On Hope, Geese, and RBG
Last night I was upstairs in my house, doing some cleaning. I sat down in the big, squashy, rocking armchair in my room to take a break, and I picked up my phone and opened Facebook to scroll for a few minutes. And immediately I saw a post from a theologian I follow who posted something I didn’t want to believe. I googled like I do with everything to verify, and then I started sobbing. Despite the television on downstairs where the kids were watching a show, my oldest son, nine-years-old, heard me crying and came to find out why.
“What’s wrong?” He asked, “I heard you crying from downstairs.”
And of course, I then felt terrible, because I don’t want him to be scared, but it didn’t matter, because I couldn’t stop. “Ruth Bader Ginsburg died.”
“Oh. I’ve heard you talk about her.” He came over and gave me a hug.
“I’m sorry, buddy, I don’t mean to cry like this.”
“You don’t have to be sorry,” he told me, his thin, wiry arms wrapping around me.
“I’m just scared and sad,” I said. “I’m scared Trump will ramrod through another terrible supreme court justice. But I’m not giving up. Sometimes we take a hit, and we cry, but then we get up and we keep fighting, okay?”
“Okay, mom.”
Even as we pick up torches passed to us by our leaders who have now gone on, we pass it to our children by showing them what it means to stand up for our neighbors….
The rest of this story is now at: https://annahoward.medium.com/on-hope-geese-and-rbg-a8818d32143
Yes, I accidentally created two medium accounts… someday I’ll write a story about memory holes from chronic illness + distracted mommy brain, it’s loads of fun, I assure you.
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Anna Howard writes highly caffeinated takes on shalom as a lens for everything from her front porch in Hendersonville, TN where she lives with her husband and two sons. She is a community organizer and movement chaplain with a background in youth and family ministry and is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary. You can find her at @aehowardwrites on Twitter and at aehowardwrites.com
