These last many months, I have slowly allowed myself to acknowledge anew the depth and endlessness of the heartache I carry within – heartache for the ways we human beings tear at each other’s bodies and psyches and spirits and holy places and communities and cultures and homes; heartache for the ways we tear at the earth and its waters and the creatures with whom we share breath and land. Chicago. Beirut. Kenya. Iraq. San Bernardino. Charleston. Paris. Israel and Palestine. Syria. Ferguson. Minneapolis. Newton. Afghanistan. Indigenous lands everywhere. South Sudan. Nigeria. Juárez City. On and on, endlessly on… When I was a kid, it wasn’t uncommon for me to cry myself to sleep thinking of children I knew must be out there who were hungry and vulnerable and suffering. I remember my small body wracked with grief too strong for me to handle or understand. I didn’t realize as a kid that my little, child’s body knew how to grieve for the suffering of the world because it also knew the pain and shock and horror of a particular violence personally. I didn’t have words or memory to name the source of my grief, but I felt its full force as I listened to stories of other children betrayed by a world that should have […]
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