Hope

The last weekish has been so busy, I can hardly believe I haven't lost my head!

Last Monday, I got a great phone call with an incredible opportunity to be part of the future of advocacy in the life of young adults in the ELCA -- aka my dream life.

Tuesday morning, I attended the Legislative Prayer Breakfast with Colorado's state legislators and progressive interfaith organizations in the Denver metro area. Inspired by the words of the Methodist Bishop of the Rocky Mountain Conference, we are bold to pray for our elected leaders.

Wednesday, our Advocacy Group and Congregational Renewal Group had their monthly meetings, full of great ideas and excitement for the future of Holy Trinity.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I was in Colorado Springs with 750 middle schoolers and chaperones for the Rocky Mountain Synod gathering. It was so overstimulating that I think my ears are still ringing but it was incredible.

I told my mom that it was equal parts noise and junk food, and I'm definitely not kidding when I say that. But it wasn't just that, either. We were split into groups on Saturday (half in the morning and half in the afternoon) to go out into the community of Colorado Springs and do service projects. For a lot of kids, this was the first time they really understood themselves as the hands and feet of Jesus in the world.

Our group went to a homeless shelter and outreach program for young adults -- they serve ages 15-21, though they cannot legally house anyone under 18. So we hung out with some of the residents and heard their stories and got the grand tour of their facility -- 20 of them live in about as many square feet as I do. It's a challenging place to be, but it's a roof over their heads, which is particularly critical in the winter.

The young woman who led us around and with whom I spent the most time speaking introduced herself as TK. She and I agreed that Harry Potter is the best thing ever, and she told me about the punk band she sings in, and how she took some classes at the community college in drawing, because she wants to be a comic book artist. I thought about who I was at her age (I think she's 19) and who my friends were and what our lives were -- we were all 4-year university students all around the country -- and how impossible it is to wrap my head around having been transient for a decade. The thing that struck me the most about TK was her positive attitude and her deep gratitude for the organizations that had gotten her to where she was. She didn't talk about leaving there ASAP or how much she hated everyone or any of the things that I'd probably say if I had to spend a week there, frankly. She smiled and she laughed and she was honest with us and happy to tell us her story. She was simultaneously so like and so unlike every other 19-year-old I've ever known.

When we got back to the gathering and were in our large group meeting for the evening, the emcees walked through the crowd handing the kids a microphone to share with everyone what they'd experienced and where they'd seen the face of God that day. Mind you, this is a group of hundreds of 12- and 13-year-olds. There were countless more hands raised than there was time to hear from, and each young person had something much more profound to say than I think even they knew. I started taking notes in my phone of what was coming out of these kids' mouths:

"We were at a soup kitchen and I didn't even know the people but I cared about them. I didn't know that was possible." 

"I saw God in how nice the homeless people were to me, even though they didn't know me, and even though I'm not homeless." 

"We went to a farm, and I fed chickens whose eggs are going to feed hungry people." 

"I was cleaning a cupboard and was like, 'No one is even going to see that I did this,' but then the lady in charge thanked me for cleaning it even though it seemed like it wasn't important. I think it was God telling me that even the little things are good things to do." 

"Today I learned that I can love people I don't know."

At that one, I began to cry. This was the first time that these kids had experienced what service of others is really like. Some of them had never been in a situation where they came face to face with the people they were helping. Some of them had never met a homeless person before. For so many of these kids, this was the first time that anything had pulled at their heartstrings in a way they could express as the face of God.

As much as we lament that our pre-teens and teenagers are so separate from the world they live in and so disrespectful of others, there are several hundred middle school students who now know that they are the hands and feet of Jesus in the world, and want to do something with that.

This, coupled with the second inauguration of my main man President Barack Obama, leads me to feel serious hope for this country. And maybe you're inclined to say that what President Obama said yesterday were just words, and that these kids have probably already forgotten how they felt on Saturday, but I can't see it that way. I have hope for the future, and more importantly I have hope for the present. I hope you do, too.

Kyrie, eleison. Christe, eleison.

