
I have stayed away from words,
breathless, in my grief,
for too long.
Diversity is my faith.
Equity is my hope.
Inclusion is my love.
Each breath I take is a promise
that things will be better someday.
And, they have been for a time,
in places expanding across space,
across multiple divides.
In a school, then university.
In a church, then a community.
Across a state, on national forums
Each breath inhaled the hate,
expanded and expelled love in its place.
Breaths took down barriers, created programs,
enacted policies, changed syllabi,
created courses and news ways of seeing,
new avenues of progress, new ways of being.
The backlash always came,
in drips and drabs, all the same.
But this! This! It is a fearsome game.
It is not D.E.I. which they decry.
They want to see us hold our breath
and die.
They SNAP food from the mouths of babes.
They ask the aged and disabled to work their own miracles,
heal themselves without medic-aid,
waste away, and die.
They place tariffs on those who stood at our side.
Making us all pay more for less to save their pride.
They fill their pockets with our labor,
changing coins to crypto for their greedy favor.
They extort heroes who fight to protect freedom world-wide
so that dictators and killers can be by their side.
They miss the days when the few controlled the many.
They refuse to compete, or share even one penny;
pennies earned from our labor, not theirs.
Lately, it seems we have not got a prayer.
We seldom did. But, do not despair.
What we did have was the freedom to try.
Now, our hard-won freedom to speak and act is denied.
We are being denied the right to even try.
We still have one another, and our God-given rights.
We will never allow those to be shoved aside.
And at the end of this life we shall hold hands and sigh
We tried.
We tried.
We tried!













MERRY CHRISTMAS 2024
Hope is the deep breath needed to sing Carols
heralding Jesus’ birth.
Hope is the breath first breathed into all living things.
Hope is the breath that softens
the hard contours of defended hearts.
Hope is the breath that soothes
the rough edges of fearful minds.
Hope is the breath that animates
the graceful move to gift our very selves.
Hope is the breath that lifts
the blindness of hateful eyes heavenward.
Hope is the breath that challenges
the world to dream of peaceful, new beginnings.
Hope is the breath that stores
the strength needed for moments when courage is needed.
Hope is the breath that brightens and enlightens
the darkness within each breathless soul.
Christmas is a time for deep breaths filled
with hope to face another moment, day, month, year.
Keep breathing is all that is required to fill
the world with Hope.
Each breath keeps Hope alive.
Merry Christmas with every breath taken
deeper in every way, every day
during the Jubilee Year of Hope.
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Tagged as breathe, christmas, courage, deep breathing, faith, good vs. evil, hope, Jubilee Year of Hope, opposition, poetry, Pope Francis, UNITY, war and peace