Let the River Flow

You who turn justice into biterness and cast righteousness to the ground...you trample on the poor and force him to give you grain. Therefore, though you have built stone mansions, you will not live in them; though you have planted lush vineyards, you will not drink their wine. For I know how many are your offenses and how great your sins. You oppress the righteous and take bribes and you drprive the poor of justice in the courts. Threfore the prudent man keeps quiet in such times,for the times are evil.
Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good, maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph.

I hate, I despise your religious feasts. I (cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps.

But let justice roll on like a mighty river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Let the poor man say I am rich in Him...
Let the dead man say I'm alive in Him...

and let the river flow.

I've sung that song many times, but I've never listened to it with an ounce of understanding. But tonight I stood in a church for a recovery meeting and sang these words with a few friends who ARE poor and a couple who have lived feeling like walking dead. But the richness of this song (and as my mind linked to) these verses in Amos is beyond compare. I've been missing it, but tonight everything came together.

The book of Amos is responsible in large part for my being here at Rising Hope this summer. I find such beauty in the prophets, and especially in this one. They deliver power-laden roundhouse kicks to my jaw and leave me broken before the will of God, yet I find myself smiling as I spit out my teeth. I am happy to be without them if they are the cost of being drawn closer to God.

I didn't walk into Amos with the intent of being reshaped. All I wanted was to get a paper done for my Prophets class and Amos was a short book with a very clear viewpoint and style of rhetoric. I approached the book apathetically, hoping to quickly move through it, analyze it, and leave it.

Not surprisingly, things did not go as I had intended. Instead of chewing up this book and regurgitating it to my professor, Amos chewed me up and regurgitated me at God's feet. In the prophet's descriptions of indulgent Israel I saw a mirror image of myself and my people in all our grotesque habits and ignorance. I saw God looking at me, my church, my friends, and saying "I don't want your songs and your pianos and your skits. I want my people and my friends to be taken care of and brought in, and then we will all worship in fullness together. Until you do that for me, guys...something's always gonna be missing." So I said, forget my other options for this summer. I'm going with GBGM. I'm going to take this opportunity and find what I'm missing.

I found it.

I found people who really need God instead of just including him as a sort of spiritual life insurance policy.
I found people who mean the words they sing on Sundays and Thursdays, because in most instances they are unable to meet their needs--only God can.
And being with them, I see now that I am looking into another mirror, and I am seeing myself again. I have been awakened to my own deep, hungry, desperate need for God. I have started to really mean the words I'm singing and to really hear what the words are saying. What was it the scripture said?
"Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Perhaps then the Lord God Almighty will be with you just as you say he is."
Seeking good involves the good of all. It's connecting with others, caring about them and for them. Yet often when I seek good, I assume I am doing it for their sake. But I
was
wrong.

Seeking good for others is for my sake. It's so I might live. It's so I might figure out that I need, too. It's so I might find God where God has always preferred to dwell--in the margins, with the people that no one but Him will claim.

And suddenly in those connections and in that caring, God appears. Amos says seek justice, good, kindness---maybe then God will actually be as present as you say he is.

Dripping with sarcasm.* Just how I like it.
Let justice flow, you fools, and of course God will be there.
Make things right, you fools, and of course God will dwell among you. He'll finally be able to! Love knows love. Love lives where love lives. A just God will live where there is justice...

why did I not get this until now?



(*denotes that this is how I perceive the verse in my mind. If you have utter knowledge as to why this verse isn't sarcastic...you're right, I'm wrong. K?)

P.S. I seem to have lost the ability to write coherently for any span of time. I hate this about myself and apologize for those of you suffering and trying to comprehend this. However, I know that in order to get anywhere I have to turn the internal editor OFF and just come back to these things later to better them. So, yeah, sorry for now.

Beautiful Goodbye.

Yesterday. Last Sunday at Rising Hope.
All I can think of is, “Why was that so much harder than I had anticipated?”

I think it’s because I encountered a love that was unexpected.

Towards the end of the service, Pastor Keary called both interns to the front with him. Charles and I stole looks at each other from our place in the choir section, then submitted. We went with blushing necks and hunched shoulders and took our places beside the Pastor. We laughed as he showed a picture as “evidence,” against us, the culprits behind the toilet papering of his office. But then, as the laughter died down, something beautiful and painfully uncomfortable happened.

