Words don’t seem to count for much these days.  I try stringing some together and it feels like dry clay that crumbles under its own weight.  There are truly terrible things happening in our country.  It isn’t just about a 17 year old boy who is dead and now blamed for his own death, his family told in no uncertain terms he asked for it.  I listen to the conversation in Texas, watch the machinations in North Carolina that rob women of the kinds of wrenching decisions we never want to make but sometimes must.  I look at the rich, white old men who run so much of our country, say ugly things to each other.   I walked out of the room where Sherod was watching a program about the devastation caused by fracking.  I haven’t been able to get rid of the bronchitis all the way.  I literally feel ill much of the time right now.

Yesterday after church, a 92-year old woman came up to me.  She was visiting and comes from a Pentecostal tradition.  As I greeted her, she began to shake and pray.  She clung fiercely to me and said she had felt close to God during the service, that she would pray for me because there are such horrible times coming.   I thought to myself, it isn’t that they are coming, it is that those horrible times are here.  Now.  I wanted to cling just as fiercely to her and instead did my usual thank you and greeted the next person in line.  How can we bear to allow so much suffering to continue to unfold, wringing our hands and writing pretty lines, but still, holding to the old familiar order no matter who pays the cost?