Broken-Down Burundi
Burundi, today I turned my face away from you. Every word I heard sounded like a rumor, not a fact. My head ached as it spun in a sea of unconfirmed reports from a multi-lingual press corps. And glad tidings were nowhere to be found. So I stopped hunting for hope amid 140 cryptic characters, stopped scanning news outlets… I just stopped. I looked elsewhere or maybe nowhere at all, but certainly not in your direction. Not today.   Burundi,…
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{ This Advent, We Mourn }
Our streets tremble these days. They quake with so much wrong and woe. How can we think of green garlands and twinkle lights, or send carolers out on the streets still stained with the blood of our sons? Ashen mothers offer their call and response from one street corner to the next, a slow dirge then an anguished cry. They clutch graduation portraits to their chest. Stand in front of cameras testifying to the humanity of their children, the inhumane…
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{ Deeper Story: none to comfort }
I used to anticipate Christmas. I anticipated The Birth, the joy and the peace. The weeks of waiting, called Advent, intensified the arrival of the baby. The purple-clad days of Advent and its slow burning candles allowed Christmas to burst bright red on the scene, to sound like a crescendo across the landscape. Now I anticipate differently. I await the redemption of the broken down places and the fractured ways of the world. It’s a longing not quickly resolved by…
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{ I am the betrayer }
Often times personal lament and confession overlap. There are moments we see ourselves amid the ashes and we complain, confess, speak out our part in the wrongness of things. Reading the lament Diana offered, this one phrase haunted me relentlessly: “And sometimes, the betrayer is me.” I love my brown brothers and sisters. Yet as I scour my own upbringing, I see how my words and actions have betrayed otherwise. It is a systemic wrong, but also a personal one…
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some to comfort
Everyone wants to deck the halls with blaring reds and shining silvers, eager to rush into celebration. We love the Christmas music, old and new, the blow-out sales and conjuring of merriment. We say the season is laced with magic and miracles amid the snow and woolen scarves. We don joy. But Advent is the season of purple hues and dark blues. It is the cool colors, the chill before the celebrations of good cheer. In this season of hush…
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{ Red Letter Christians: Adoption Lament }
“What was her name?” my daughter asks. “Did anyone save a picture of her?” “Do you know where her house is so I can see where she lived?” Her questions come fast these days; always asked with great curiosity and sometimes intensity. A salvaged photograph would mean she could see what her birth mom looked like – do we share brown skin, did I get my long lashes from you, is there any resemblance between us? At night she burrows…
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the scars of our sons
My son is dead on the street. A part of me lay dead, too. The whole of me crumples over with the weight of ‘Why?’ I look around at everyone watching and hope they do more, hope they witness to my irrevocable, unspeakable loss in broad daylight. Don’t let me bury my son alone. ***** Will you step in as a pallbearer for our dead? The mothers want to know – will you walk with us the final distance to…
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{ Deeper Family : Everyday Lament }
Words pierce like a weapon. The comments crisscross via phone slashing her. In the middle of a seminary campus walks a woman with quick stride and a crushed heart. When we talk she’s stunned (or embarrassed) the words still ring in her ears days later. “You are allowed to have days like this one.” I say. I mean it; you are allowed to have hard days when your insides ache. I thought of the need to lament disconnection whenever it…
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When the roads to Zion mourn…
The week moved fast with controversy, but slow with grace. The magnanimous inched along like amber molasses, slowly shining, but outpaced by hot hostilities burning through my internet neighborhood. In the aftermath there’ve been a few cloistered conversations with thoughtful friends. These discussions about evangelicalism, ecumenicalism, art and faithful translation happened in the alleys behind the internet streets. In quiet hallways we huddled down for gentle conversations with one another. Maybe we were licking our wounds, too. Yesterday a friend…
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{ Deeper Family: He Sits With Women }
He sits with women. When trouble comes, the mamas and widows gather at the edges of peril and my husband finds them. He joins them. Last week flood waters rushed in overnight killing some of the most vulnerable children and displacing over fifteen thousand families from their homes. Almost as fast the Red Cross erected at makeshift camp on a nearby soccer field. At the invitation of the director, my husband drove out on the first day to survey the…
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