I want to rise

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Do not human beings have a hard service on earth, and are not their days like the days of a laborer?...  I am allotted months of emptiness, and nights of misery are apportioned to me.  When I lie down I say, “When shall I rise?”  But the night is long, and I am full of tossing until dawn.  

          Job 7:1, 3-4

 

Slogans are fine, actions are better

          Diana Butler Bass

 

I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.”

          Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

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This night is long

And the darkness grows

 

As anger and despair

Smother joy and gratitude

Like the night swallows the day

 

Evil, yes

Evil

Comes relentlessly

Wave after wave of words and actions

That minimize and destroy

Everything

 

The planet

Souls

Truth

Hope

 

All quickly slowly painfully relentlessly

Destroyed by lies

And hate

By injustice clothed as justice

Sin hiding inside righteousness

Weakness pretending to be power

 

It is too much

On this Saturday morning as the sun rises bright

Into an azure sky

As the mountain stands, immovable and resolute

 

I lift my eyes to the mountain

But help does not come

Not today

 

And I wonder

How long, how long O Lord

How much longer will this darkness overcome

The light?

 

How long will hate win?

Lies prevail?

 

I want to rise

To get up from this place

Of deep sadness

I want to stand in the sun

And feel the warmth of justice and joy

 

I know the promises

That the darkness will not overcome

The light

I hear the words of mother Mary echo in my soul

 

The day will come

The day WILL come

 

When the rich and powerful will be cast down

Not a stone left on stone

 

The day will come when

When the poor shall weep no more

And the immigrant can walk the streets in safety

 

But on this day

I am full of doubt

And all I can do

Is put one foot in front of the other

And trod, trod, toil and trod (GMH)

through this world, which unravels each day

the sacred denied

bleared, smeared, diminished

 

I am entangled in my fears and doubts

Burdened by my anger

 

But it is time to cast off

those things that hold me down

Crushed

 

I want to rise

And greet the dawn