How Now Shall We Give

Title serves as a play on Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey’s How Now Shall We Live? Below is a poetic, outward processing of the current American racial and cultural tension.

Is it enough to raise awareness?

To make a post on our media that is conditioned to pass through our minds in less than a minute. 

To be undermined by the attention span we have been cultivating and propagating

as slaves to our harmful words and every opinion.

Now it matters.

But it did all along? 

Now they matter. 

But they have all along? 

It has always taken hard work—a meaningful, tough conversation.

Patience is uncomfortable, it echoes of sloth.

Patience for the other, 

Staring back at us.

Do we have room in our society for this?

Do we make room in our hearts for this?

Are we really a “we”? 

The polarized, battered bicker has found it’s home in our house.

Is our house really a home? 

Patience for a thought.

Thoughtfulness defines a difference.

What it means to be a professional,

Versus someone who loves to profess. 

Quick to speak about the past,

Without taking the time to learn and know the history. 

Quick to speak for a brother, 

When legacy just dies with me. 

Quick to capture a moment, 

When my fear paralyzes my movement.

Quick to throw our labels, 

Quick to throw our stones. 

Only forgiveness sets the sinner free. 

To love is to commit. 

To hate is to give in. 

A conversation takes character. 

Harshness turns others into characters. 

Time lets us see, 

Our past, 

Our moment, 

Our future. 

Fear drives hate. 

Friends bring love. 

We can only see with a Light. 

Taught to fight, not by a teacher. 

To love is hard.

Giving does not feel safe. 

Sacrifice does not feel safe. 

You can only give if you have eyes to see.

What are we fighting for—do we have a vision? 

The mountaintop from the valley,

Where our self-protection runs deep. 

Supposed to 

Need to 

Required to 

For who? 

You? or Them? 

Are we really a “we”? 

How about instead of taking a video,

Or taking a life, 

We offer our lives instead. 

Greater love has no one than this, 

that someone lay down his life for his friends. 

Step in front of a friend, take the beating. 

Break the cycle from its repeating. 

Down your street, on your land.

Become vulnerable, 

not another demand. 

Stepping out of our slavery to harm, 

our attention deficit. 

A massive undoing 

within our nation’s precepts.

Within my chest,

Within my mind. 

May I leave my old self, not my brother, behind. 

How now shall we give? 

We must step out of our inner slavery to the things that harm, 

Step forward—not just behind—for those who have been harmed.

Now I must give, 

So all have the choice to live.

Not a life of addiction,

No more harm. 

A chance to humble oneself. 

A change that begins in the heart. 

Causing a movement within the blood. 

A blood that binds us, 

That keeps us alive.

How now shall we give?

Let us give our lives.