let this fire burn

There's a fire, low and hot, spreading and speeding rapidly - reaching its smoldering fingers into every corner of our nation, and bursting our communities into raging flames of reckoning. We’ve run from it before, and stifled it out. We’ve doused it and blocked it. But this time it’s different, and we can’t run from the fire any longer. We have to let it burn - sometimes slow, then raging, sometimes racing, then simmering - for as long as it takes to burn down the ugliness it’s after. Then, when there’s nothing left to catch, the fire will extinguish itself. And we can begin our renewal.  

Our bodies are expectant of change in the Summer because year after year we shift our rhythms as we end the school year and crash into summer. We usually find our Summer renewal in the rest and play and lightness of heart of the season. This year, though, even as we are tired from months of social distancing, and even as we crave renewal more than ever, this summer brings a work for us. Our renewal will not come through rest and play and lightness of heart, but through the bitter and excruciating work of tearing down, brick by brick, the institution of hate which has formed a rotting bedrock in our country for generations - racism in America. This summer, renewal is still ours for the taking. But I’m telling you, it won’t come through rest, it will come through deliverance. 

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