Sorrow and Hope and Chicken Jockey - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

While we were memorializing our beloved, millions of people were marching and demonstrating in cities across the country. Every record of this event I saw showed grieving and laughter in potent coexistence. Homemade signs that embody rage and humor. Sorrow and hope - neither strangers nor enemies. For these millions, disillusionment with our present reality has not undermined a belief in what can be, in what we can be. It is a mighty love that produces such sorrow and hope. A hope that does not acknowledge sorrow is all artifice and denial. But a sorrow without hope? I don’t want to know it and neither do you. We are built for hope. 

The next day, we drove through 6 hours of rain to get home to our children. I reached the front door exhausted and held onto them for dear life. It is such a cliché to say my children give me hope. But clichés are clichés for a reason, aren’t they? It is not my kids’ innocence I love – in all honesty I don’t consider them all that innocent. Children experience anger and shame and fear and sorrow and joy and all sorts of what we call “big feelings” just as much as adults do. They’re clueless and naïve and idealistic and wholehearted, but I do not worship or idealize them.