Song of the day:
Video of the day:
National Poetry Month
Daisy Time by Marjorie Pickthall
See, the grass is full of stars,
Fallen in their brightness;
Hearts they have of shining gold,
Rays of shining whiteness.
Buttercups have honeyed hearts,
Bees they love the clover,
But I love the daisies' dance
All the meadow over.
Blow, O blow, you happy winds,
Singing summer's praises,
Up the field and down the field
A-dancing with the daisies.
We’ve almost made it to the halfway point of April, but sometimes it still feels like we’re lingering in 2020 and doomed to stay there forever. Sure, people are getting vaccines, but the new strains of the virus are bad news. And there are a lot of people flat out refusing to get vaccines, namely a lot of white evangelical Christians, aka supporters of the former president. The rationale in not getting the vaccine is that God will protect them. Being a white evangelical Christian myself I fully believe that God will protect me. And He does that by inspiring scientists to create vaccines. And I walk in faith in taking that vaccine knowing that doctors and researches who are a lot smarter than me have worked for thousands of hours to get us where we are today. Are the vaccines perfect? No, of course not. Do we still need to be careful and wear masks and social distance? Yes, of course we do. Because just like the flu shot, they don’t create immunity. But there are a lot of people who have been vaccinated running around as if everything is perfectly fine, as if they can’t get the virus. That’s just simply not true. Being vaccinated just means that if you do get the virus it won’t be as bad for you as it has been for others. It’s not a license to frolic. In fact we will all likely need another shot of the vaccine within the next year. And probably every year after that, just like the flu shot (which also doesn’t protect you from getting the flu, by the way, but ensures that if you do get it, the case won’t be that bad).
And then there’s the racism, and the killing of Black men by police officers. Another one of those happened yesterday. In Minnesota. I honestly don’t know how Black people get out of bed each day. The strength and courage they show every single day is immense. The killing has to stop. The funding has to change. The model has to change. There are so many more good police officers than there are bad, but the bad are a whole lot louder. Is it easy to realign the funding and redefine policing? Of course it isn’t. Should we try to do it anyway? Of course we should. And some areas of the country are doing just that. Trying.
And then we have the ongoing attacks against the Asian people in this country. As one of my friends said, “The whole perpetual foreigner status we face is infuriating. It’s not just the blatant hate, it’s also the ignorance. Like how am I any less American than a white American?” And of course the point is, she isn’t. And again, I wonder how Asian people get out of bed and go about their days.
And don’t even get me started on gun violence in this country. But wow, it has gone up a lot in the last few months. It’s like once people decided they were personally done with the pandemic they went right back to how things were before it started. There are once again way too many news stories about mass shootings. I know the President announced something related to gun control last week but it didn’t stir any great hope in my soul because honestly, it’s more about the hate than the guns at this point. Though believe me, we need to get the automatic weapons off the street, and we need better laws and controls for buying guns. But we also need to address the deep-seeded hate that people - mostly white people - have for others in this country who are not like them. And I have no earthly idea how we do that save for speaking up, modeling what it should look like, and voting for people who don’t have hate as their primary value.
Okay, I think I’m done for today. I honestly wasn’t expecting this post to take this turn but I guess I had some things to say.
I hope you all have a good week ahead. And for Black and Asian friends, and other friends of color, please know I am here for you. Always.