wake up

 

  God—let me be aware.

  Stab my soul fiercely with others’ pain,

  Let me walk seeing horror and stain.

  Let my hands, groping, find other hands.

  Give me the heart that divines, understands.

  Give me the courage, wounded, to fight.

  Flood me with knowledge, drench me in light.

  Please—keep me eager just to do my share.

  God—let me be aware.

                     Miriam Teichner (2^nd stanza of Let Me Be Aware)

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it takes a brave or foolish soul

to wander outside their safe places

their encapsulated places

 

in this time when dangers seem to abound

 

there are shifting climes and strange storms

Covid still roams

angry, fearful people with guns worship at the altar of power

politicians divide and destroy

 

…it’s a killing ground out there!

…you can get killed out there!

(William Hanley, Slow Dance on the Killing Ground)

 

even a trip to the mall

the grocery store

can become a fearful thing

 

if not for guns

then for oblivious people

who, armored in well-manicured ignorance (at best)

or self-centered contempt (at worst)

refuse to wear a mask, or distance

 

it is this that strikes one’s soul

as one wanders through America today

(it is this way everywhere?)

 

how so many are unmindful

unaware

and have little sense of others

 

it is seen in the smaller things

in a refusal to wear a mask

or keep one’s distance

(smaller things which are big things)

 

it is seen too in the willful blindness

that enables and sustains

injustice and inequity

 

in Mr. Santorum’s arrogant a statement

that delegitimized the indigenous people of North America*

in the blindness of white privilege

that refuses to see the pain and struggle of people of color

 

it is seen in the blind idolatry of those

their right to have any gun they want, any place they want

is more important than the lives of all those who die by gun violence

 

what the world needs now

is people who see other people

who see what other people suffer

see what other people need (to be safe and flourish)

 

and

believing those “others” to be

precious, sacred children

look beyond themselves

 

and do what is needed

to protect, to help

to comfort

 

for the fact is we all make it to the Kingdom together

or (in spite of what evangelicals say)

we don’t make it to the kingdom at all

 

_____________________________________________________

 

* “We came here and created a blank slate," Santorum said. "We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes we have Native Americans, but candidly there isn't much Native American culture in American culture.”