Saturday, February 17, 2018

Help my Unbelief


I had a conversation last evening with someone about the latest school shooting…I’d had a conversation earlier in the day with someone too.  In both conversations and in a comment I’d made on a friend’s Facebook page, I found myself sighing and thinking “Help, Lord, my unbelief.” My unbelief that things will change…my unbelief that things haven’t changed yet…my unbelief that a nation can sleep when this is happening…my unbelief…that has nothing to do with God and everything to do with human beings, human nature, and the inability to make a decision.

The unbelief—it has its foundations in an all too intimate awareness of the complexity of this issue.  The unbelief has roots in watching laws get rolled back and pockets get lined thanks to the choke-hold power of the gun lobby. It comes because congress seems to think, or perhaps even claim to know, that US citizens would rather give up the safety of their most vulnerable populations than give up the right to legally own, load-up, and wield, weapons of war. The unbelief comes because though there have been an obscene number of opportunities, congress cannot collectively decide that it would be better to try reducing the possibilities of violence though peaceful means rather than have a little extra jingle in their pockets. 

I might have a hard time believing that Congress will actually enact laws to help ease this collective infection, but as a woman of faith, I shall summon up every reserve I have and I will speak out with ink and voice until we make a better decision for the sake of humanity. 

I thought about that again this morning while sitting in one of my favorite thought-spots at the farmers market. 

7:10 AM Hammered dulcimer music floats over the round-edged comfort of early morning conversation between passers-by and vendors selling both winter vegetables and the promise of spring. The coffee is hot and strong, the book newly begun, and the pen has ink. Amen.

And then a little while later:

…It is time to let someone else feel the blessing of February morning-water sun spread across their back.  It’s a beautiful thing, that feeling…not dissimilar to listening to Evensong the other night.  It is a feeling I find myself “yearning-into”—something more than leaning. The tender, permeating, wide-love warmth that makes even the vulnerability of allowing my spirit to stretch and relax in public a blessing.

And then I thought… this feeling, this is my wish for humanity.  Feel the weight of this.  Not the weight of weapons.  Not the weight of no better option.  Not the weight of hate, racism, injustice.  Not the weight of purchased influence.  Let us decide together bear the weight of Love and all that it asks of us.  

Giving in to that takes more courage than anything else I know.



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