Apparently, there is an Order of Farewell in the services of the United Methodist Church. Keary had adapted this for Charles and I, and he began to lead the congregation through the service. My eyes cast about in my head like swivels, I think; I can’t remember staring at any one thing too long. But as that beautiful, oddly matched congregation of self-professed goofballs and screw-ups spoke their love for us, joy in our coming, and sorrow at our departure, everything sank into my chest at once.
And then it all rose upward to lodge in my throat. Come to think of it, it was sort of like a big mushroom cloud.

That’s a good descriptor for this goodbye. A tiny little atomic bomb detonating in my chest, then sending waves out into my body and a cloud up through my throat to mist over my eyes.

After it was over, Charles and I were given a moment to rebut during which I stammered and probably made very little since. I was just sort of overwhelmed and touched and blown light years away from whatever summary I thought I’d had of this experience. Everything. Sunk. In.
And now, I’m leaving it.

We took prayer requests, as usual. And as it turns out, a regular member of our congregation will end up homeless at the end of this week unless she and her husband receive a miracle. Hearing that, another bomb dropped. All of these people, working all this time to get people off the street and keep them off the street, and here one of our own is suffering the same thing? She herself was regularly involved in the food ministry, and I didn’t realize it, but she seemed to really love Charles and I. One more, I kept thinking. One more gets turned out on the street. It didn’t seem helpless or hopeless—it just seemed wrong.

“911? We have more babies.” (that’s an intern training joke that you probably will not get, but describes the situation perfectly.)

And then, after a special prayer for Carol and Eric, we sang “Let it Rise.” And a miracle happened. Despite the sadness of some of the congregants, despite being awash in mixed feelings within myself, we had a true, awesome, dancing and laughing worship experience. Dale’s little Brianna and Christopher stood in the choir with us, and Brianna sang at the top of her lungs. She put her arm around my back and we swung our skirts together and goofed off through the whole thing. I winked at Aliah and Tay-Tay on the other side of the room and they gave me shy smiles back.
And God said it was good.

Aliah and Tay-Tay scrambled up to me after the service. With hand on one hip, a perfect imitation of a grown woman, 9 yr. old Aliah said to me “You know you ain’t leavin’ without us!” And then she became a little girl again, scaling my body until she was balanced on my hip, arms and legs wrapped all around me. And I stood there and hugged her, never having realized that she took notice of my presence. Tay-Tay, who had come to programs even less than Aliah, also gave me hugs and asked sadly, “Why you gotta leave us?”
To which I replied, “I have to go back to school.”
“Why?”
“So I can get a good job where I can work to help people like they do here at Rising Hope.”
“Yeah…but you know, nobody wants you to leave…”
And I paused, and finally responded, “Well, neither do I.”

Both girls will be at camp all this week. So we had our final goodbyes there at church. I hated it.
I guess it’s how life goes, though.
And that’s how life will go all this week. Shoot.

A Prayer: 6/23/08

I wrote this after reading a section of Shane Claiborne's "The Irresistable Revolution," where he describes his trip to Iraq as a peacemaker. Specifically, his visit to a children's hospital where he witnessed a young girl, horribly marred, rocking back and forth repeating "What did I ever do to America?" After this incident, he spoke with a doctor who said sadly, "Violence is for those who have lost their imagination. Has your country lost its imagination?"

I had to put the book down. I was crying. This is my heart's response.

Lord, it has to end. The violence, the war, the injustice, the aloneness, the terror...
it has to end! And while I want the satisfaction of feeling that I'm standing at your door, pounding and screaming for you to come rescue us, I don't get it. Instead I find you waiting for me on the porch, hands simply at your sides, saying, "I know. What are you going to do about it?"
And I stand here, dumbly, and then sink to my knees, crying, "I don't know! God, I don't know...! I just can't stand it anymore."
But you, you stand there and you look at me and I know I'm the problem.
But I know I'll never be enough.
Oh God, help us. Help us! It has to end.

It's not enough that God loves us. It's not enough that he finds us beautiful and special.
He loves them.
Theyare beautiful and special, and that is the reality, no matter who our "they" may be.

