through sprints and jogs.
Over and over…rage & rest…rage & rest.
Retuning home, I’ve not solved the problems, I’ve barely scraped the surface, but I’ve moved, breathed, yelled, prayed and spent time in my community. And that is where I feel hope today.
Terror: the experience of our brothers and sisters in Ukraine, wondering if their home is the next; to be bombed;
Terror: the fear of the child who is being abused by someone who is supposed to love them; listening, quivering for sounds that it is about happen once again;
Terror: the children forced to participate in shooter drills who jump when a car backfires;
Terror: the horror that our politicians keep accepting money from gun lobbies;
Terror: the fear within each and every marginalized group that there are few places they can feel safe.
Terror: allowing hope to die by apathy and inaction.
Terror: that lonely feeling of impending doom because no one stood up!
In my tent
Under stars
Quivering legs
So exhausted
But what if there
is a bear outside
who’ll tear into our tent
and crush our skulls?
Or perhaps a saber-toothed tiger
or even a mammoth
casually trampling?
I’m too terrified to sleep out here
night after night,
month after month,
Yet I do.
Each night I face my primal fears
and lay down under the ripstop plastic
and trust.
Today it feels like terror is winning.
It feels like the power hoarders
who choose and maintain
Violence
Guns
Wars
Oppression
Exploitation
Scarcity
Greed
are winning.
It feels like the awakening of universal consciousness is happening too slowly.
How many more lives must be taken?
How much more suffering can we bare?
Today the terror brings overwhelming grief and despair.
Will the terror ever end?
The storyteller takes a pause, a breath,
letting the terror of the moment
sink in their stomachs, empty weight.
“And what happens then?” they question,
unsatisfied. The storyteller sits quiet,
waiting for the words to come,
praying this is only the middle
of the story.
Millennia ago,
it was given names
as gods
Marduk,
Ba'al
but then after
defeat
at the Resurrection
it rebranded as
powers and principalities
surviving through
a violent world
appearing at times
re-empowered
as empires
rise and fall;
nations
revolt and
hold "civil" wars;
churches
reform and split.
but that is not
enough,
it always demands
violent sacrifice
on it's altar
it rebrands
again.
It goes into
smaller communities,
churches,
schools,
families.
generations of
violence
trauma
feed this
we
aren't willing to
SACRIFICE
our "rights" to guns
because the odds are
"in our favor".
others people's
children, parents, grandparents
are fitting sacrifice
so it gets rebranded again.
in all that
death, blood
tears, pain
I see the truth.
I know where the
temple to this god
resides.
Knowing where it is,
it can be stopped
more will be sacrificed
before it is
thoughts and prayers
won't change that.
we can
we must
we will
one day
partner with
GRACE
and
LOVE
to end it
Terror
I live near Sandy Hook
45 minutes from where
A nation, a state, a community
Is irrevocably scarred
By terror
I work at an elementary school
In a “safe, wealthy, suburb”
But nowhere is safe anymore
From Terror
Terror is always at the fringes
Fear is always on the border
Of my mind
Yet
I choose to live my day in grace
And in compassion and empathy
And mindfulness and laughter
And hugs and “thumbs up”
And if I should die by Terror
I will have lived by Love
I read the headlines, and sometimes,
it doesn't hit me right away.
There have been so many like them,
so very many,
and I'm so tired.
Aren't we all tired of this?
It feels easier
to not feel it all at once,
but that does a disservice
to those who have no choice.
To those who are waking up today,
in the wake of gun violence,
without their loved ones.
To those who aren't waking today at all.
To those who may not wake tomorrow
if those in power continue to offer nothing
but "thoughts and prayers."
This isn't supposed to happen.
It isn't supposed to be this way.
It doesn't have to be this way.
How quickly would it change
if those in power felt this terror,
felt it all at once,
had no choice but to feel it?
How is it that power and money and greed
can cause someone to forget their humanity?
To forget how to feel, so much,
that they'd rather offer empty platitudes
than to act to ensure
that this never happens again?
Today, I'm waking up with my babies,
and desperately aching
for those who aren't,
and desperately angry,
because it didn't have to be this way.
Inconceivable
Held hostage
by a few fat, cruel, ignorant
pharisees
who grip power
Knowing
Beautiful Human Beings
In their care
will die
“It can’t be helped,” they say
as they count their money
and track their power with the corrupt
Terror works well for them
You don't care.
you bring him just to spread more.
thru the eyes, the ears,
You don't care.
straight to the soul you go.
and you stay and stay and stay and stay and stay and stay and stay and stay and stay and stay,
always always lurking for a replay.
You don't care.
Coward.
Selfish Pig.
Asshole.
Today’s run brought me by
Elementary school kids at the bus stop
Running to and fro as they always do
Recognizing faces, I spoke with some moms.
On the road again, I wondered how they were
Really feeling.
The path I ran today continued by more students.
Eagerly walking with their teachers to a day at the local playground.
Ready for fun.
Ready for freedom.
On the move.
Ready to be kids.
Tugs at my heart brought my run through the middle & high school parking lot.
Examining the full parking lot, I prayed for teachers, staff & students.
Reflecting on their lives.
Requesting protection and safety
On them, over them, around them.
Realizing I have no idea what they need.
The track is where I
End up. To
Rage and
Rest through sprints and jogs.
Over and over…rage & rest…rage & rest.
Retuning home, I’ve not solved the problems, I’ve barely scraped the surface, but I’ve moved, breathed, yelled, prayed and spent time in my community. And that is where I feel hope today.
More deaths than days
Committed by grown men who
Praise violence,
We bury our dead
Bless the dying in silence
Shed tears that tear through a heart
A community, a world
On this, the anniversary
of a terror.
How de we contain our furor,
keep making sense of
Something so senseless,
we the defenseless,
The heartbroken,
The enraged
Like candles burning, emblazed
Maybe our anger is to
Illuminate
Maybe our embers glitter
Anyway.
Love has been the answer
Love is our only hope
Love will prevail over hate, terror, guns, racism, colonization, otherism, murder, slavery and persecution of all shapes and forms.
Terror
Split wide open
Ripped, violated, subdued, trashed, shot, overpowered
Dehumanized.
Suffer, just suffer, more than you can imagine, suffer.
You are powerless.
Be afraid, be in terror.
Have no power, it has been strangled from you.
Cry, tremble, cower.
This is terror and it is beyond hope, beyond God.
Or is it?
If there is a god, that god must be with you and I
even when there is terror afoot.
And this God must give us vision and power and resistance and resilience
And courage and imagination for better; for love.
For love and hope stronger even than terror; for Life
out and stronger than death.
Terror: Awful, Awful, agonizingly awful, gut-wrenching.
But not the last world.
Love and hope still, even in the presence of terror, Abide.
They must abide. God helps us! Love and hope must abide.
Terror: the experience of our brothers and sisters in Ukraine, wondering if their home is the next; to be bombed;
Terror: the fear of the child who is being abused by someone who is supposed to love them; listening, quivering for sounds that it is about happen once again;
Terror: the children forced to participate in shooter drills who jump when a car backfires;
Terror: the horror that our politicians keep accepting money from gun lobbies;
Terror: the fear within each and every marginalized group that there are few places they can feel safe.
Terror: allowing hope to die by apathy and inaction.
Terror: that lonely feeling of impending doom because no one stood up!
Stand Upo!
Terror is omnipresent.
My soul is heavy
Under
The weight of this grief.
Exhaustion starts to set in
But, damn, if I am not going to let terror
take away my spirit.
An exhausted spirit
But living, breathing.
This one knocked me out— powerful!
I just have rage mixed with sadness!