e pluribus unum

I feel...lighter.

Tonight, a dear friend asked me what I would do differently with raising my kids from what my parents did with me.
"I would make sure they knew that they are not alone."
"You're not."

I know. At least, I've learned so, despite what I've been taught.


I am the make-up of everything around me. Absence of starlight sits in my soul, near leaves and smog and imperfect moons. I am crowded with others. My mother's strength, my father's imagination. Her masochism, his selfishness. My brother's loneliness, diluted. A bit of the faith in God of my sisters, and also a tiny growing spark of their faith in me. The healing of my boyfriend, in small measure. I am fundamentalist, fire-and-brimstone, hellbound, heaven-gazing, slowly expanding, peace-searching, solitude drawn, community grounded, hell-denying, ever-opening in heart and mind. I am always everyone I meet. I am never who I used to be.

And, I am humbly grateful.

Pick Any Verse

"He is a homo! A Sodomite! An abomination!"

So screamed the evangelist standing in front of the Tate Center on campus this morning. The jeering crowd around him fed off of their common hate for him. They screamed back. The boy the man was referring to was standing behind the evangelist wrapped in a rainbow flag and making faces. The crowd was reflecting back at the man the exact same hate he was subjecting them to.

All of this hurts my heart.

The evangelist does not seem to understand that he's only spreading hate. Animosity. Making a mockery of the religion that, through some fluke, we both claim as our own. The crowd around him is a testament to the revulsion that many are adopting as a defense against what this man would have them believe is Christianity. He called the boy an abomination - something hateful to God. That boy is a creation of God, and is as loved by the Lord as everyone else on this earth, including myself, each person in that crowd, and the evangelist himself.

Jesus preached love. Why are so many of us forgetting this? So quick to judge others, so quick to condemn, so quick to make war not only in other countries, but within our relationships to our neighbors. Love is not "spreading the word" that everyone's going to Hell. That is separation, a categorization amongst an illusory "us" and "them." There is no difference. Really, when it comes down to it, there is absolutely no difference. We are each human, and must share in the fate that God has wrought for us. We're in this together, so why are we so determined to wrench each other apart?

My prayer today is that God will give us the understanding and courage to heal the wounds we tear in ourselves.