...but I need my prayers to change. Change from "God, when will they understand" to "God, help us to understand." Because they are both the oppressed and the oppressors, the war victims and the warmongers. And I am bound up in both of them.
I have sinned against so many. The vastness is just beginning to sink in. I ache for the sin in me, for the wrong I've done in passivity, entitlement, self-centeredness, and greed. I am so quick to seek happiness for me and mine that I idly allow others to be crushed in labor until my purchase profits their crushing Big Foot.
God, I need forgiveness, and with it I know repentance is not an option but a requirement. But I wonder about tripping over my humanity. God, I wonder about my frailty and my inability to follow through.
To follow You.

And God repeated, for the billionth time, "I factored failure into the equation long before you ever did, and it still equals out that I love you. Besides, it's a journey we're on together."

And photos faded in and out on my computer screen saver, most of them containing faces from Rising Hope.
The Holy Spirit whispered, "Aren't they worth it?"

My oh-so-timid heart whispered, "Yes."

God, I don't know where to begin, but, I'm beginning. I'm naked--no pledges to hold before me or promises to cover me. I can't keep a single one. But God, this life is worth so much more of me and I don't know where that more of me is. Please awaken it, sustain it. Help me help it to grow. Times like this I get so overwhelmed with passion...I want to hop planes to Iraq, take years off of school. But what do you want me to do? (And the questions in my heart begin to surface, breaking the flow.)And Scripture whispers to my heart, calming it, saying "Behold, I am with you always..."

Another piece of my Self broke away and blew into the dark room. I get the feeling it floated all the way to the stars, and maybe it glimmers there, now free to be a part of something bigger than little old me.

I think when you lose yourself it's easier to breathe. When you lose yourself, the whole world breathes with you.

Getting It Together.

So today is the most glorious and inimitable Saturday, the most popular day of the week for all things fun and family and lazy. Today has afforded me the rare opportunity to have the house to myself in the quiet sunlight that comes through the windows. I've been quite lazy and a little domestic (i.e. I used the microwave and am doing laundry) but what's really great is I've had a chance to tie up some loose ends.

The thing I find about tying up loose ends, though, is that there always seem to be question marks dangling off of them.

Maybe this is a trait that's unique to me. For example, I located my itenerary for my trip back to New York and then home and found that everything was in order. I contacted my dear MIRYAP (missionary-in-residence for young adult programs) for my weekly check-in (as per my program) and asked her about travel plans as well. Then I sat back, expecting to feel a sense of contentment--you know, that feeling you get when you've checked something off the list.
I didn't feel any such thing.
Instead, I found myself wondering how I'm going to manage this whole leaving bit once I (seemingly) just got used to staying.

When I left home, many people I spoke to expressed concerns about my safety. Now that I'm returning to it, I think life at home...Beardstown, Greenville...is a lot more dangerous than life at Rising Hope. At least, it is for me. It is so easy to get comfortable at home. All that comfort surrounds me like a buffer. Complacency settles in around my shoulders and Comfort bubble-wraps me in, away from the world's, the US's, Greenville's urgent problems. It's easy to stay on top of things when I'm in the nation's capital working with the poor while the rich (and occasionally oblivious) legislate away. Of course homelessness seems urgent to me when I work with the homeless every day and suddenly one of our people goes missing for 5 days. Of course it seems urgent when a critical resource center for my friends and coworkers is in danger of being shut down.
How urgent will it seem when I'm in a classroom surrounded by other comfortable people like me?
How urgent will it seem when the homeless are hidden in St. Louis alleyways 50 miles away?
How urgent will it seem when I'm in the Union at 1 in the morning watching The Dark Knight when it comes out on DVD in February?

Although I understand that I don't have to feel that all-out sense of urgency every minute of every day, I still fear the creeping power of comfort, which leads to complacency, which leads to apathy. I know it will be a temptation, and it's a sweet one; it comes so stealthily. But now that I know what I know, home has become the dangerous place. In the face of all this adversity, diversity, and scattered privelege, I can feel vitality filling my soul and guiding me through.
But home is dangerous. If I'm not careful, this vibrant soul-life will slowly die, and with it will go my true care for the greater problems and issues I've come to notice.
(I don't mean to say in any of this that people at home don't care about these issues or don't work to resolve them--this is not a feeling that minimizes home. It's just a struggle that I anticipate within myself based on the ways that I interact with the world around me.)

