Today, in the summer time, it snowed in Lake Tahoe.
Grey skies, instead of June’s usual blue.
Cold where warmth was expected:
Something appearing that didn’t belong there.
We were entered into the middle of a war without approval from congress.
Again, we see this as a reason to also war with one another.
The Houthis declared they will no longer follow a ceasefire agreement with the U.S. because of it.
The nations line up for their turn at the podium.
Bombs are being dropped, unprovoked:
a fact remembered by the people,
even when the president adds an “We love you, God” at the end of talking about it.
Today people were whisked off streets and out of lumber aisles to be separated from their families.
A news report talked about adults fighting children in detention facilities for clean water.
A fire was lit, and instead of bringing something to douse it, gasoline is being poured on, instead, by some who think that they can force the hand of God to bring about the End Times.
They don’t realize that, in doing so, their own hands are what they actually worship.
We’ve grown desensitized to the sight of starving babies.
Every day we see people carrying them through piles of rubble, wearing donated, threadbare T-shirts promoting a cartoon character they’ve definitely never spent a peaceful Saturday watching, now soaked in the blood of another innocent child lost to the ego of another guilty man.
We scroll on to watch a pasta cooking tutorial.
Another war.
Another battle that no one is winning.
Another shouting match on TV between two people who, as children, needed much more hugging.
Another set of propaganda that feels all too familiar.
Another way for them to divide and conquer.
They are counting on us to not remember the days a dog lived at the White House,
or when we gave a cup of sugar freely to our neighbor.
They want us to forget the way it felt to stand in the street as a kid with a sparkler on the Fourth of July, and look around at the joyful, flickering faces of a street full of people celebrating the same things with you.
They want us all to abandon the things we surely remember about how we formed this country, and what it really took to get here;
And yet, we get gas,
and grocery shop,
we clock in to our same jobs like normal as the world churns on, and volcanoes erupt.
The whole world is crying, yet, we’re expected to cheerfully whistle.
It is crying out for attention, grace, love, and wise discernment.
It is crying for our full hands to stay open, instead of always tightly clutching;
To see the excess we wallow in as Americans, and to see that we have always been able to spare some.
It is crying out through the voices of brown-faced children who already had no toys, or shoes, or books, or parents, but now also just had their medicine and their mosquito nets taken.
It is crying for a people who remember.
Put your ear to the ground for a while and listen.
The sound is growing louder.
It cannot be ignored any longer.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
