My hope for these posts is to bring something engaging and ennobling from the world of digital media (or old media that is now available digitally) to people so they have something nourishing to chew on. My hope for that is always to find something that points to the best we can be as people. 

But we do not live in ennobling times, and the upshot of the internet-world we live in is that issues of serious consequence come and go like waves lapping a shoreline, here for a moment and then gone. 

I intentionally put this post aside for when that happened with our attention to what happened in Uvalde, Texas. Already, we’re losing track of the horrors there and it’s hard to keep our heads up and our eyes open. It’s no fault of ours––the world spins madly on and our attention can only cope with so much trauma. But this is the world, and we in this community are searchers after truth, and sometimes the truth is ugly.

Langston Hughes wrote this poem in 1938, but as poetry tends to do, it rings with renewed significance today. These words help me keep my attention on where my values intersect with the madly spinning world. I hope they do the same for you.

Kids Who Die
This is for the kids who die,
Black and white,
For kids will die certainly.
The old and rich will live on awhile,
As always,
Eating blood and gold,
Letting kids die.

Kids will die in the swamps of Mississippi
Organizing sharecroppers
Kids will die in the streets of Chicago
Organizing workers
Kids will die in the orange groves of California
Telling others to get together
Whites and Filipinos,
Negroes and Mexicans,
All kinds of kids will die
Who don't believe in lies, and bribes, and contentment
And a lousy peace.

Of course, the wise and the learned
Who pen editorials in the papers,
And the gentlemen with Dr. in front of their names
White and black,
Who make surveys and write books
Will live on weaving words to smother the kids who die
And the sleazy courts,
And the bribe-reaching police,
And the blood-loving generals,
And the money-loving preachers
Will all raise their hands against the kids who die,
Beating them with laws and clubs and bayonets and bullets
To frighten the people—
For the kids who die are like iron in the blood of the people—
And the old and rich don't want the people
To taste the iron of the kids who die,
Don't want the people to get wise to their own power,
To believe an Angelo Herndon, or even get together

Listen, kids who die—
Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you
Except in our hearts
Maybe your bodies'll be lost in a swamp
Or a prison grave, or the potter's field,
Or the rivers where you're drowned like Leibknecht
But the day will come—
You are sure yourselves that it is coming—
When the marching feet of the masses
Will raise for you a living monument of love,
And joy, and laughter,
And black hands and white hands clasped as one,
And a song that reaches the sky—
The song of the life triumphant
Through the kids who die.

Allan T. Georgia, M.Div., M.T.S., PhD

Sometimes it is hard to tap into our spiritual selves or find time to nurture our intellectual curiosity. Here is a section that reflects on some nourishing materials from around the web and related media channels in order to get us thinking, get us feeling, and get us reflecting on the lives we are living in this big, beautiful world. **Some Adult/Mature Themes May Appear in Links and Other Attached Material**

Share this post: