The time of darkness was upon us,
Long before most of us even recognized
What it was
Or knew what to call it, my son.
Neighbors became strangers
We were defined by fear, by borders,
By distance
A prisoner of the stories we told ourselves
Until we had no chance but to believe them.
Some held on for love
The currency of endurance
Longing hearts rejecting apathy,
Refusing to surrender to numbness.
But the skies erupted into fire
The night burned flashpoint red
With flames of hatred
Constructed by our own hearts and hands.
Books, buildings, dreams
Scattered to ash
In what felt like seconds
In the name of tribe
Of power
Of Nothing.
Dividing lines and dividing souls
Losing our most precious gift:
Each other.
The sickness sank into our bones
Burned holes into our souls
The filters could not cover the shape of the lie
Or the stench of the decay
We just scrolled
Absent-minded
Addicted to distraction
Binge watching our own destruction.
Cynicism replaced curiosity
Love slipped out of fashion
Cruelty was rebranded as a superpower
Vulnerability was the old way
And the old way was cursed, mocked, shamed;
And then it was forgotten.
Endless breath was wasted on rage
Engulfing and suffocating
The prayers of grandmothers
The cries of babies
The dreams of our fathers.
The village songs, muted
Fences built high
With the wood from church pews
And kitchen tables
The feathers of hope, torn bit by bit
We chewed them up, spit them out.
But let this not be how it ends.
So, my son
I say to you now
Under these darkened skies
In these graveyard cities stained with blood..
If you are permitted the chance to start again
If you are called to build a new Canaan
Start with the simplest things.
Tend to what is beneath your feet
Place your faith in seeds
Listen to the story of the cicadas
Rest your hands in the dirt.
In the faint, stirring breeze,
Hear the songs of children to come.
Let the rivers and trees speak
Ask nothing in return but to listen,
And to marvel.
Touch one another’s faces
Make the soft folds of flesh holy again
Let the songs you sing to one another
In the crisp of air of morning
Glorify the world you tend to
The world you hope to build
And the world to come.
Summon the hope and the empathy
To imagine what our dead would ask of us
And find the courage to dream it
To build it
To give it.
Learn the names of every pair of eyes you meet, my son
Say them
Sing them
Remember them
Tattoo them on your heart.
This is how we remember,
This is how we begin again.