I get squirmy when I think about these things. And that's okay. It's usually in my times of general unrest that I get the most done. So, my unrest pushed me forward to think about and research how I could live out my experience at Rising Hope. I find myself, much like Mayjean, seeking shalom. I want that holistic, all-permeating life that integrates my experiences and the experiences of others and of God into one beautiful whole. I simply can't allow myself to let these people, faces, and stories live in a little 2-month compartment in my heart; they deserve more than that and they are more than that to me. I want this to be about my whole life and I want my whole life to be about this. So I thought about the next possible step...


and clicked over to the Peace Corps website.

I read all the material there, then clicked over to another website that gave me a little more of an unbiased history of the organization. Then I went back to the PC site. Did you know that there is a program in Morocco for youth services? Did you know that an ability to speak Arabic is a plus? Did you know that only 6% of PC programs are youth-oriented and only 2 countries in the Middle East are receiving PC volunteers?
Neither did I.
All I knew is that I really wanted to go to the Middle East (or anywhere overseas, but I do really want to go there),
I really loved learning Arabic,
and I've always loved working with youth.
Now, I'm not saying that this is "like, totally definitely completely amazing and I'm so like going to do this." But it's out there. It's a possibility that excites me to no end. On the surface (and I am careful to note that it's only surface,) it seems like a wonderful blend of everything I'd want to do.
I guess I'm just excited. Every big adventure begins with knowledge of the possibility, and now I have the knowledge.
Step One.

Now, it's occuring to me that this is a really rambly post and I'm supposed to be getting Cold Stone with Charles and then seeing Transformers for free at an outdoor film festival. I can't really think of a good way to wind this up elegantly either, something classy like this:

FIN.

Beautiful.

A reflection on Acts 3

One day Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer--at three in the afternoon. Now a man crippled from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Then Peter said, "Look at us!" So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something in return.
Then Peter said, "Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk." Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man's feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, praising God. When all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the gate called Beautiful, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.

Beautiful
I sit at a gate called b\Beautiful
and the women who pass me are Beautiful
and the colors and worship around me are Beautiful
and I know, deep in my heart,
I feel God is Beautiful.

But while the beauty gleams above me
and steps around me
and always seems to flit just beyond my grasp,
I sit on my mat.
And the Beautiful, strong ankles all hurry past my sightline
and I beg for alms
and the palms that they fall from are always
clean and soft and Beautiful.

God gives me everything I need. I know God is Beautiful.
It is I who am Not Beautiful.

I am so covered in sin and shame. My parents or mine I cannot say, but with these mangled, twisted feet I cannot be Beautiful.
So I like to sit as close as I can get.

And then two men,
weary, dirty,
passed by the gate called Beautiful
but they were not Beautiful, not like the
women and Pharisee men.

I saw as their strong, sturdy ankles moved past, tracing around the delicate ankles of the women. And I saw as they stopped in front of me.
I wondered at those ankles
those straight, balanced toes
but my feet would never be as Beautiful as those.

But the man said look at him
and I raised my eyes and hands
because when you're taking charity the two are linked.
But no alms clinked into my palm;
he spoke grace instead.

He grasped and he pulled on all my dead weight until he fell,
stumbling back again as my weight came alive.

What Beautiful ankles!
What strong, sturdy toes!
What feet that bent and rippled in the ways they were meant!

And the Beautiful people
at the Beautiful gate
on a Beautiful day, all marveled.

They whispered of miracles
and hushedly spoke of power and shalom
and the man who tugged at me spoke on about
a Beautiful God and
a Beautiful Son
and in my heart then I knew all along


I was born, not of sin, but of Beauty.


From then on I sat at the Beautiful Gate
and told any listeners of my Beautiful wait.
How I, too, became Beauty
when Beauty lowered himself to me.

Faith.

I am sometimes reminded just how tenuously we are held together. Everything is mystery--God, love, life, and how all three work--nothing important follows rhyme or reason. All I know is that I am held, completely and utterly, suspended in love and saran-wrapped in mystery. I can feel its static cling all over me--tingling, waiting to spark.

All that is asked of me in return is Trust.
And how short I fall,


but how high I reach.

Faith, for me, is like reaching for a cookie jar set interminably high. Nearly on pointe I stand, calves flexed, spine stretched, brow furrowed in concentration, fingers splayed. I strain and stay in this position until my bones are on fire and my muscles tremor with fatigue. It is a master discouragement to see how very short my fingertips fall from my greatly desired prize. Still I stay, straining, seeming to reach but never grasp.

