Tonight my husband and I prayed with countless others at an ecumenical vigil at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, the church home of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Among Jews and Catholics and Baptists and Presbyterians and Episcopalians and Muslims we were reminded that being “good” does not mean being “passive” and now more than ever is when we need to speak up and speak back to the obscenity and the affront these actions are to God and the world. My husband quoted MLK saying “the ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” Tonight we celebrated being prisoners of hope and action. 
I am a prisoner of hope. God never said the road would be easy. Things happen. Devastating things even. Change remains constant. God remains unchanged. God has brought us thus far and will not leave us. Emmanuel! God with us. I am a prisoner of hope. And hope builds power and boldness and confidence to be God’s extensions right here in the midst of the storms.
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My heart aches for lives and souls lost. For being blind to human dignity. For seeing with our molded, manipulated imaginations and not with our hearts. For losing to fear and not to courage.
My heart aches, for these actions burn like wildfire. Rampant. Reckless. Contagious. Destructive. Debilitating. Deadly.
Yet, fire is not victorious.
My heart surges for the fertile medium that remains. Scorched yet not silent. Incinerated but not extinguished.
Cremated but not breathless.
Ablaze but not barren.
For up out of the gravid soil, life struggles to emerge. Bold. Defiant. Dauntless. A fire-eating delicacy bursts through.
Beautiful in its complicated brokenness.
Stalwart and assured.
Open.
Breathing in and out new possibility.
Hope.