Hope and Keep Busy
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NaNoWriMo: Day 7
Something remarkable happened across my social media world yesterday and today. I witnessed so many wise and mature voices rise above the vitriol and hate, voices from my generation, voices that are oft ignored, voices from mothers and friends and professionals and rebels and artists. People who used their corners of the world for honest, caring discussion. People who jumped up and volunteered what little they had for a greater American whole.
You voted. You participated, we tracked results, of national and local scale, and you cared.
A common topic of discussion between me and my parents is about "the youth exodus" from the church. Having grown up in a more liberal state, sort of raised in a liberal church, and then kind of muddled my way around four years in a conservative evangelical college, it is a topic of great interest to me. My husband grew up in the Tea Party's backyard and shoulders his own spiritual baggage. Whatever bitterness and frustration we claimed just years ago when we graduated from college and ran far away from the church to lick our wounds and regain our sense of self, for the most part it is fading away. I've had enough distance from those years to be able to separate the weeds from the harvest.
So whenever my generation has been belittled by others for being non-committal, lazy, superficial, I have to raise my voice in opposition. My time after college had been full of surprises: sons and daughters who rebel against their parents' beliefs in an attempt to find truth that is relevant to this world, today and now, to heal the brokenness that plagues their generation. Sons and daughters who kneel at the feet of God by any name, who serve in love and not judgement, even when others assume them to be small minded and ignorant for having faith. People who have chosen to walk the hard, tedious path of service and sacrifice for a greater good. People who have chosen to build something, to offer the world more than just a sledge hammer and a sneer. People who channel their inner Marmee during times of both feast and famine.
My response to my parents' concern about our generation has always been: "Just wait. Something amazing is happening. I feel it, something amazing is happening." I think about the Church, broken, beautiful, and I hear her call to me but still I wander. Let me reach the precipice and hear the crash of the ocean waves and feel the ocean spray (Hmmm... my subconscious at work: the new M&S video directed by and starring Idris Elba). Just wait. Something amazing in happening.
I am increasingly proud of my generation; jumpers, failures, artists, rebels, heretics and heathens all. I guess I just want to say that you fill my facebook feed with joyful news and have kept me from losing hope. Maybe I should note that I have a lot of facebook friends who insist on posting hateful sentiment and petty assumptions but I have long since unsubscribed from their ugly worlds.
The day after yesterday is here and with tired smiles (and extra cups of coffee) we return to work. Life continues, writing must be done today (it must!), and as President Bartlett would say, "What's next?"
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| snack du jour |
You voted. You participated, we tracked results, of national and local scale, and you cared.
A common topic of discussion between me and my parents is about "the youth exodus" from the church. Having grown up in a more liberal state, sort of raised in a liberal church, and then kind of muddled my way around four years in a conservative evangelical college, it is a topic of great interest to me. My husband grew up in the Tea Party's backyard and shoulders his own spiritual baggage. Whatever bitterness and frustration we claimed just years ago when we graduated from college and ran far away from the church to lick our wounds and regain our sense of self, for the most part it is fading away. I've had enough distance from those years to be able to separate the weeds from the harvest.
So whenever my generation has been belittled by others for being non-committal, lazy, superficial, I have to raise my voice in opposition. My time after college had been full of surprises: sons and daughters who rebel against their parents' beliefs in an attempt to find truth that is relevant to this world, today and now, to heal the brokenness that plagues their generation. Sons and daughters who kneel at the feet of God by any name, who serve in love and not judgement, even when others assume them to be small minded and ignorant for having faith. People who have chosen to walk the hard, tedious path of service and sacrifice for a greater good. People who have chosen to build something, to offer the world more than just a sledge hammer and a sneer. People who channel their inner Marmee during times of both feast and famine.
"I have no fears for you, yet I am anxious that you should take this trouble rightly. Don't grieve and fret when I am gone, or think that you can be idle and comfort yourselves by being idle and trying to forget. Go on with your work as usual, for work is a blessed solace. Hope and keep busy, and whatever happens, remember that you never can be fatherless." - "Marmee" March in ch. 16 of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
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| For the Marmees of the world |
My response to my parents' concern about our generation has always been: "Just wait. Something amazing is happening. I feel it, something amazing is happening." I think about the Church, broken, beautiful, and I hear her call to me but still I wander. Let me reach the precipice and hear the crash of the ocean waves and feel the ocean spray (Hmmm... my subconscious at work: the new M&S video directed by and starring Idris Elba). Just wait. Something amazing in happening.
I am increasingly proud of my generation; jumpers, failures, artists, rebels, heretics and heathens all. I guess I just want to say that you fill my facebook feed with joyful news and have kept me from losing hope. Maybe I should note that I have a lot of facebook friends who insist on posting hateful sentiment and petty assumptions but I have long since unsubscribed from their ugly worlds.
The day after yesterday is here and with tired smiles (and extra cups of coffee) we return to work. Life continues, writing must be done today (it must!), and as President Bartlett would say, "What's next?"
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