Then, just when I am on the verge of collapse, it happens! When my shaking becoms most violent, when the fire encapsulated in my bones reaches its peak, when my weakness seems to have overtaken my mass, I collapse...


only to find that, miraculously, what collapsed me was not my weakness but the weight of that big, beautiful cookie jar falling inexplicably off of the shelf and into my lap. With a wallop to the chest it sits me down hard on my rump. When I recover enough to sink my wonderstruck little palm inside, I pull out the biggest, warmest, juicyest, softest cookie imaginable. It's never the same flavor and even though there are always bitter portions to it, they only serve to add to the sweet of the whole. I am always left wanting more, but I am always left filled. I savor the cookie and get horribly messy with crumbs left all over my person, falling from my fingertips and smiling cheeks. And then the jar is replaced and it seems even higher than the last. The stretching begins, the doubt begins, and hope digs in its heels.

Help me, father, to fill the gap between my outstretched fingertips and the Heights with faith. (My child, my child--between your reaching and your grasping is Light. The very thing you reach for, though high, is yours so long as you reach. Remember.)

Seriously.

I've been silent for a long time.

I spend a lot of my days at Rising Hope relatively silent--relative to my normal talking rate, that is. I listen. I hear stories, or half-baked rants or complaints or disrespectful comments. If I get honest with myself, I truly don't know what to think about it most of the time. I shake my head, drop my chin, and try to get on with my day. The sheer weight of a lot of the things that go on at Rising Hope is...enormous. And I don't really know what to do about it.

People ask me all the time how I'm liking it here, whether or not I miss home, what I think of the work, etc. etc. but I don't feel like many of them want my real answers. For one, my real answers would take more time than they want to offer me at the moment. For two, they all seem to be looking for some cute anecdote or amazing story of redemption. Truthfully? Very little of what I do is what I would call "cute."

Sure, every Tuesday we allow kids to play in some water games out back in the parking lot and every Wednesday we take them to the movies. And some of them...really all of them...are ridiculously cute. They have moments of being total angels--bright of face, sweet of spirit, unexpressably kind to one another and bear-hugging all of life they can get. And then they have moments where they look a lot more like me and the rest of humanity; whiny, petulant, ungrateful, and brokenly beautiful. But it's so easy to become detached or pessimistic. I flirt with a happy, dazzling four-year-old boy, giggling and tickling and teasing him into eating his lunch, and then I wonder what will happen to him as he grows up. Who will his friends be? What if his mom loses her work? Will he end up out on the street, too? Will he end up behind bars?

Will he, like so many of the people we see every day, become a victim of forces beyond his control and then grow up believing that nothing is in his control?

And I don't mean to make the situation seem hopeless, because it's not. It's so beautiful and messed up and broken and full of stories and redemption and love, but the latter seem so few and far between and the vastness of 2,000 homeless people in one of the richest counties in the richest country in the world...

I just don't know what to do with it. I can't fit it in my head or in my heart or in my arms. I can't find a handhold to grapple with it. Here I am, in the thick of it every day for 5 weeks, and I still can't figure it. I don't know if I'm running from it because it's too hard or if it just needs a lot of time to sink in. Slowly, slowly, it's sinking in. It's penetrating everything. And while that's happening, a lot of well-meaning people are approaching me and saying "So what do you think of your work here?" and I think to myself, you know, I'm really not sure, but I guarantee it's not the answer you're looking for. Usually I throw in the words "challenging" or "stretching" but always end with "but still fun" or "it's really been great to be here."
And I feel fake.
And I sound fake.
But I just don't know what else to do.

The truth is it's discouraging. It's hard. It's frustrating to the point of popping blood vessels, but not because of the craziness coming from our oddball constituents. The people I trip over are the have's, not the have-not's. Some of them work with us. Some of them just bring donations. All of them mean well but clearly harbor some feeling that the homeless are on a different kind of level and seek a different kind of life than they do. A lot of people bring a lot of amazing things to Rising Hope. And a lot of people just bring one man's trash and expect it to be one homeless man's treasure. And sometimes, I just want to look at these people and say, "With all due respect, sir, sometimes trash is just trash, and we're not a disposal service."

