The Last Minute

As I scroll through my facebook newsfeed and am inundated with a sea of red equal signs, all I can think about is that one scene in The Lion King, you know the one, where Rafiki finds out Simba is alive and pressing the pad of his thumb into ink paints hope alive; a mane around the head of the faded cub he neglected so long ago. Then in his joy and excitement he says, "It is time". I feel like we, in the United States of America, are standing at that pivotal precocious point. We are living in a land that is barren and dark, wasted and neglected. It is a land that has been greedily stripped of its nutrients, it is a land that is painfully broken. Now, because this is a metaphor, I don't mean the land itself (at least, not in this instance). But a people. We've forgotten how to take care of each other, how to make sure the circle of life envelopes all the kingdom. We have upset the balance of power and neglected to extend the place the light touches to everyone. So th

I don't know about the rest of you out there but after this week my feminist hackles are raised. I am in a fighting mood and I am not ready to back down. So, some things about me that are important going forward: I am a straight, white, married, woman in my mid-twenties. I was raised in a middle class, urban, democratic, feminist household. I attended public inner-city, elementary and high schools in an North-Eastern mid-size city. I have attended a rural primarily white college I have attended an urban community college I graduated from an urban all-women, overwhelmingly liberal, fairly diverse, woman's studies focused undergraduate institution. I currently attend a small Presbyterian seminary that I consider conservative. I offer this because my educational background, and the spaces I have occupied over my life are integral to how I view the world. These experiences, while limited in their scope of my life, give a peak into where I am coming from. They are hardly

Dearest child, Though you have barely been imagined, though you have not yet been yearned for and you don't have a star in the sky I point to and call yours, I am writing you this letter because my heart is heavy with the world today. Someday, when you are here, and running barefoot in a green backyard and I am watching you with my feet in a blue plastic kiddie pool filled from the hose, I might remember this letter. Someday when you are dripping in hormones and slamming me out of your bedroom (like I did to my mother) I might slip this under your door. I may not know if you are gay, or straight, or transgender, or if you don't believe in labels. You may not know who you are yet either, and that is wonderful too. None of these things change the part of me that is also a part of you. The part of me that gave birth, or adopted, or fostered you into the person you are now, the part of me that heaves in pain with you in one breath, cries out with joy in the next. Whoever you