I was asked for a recommendation for a good gift for a four year old.  Without hesitation, I answered, "flashlight."

As a kid, I loved playing with a flashlight as much I enjoyed throwing a ball against our brick garage wall.  My family was a big outdoors crew. Our family vacations were serious, walk-a-mile into the woods and set up camp experiences. Having a good walking stick and flashlight were standard, flashlights gave comfort in the dark nights in the woods and were way cool to shine on the inside of the tent walls.

Give a kid a flashlight and they are entertained for hours. Ever play flashlight tag?

In these days in which we journey --- another school shooting, cruel hoaxes of a possible active shooter, anger, tension, fear, and...oh, yeah, a former US president about to be indicted --- yowzers....we need light and lots of it in whatever way we can get it, shine it, be it.

The followers of Jesus are called to be the light of the world and to shine; one of the first songs we learn as kids at Vacation Bible School or Sunday School is "This Little Light of Mine" and it's tune and words are easy to learn and to be sung ad infinitum. And it is....blessed be.

There is the familiar phrase of "either be the light or reflect the light."  I offer another in one of those "Holy Nudge" moments that I read during today's morning Quiet Time:  

“SOMETIMES OUR LIGHT GOES OUT, BUT IS BLOWN INTO FLAME BY AN ENCOUNTER WITH ANOTHER HUMAN BEING. EACH OF US OWES THE DEEPEST THANKS TO THOSE WHO HAVE REKINDLED THIS LIGHT.”  

~ Albert Schweitzer

.....find it....be it.....become it.....

The better begins now

 During the early, scary, isolating time of the pandemic, I did what I realize I often do and that was to look to the children.  Be it their messages of hope shared in sidewalk chalk, asking if I wanted to play catch, their resiliency in not losing their bounce in their steps or the brightness in their smiles....all were a balm to my being.

The fact that guns are the leading cause of death for children in America should pause us, piss us off and push us to finally find the courage to act.

How many more?  Are we numb? Indifferent? Too busy? Too distant?

As with most things, we can solve it, we just need the want to. It's sobering to realize, we don't.  It's shameful that this is how we love and care for our children...all children.

When I worked for the Children's Defense Fund, founder and CEO, Marian Wright Edelman during a planning meeting coined the phrase "Cradle to Prison Pipeline."  I have always thought with most of the major issues we must take the pipeline approach and solve from a multi-disciplinary approach. What is your field, your profession, your passion? Ask, reflect and answer what that particular discipline can do to lead toward an effective, time-is-NOW solution. Offer it to the shared effort. 

Can more dead children focus us on solving the issue not passing blame and pointing fingers at those who own guns versus those who offer thoughts and prayers versus a lacking mental health support system?  

First Lady Jill Biden said, "Our children deserve better." I hope that we are those better people.

Answer?

 

In one of my first classes in seminary, a key assignment was to write a belief statement. Then three years later before graduation to write a belief statement. The hope was that the belief statements would be different, that one’s theology grew and was further shaped. 

 

I can report that my two belief statements were different, and I too was a different person upon graduating seminary.  The growth came from asking if based on my gained knowledge, my reason, the foundations of my faith tradition and my experience did I still believe what I had been taught as a child. 

 

Christianity is not a doctrine to be taught. Christianity is a life to be lived.

I believe this.

 

I definitely believe that if we answered the question, “Do you believe?” by our living the love and doing the justice and walking humbly --- "a proper sense of self in a universe full of wonders" --- that the world would be as God would have it to be.