The suffering in Afghanistan continues to haunt me, friends. As a pastor and a student of political science I hope to offer you a thoughtful, historically nuanced, Jesus-informed response to US involvement in — and withdrawal from — Afghanistan in the coming days, but for now all I have to offer publicly is my personal lament.
Perhaps that is where we should always begin in the face of tragedy.
I wrote the following poem after spending several idyllic days fly fishing with dear friends on the Ibek River, near Cordova, Alaska. The world holds such joy for me, and at the same time such deep pain… and I find that my journey of faith often involves embracing both teachers.
I stand in gin-clear water
fly line stretched taut above me
while across the world
desperate brown bodies fall from the sky
explode with hatred
and drown in silent grief
flailing helpless like
the ocean-bright fish at my feet
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I have done nothing to deserve
the beauty of this riparian harvest or
my endlessly grace-laden days
while under the self-same sky
unknown sisters struggle and
suffocate…
by fortunate accident
my girl-child grows free and unbound
reads her own heart on a thousand printed pages
and I am not the mother
wondering daily whether
her daughter’s body will be ravaged
tender pages torn out
her young story’s spine split wide open
on the way to school
but I could have been
…I could have been
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powerful men shift their weight and
injustice crushes us all
my joy bleeds out, unbidden
and still
the Ibek river runs
inexorable
toward the sea