But I don't say that.
I take things, and I smile, and I rage inside, and I reflect on Micah 6:8. And that's where God always takes my hand and helps me up after I've tripped over myself, or the Trash Man.
(Act justly.) -yep. I know I've given my best to act justly today.
(Love mercy.) -yep. I know I've really striven to be merciful today.
(Walk humbly with your God.) -ummm...well crap. And then I pray that God will help me take my shaking-with-frustration hand and put it in the hands of those he's placed around me and simply walk. I can't stand uncritically and idly by, but I certainly can't wrench my hand away in disgust and indignant belief that I have found a better way. The fact that these people have found a way is an out-and-out miracle. And I've found my way with them and I like them. Sometimes in spite of myself, but I like them. And like any family we roll our eyes at each other and sometimes want to scream and sometimes get screamed at and sometimes share side-splitting laughter and sometimes feel like walking away and never looking back.
But the minute I see someone messing with one of our people I get so prickly and defensive I can hardly sit still. Sometimes it's people in the Rising Hope family itself. Sometimes, unfortunately, it's the Fairfax County police. And sometimes it's this great invisible wall of Accepted Apathy, and it's built of structures and omissions and dishonesty and government programs and well-meaning people who bring used bottles of salad dressing and 27 year-old pasta packets to people who probably "won't know the difference anyhow."

So I guess this post is me ceasing my 5 week silence. It's me refusing to give the cute story or the patent answer because even though they exist, they're not what it's about and they're not what I've become. I'm raging and railing against the wall of Accepted Apathy aloud now, just like I have been within myself.

But I know that I am not alone.

Martin Luther King railed against that wall. Shane Claiborne rails against that wall. Anne Lamott, Joe Culumber, Pastora Martha de la Rosa, and millions of others rail against the wall.

I grew up reading about the standard subjects for third and fourth graders. I read about Titanic in third grade. I read about the civil war and slavery in the fourth grade. I read about the civil rights movement in fifth grade. But everything that had to do with fights for humanity (I notice in retrospect) struck a deeply resonating chord within me. I devoured everything I could about the civil war and civil rights when I was younger. I checked out nearly all the books about the subjects from my school library. I all but worshipped Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks and MLK. I was sick at how low-income people were treated on board the Titanic and deeply saddned about how lopsided the survival figures were. And over and over again I would think to myself, pray to God, or whisper beneath my breath, "I hope if I had lived back then I would've gone against slavery." Or segregation. Or allowing 'more important' people onto the lifeboats.

I was leaving the Lincoln Memorial with my mother and father a couple of weeks ago. They had come to visit and we decided to view the monuments by night. We walked along beside the reflecting pool with the words of Abraham Lincoln ringing in our ears, our downhome-boy from Illinois, who wrote these truth-drippingly relevant words in 1865: "Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause
of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself
should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less
fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray
to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other.
It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's
assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces;
but let us judge not, that we be not judged.""
My mother and I had read those words aloud in the monument and we could feel each of our hearts aching, wondering how it seems we could have gone so far away from that sentiment, wondering why on earth this country had allowed its presidents to seemingly stray so far from it. I asked my Mom how we could have wandered so far away, and quickly she said, "Apathy."
We sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and thought in black-and-white pictures of Martin Luther King and his dream, his demand that Lincoln's signed check of freedom be cashed in 100 years later.
And then we walked along that reflecting pool together and I told them about being little and praying that I would've fought on the right side. "And that's why I'm doing this," I said. "The fight isn't over. There are still things that need fighting. I think that, more than anything, is why I'm doing this this summer." And my Dad said "You're absolutely right." And my Mom said, "Honey, we knew that."

But until then, I hadn't known that.

So my job isn't cutesy. I can't fit my hands around it. I want to yell at the belligerent man who comes to lunch and then criticizes the people who prepare it sometimes. I want to pull my hair out sometimes and sometimes I want to cry, or hide, or just come home. But I couldn't in a million years, because that all-cursed Wall still stands smugly invisible.
...and I can't help thinking that at least if I beat my hands bloody, the color might allow people to notice the wall, and then maybe they'll think that it ought to come down, too. Because then they, like me, will get messed up because they'll always know it's there and it'll drive them crazy. Maybe I can ruin somebody's peaceful, comfortable life. And actually no, not "maybe I."

But maybe I can help the God who makes it an annoying habit to ruin people's peaceful, comfortable lives.