Coming to peace

i hate you, humankind.

your war. your power.

you are so dangerous, humankind.

so intelligent, so foolhardy.

it is confounding, humankind,

that you are at once so hopeless,

and, equally, so hopeful.

so judgmental and so compassionate.

so powerful and so small.

i hear you, humankind. i see you.

your ardor. your grief.

you are so excitable.

it's your ruin and your rise, humankind.

to be so passionate.

you are so expectant.

so inventive. so beautiful.

just as you are

i love you, humankind.

I miss direction most

I remember being traumatized by images of WWII’s concentration camps in elementary school. I literally felt my innocence burning away as my face would tingle with discomfort and rage. I’ve lost that physical reaction against human cruelty and have, in some ways, grown accustomed to the existence of hunger, violence, and overt injustice. Imbalance. I wish I still felt that utter horror at the concept, but I do not. All I have is some intellectual or spiritual aversion to the current reality. Maybe that’s enough. Rather than slowly watch that flutter away as well, maybe I can choose to engage.

I have started applying for jobs again. I am restless. Maybe it’s discontentment. Is it healthy?

Children endure horrific abuse daily. I have seen the rows upon rows of filing cabinets documenting the discovered cases of abuse. I have also seen children taken from the care of their families because the definition of neglect is nearly inseparable from the definition of poverty. People in my city are hungry. I have seen the anger of people who show up to food lines and leave unsatisfied. It’s real, and it’s close, and it only seems to get worse. (Cue Music)

Sometimes I think social work holds no answers to these problems. And as a social worker, I have felt myself becoming cynical trying to create change amidst competition, manipulation, aggression and other coping mechanisms that originated in people, communities, and organizations from some line of injustice or imbalance that seems to me inescapably cyclical. Which might be why I cannot see my friend community’s desire to farm land and live relatively isolated from the world as anything but escapism. I want that. I want to walk away from the cities and the islands of rural towns and find a place to hide. I want to tend to the land and my own spirit; the things I can more easily control.

But

I feel as though, at some point, despite the hurt and rage and nonsense of humanity, you have to be willing to say, “Ok, I’ll be part of this world”. Not only because it’s an illusion to assume you are not, but also because, in engaging, I have also seen the hope. I have seen strength and trust and empowerment and self-discovery and balance. It is much like the food line: I resonate with the feeling of being fed but unsatisfied. It's a frustration to hope. But watching the slow unraveling of a very complicated knot, you sometimes witness it break open in a burst of freedom. And it is freedom for us all.

"Although the world is full of suffering,

it is also full of the overcoming of it."

-Helen Keller

Two loves

I had another revealing dream.

I dreamt I was lying in bed, walking my eyes over the curves of the sheets.

Then I realized...this was not my bed, but my hometown.

And I knew it intimately.

I knew it completely. Every rise and fall, every veer and surge in the land.

I loved it, because it comforted me, sustained me, and possessed me,

and I it.

As I came to see the details,

the molehills of humanity in the hollows of this hallowed ground,

I began walking the streets of my city

as though they were the halls of my high school. I knew

everyone I passed.

I felt great warmth for each of them. And I worried, with them,

over their concerns. Health, financial, familial, what have you.

But despite our daily worries, there was security in our amity

and goodwill.

We were connected, and stronger for it.

Then an idea turned everything grey,

stuck somewhere between black and white.

I put my hands in my pockets and continued to walk the streets,

a little more bent, biting my lip as I chewed over the idea

The full potential of my two loves could not be reached together.