A Prayer

Last week I went into a black hole. I was sucked into the agony of parents ripped from their children, children torn from their parents, and the senseless incarceration of innocent people. Babies. It was the agony of children crying alone, sub-zero ICE and chain-link all around them, no comfort, no safety to be found. I got sucked into the black hole of severed cords, of our pulsating human umbilicus torn in two. I don’t know much about actual black holes but I understand nothing survives. Sucked in and forever disappeared. But very possibly not– because there is everlasting life and therefore infinite possibility of transformation and reconfiguration. Perhaps my black hole was relatively small by cosmic standards, but I’m not actually sure if there is any place where the microcosm ends and the macrocosm begins, where the individual is distinct from the collective. The principle—what helped pulled me out– may be exactly the same on any scale. Out of apparent destruction, and hearing the unmistakable call of Infinite Love, somehow we must seek, and somewhere we must find, the seeds of new life that are waiting to sprout from the blackest burnt soil and the nuclear evaporation of human kindness and decency.

I have been blessed to have three children. They are all grown now, but the experience of carrying a baby and giving birth to life itself is one of my most sacred and indelible memories– the visceral, mammal, maternal, and altogether other-worldly connection to the little beings that are literally flesh of our flesh. We are all wired, male and female, to bond with and protect our young. And for humans, the connection is beyond physical and instinctual, beyond emotional even; the connection is outside time altogether. Life is delicately deposited by Divine grace into our finite forms. Deposited like wealth in a bank, for safekeeping, for growing interest on God’s investment in us humans.

I think you’ve forgotten, and I’m sorry for you. Robbing the bank of humankind and throwing away our gold. ICE cold. I’m sorry for you and I pray you find your way Home.