I woke up this morning and lamented that I couldn't go to Zumba class because of my still-injured toe. As my mom put it, it's too "jumpy aroundy" of an activity. Hiliarious. I called my mom to wish her happy birthday, and then hung out in my bed checking all my social networks for a preeetty long time. Around 10:30am MT, people started to tweet that a shooting had been reported at a school in Connecticut. I shook my head and sighed.

Suddenly, the tweets were not just the routine "breaking news: shots fired in Newtown, CT" but rather "hundreds of children evacuated from CT elementary school" or "entire classroom still unaccounted for" or "three rushed to hospital" and as I looked back and forth between MSNBC and Twitter, the reports careened off the edge into "one dead" then "three dead" then "six dead" then "a child is dead" then "20 shot" until finally "27 dead, 18 of which are children."

I was numb.

As each new wave of information came through, tears fell anew. It just kept getting worse.

I had some errands to run, so I pulled myself out of bed to shower and get out of the house for a little while. I'm sure I was imagining it, but everyone I saw in their car or in a store seemed sad. I definitely did not imagine watching a woman wipe her eyes while we were at a red light. She could have been crying about literally anything else in the universe. But it just seemed like there was nobody unaffected.

When I got home, I was just in time to see my President weep on national television, too. That's where we're at right now, you guys. President Obama could not even speak for four minutes about this without tears, and without stumbling over his words. This is real life.

He quoted Psalm 147 in his remarks -- God heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds. It would seem, that, today, God's the only one who can.

And so, for now, my prayers are with the families of those 18 kindergarteners who should not have lost their lives today in the relative safely of their own classroom. My prayers are with the families of the staff and faculty who were killed in attempts to stop the shooter, or who found themselves in the line of fire for any other reason. My prayers are with the family and friends of the shooter, a sad young man who I wish I could hug as much as I wish I could hug all those children. My prayers are with the community of Sandy Hook and the city of Newtown, and the state of Connecticut as they hold tightly to each other and try to piece together this unspeakable violation of their way of life.

My prayers are with everyone in every city that has been affected by gun violence, especially my current residence of Littleton, CO. Since the shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, there have been 31 mass shootings in the United States. And every day, people die gun-related deaths in cities all over this country.

This is where I must address that the prayers of this nation will not be enough. Nothing can ever right these wrongs, or bring anyone back to life. But what we can do is prevent, to the best of our ability, future sprees of mass murder in our communities. And this is not about one thing. There was not one cause of this or any of the mass shootings we've endured these last 13 years.

What we're able to do is limit access to weapons, expand access to mental healthcare, and remind each other at every available opportunity that our lives and the lives of all others are so, so valuable.

I hope you've been tweeting and facebooking and talking to your family and enacting any other means of catharsis you can -- I mean that in earnest. It's exactly what I've been doing. But don't stop there. Write your representatives -- including your President -- and let them know how you feel about gun violence in this country, and about mental healthcare in this country, and how your love of your neighbor leads you to those feelings.

An actively participatory citizenry is the only way that tragic gun violence we experience in this nation ever stops. Demand that your government make a change. What we're doing right now clearly is not working.

We do not have the power to stop legal gun owners from going on murderous rampages. We don't. But we do have the power to limit what guns Americans can legally own, and who can legally own those guns. Obviously, I'm for banning every gun there is outright, and there's not one of you who doesn't know that. But wherever you sit on the gun regulation spectrum, there's no way you believe that what happened today is just the price we pay for our "freedoms."

I say all of these things because I love you with all of my heart.

Four More Years

I'm exhausted and I have to get on a plane in 9 hours so this is going to be brief, but will of course be followed by more words and more eloquent words.

The point is that we did it. Again.

As I write this, CNN says President Barack Obama is re-elected with 304 electoral votes -- but a few states are still left to count. (cough, Florida)

In addition to this great joy, there are a slough of new women in the Senate! And at least two states have added marriage equality to the rights of their citizens. And, hilariously, at least two states have moved toward legalizing marijuana.

Important things happen every day in this country, but today shines.

I am so proud to have cast four ballots for Barack Obama (primaries and generals) and would cast a few more if he could keep running. What a delight.

We worked so hard to get where we are.

Cheers to four more years, Mr. President.