An offering on the anniversary of August 11 and 12

Even in an event center with a crowd of 10,000 people, his laugh rang out and moved me. When the Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke at my college campus in the early 2000s, I had the good fortune to be there. Now as I reflect on the events in Charlottesville five years ago I am heartened by his laugh and know that if he, and his dear friend the Dali Lama, could laugh after all they have seen and lived through, that there is still room for laughter. It is his laughter in part that inspired my poem below. 

 “So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of the oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter.” - Ecclesiastes 4.1 

 So I ask Spirit to remove this division within me and make room for comfort. 

And I invite Laughter.

Laughter which shatters the forms of the way things are, making room for the beautiful, impossible, world that our hearts know is possible.  

Laughter which encounters what is unknown and Other and has no fear, but delights in what and who it has not known before, playfully knitting us together. 

And I think of Laughter's good friend Foolishness.  

Foolishness that sees hate and violence but returns love and kindness. 

 Foolishness that lives in the beautiful, impossible, world that our hearts know is possible amidst the evidence of its impossibility. 

 And I ask that we bring this Laughter and this Foolishness to our community.