Martin Luther King, Jr., Politics, Prayer, Robert F. Kennedy, Tribute, Uncategorized

Robert F. Kennedy: A Tribute

June 6, 2018June 6, 2018 kathymfindley

3DBDB3DF-6217-4BB9-8558-F5C4BF3F3CC3 It was called the greatest speech ever written — April 4, 1968.

A predominantly black crowd gathered in the streets of Indianapolis. They had had not yet heard the devastating news of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. It was Robert F. Kennedy who brought them the pain-filled news in a brief announcement. And then he shared the unending pain he felt, but seldom mentioned publicly, of his brother’s death in Dallas. He pleaded with the crowd to “return home, to say a prayer . . . for understanding and compassion . . . to make gentle the life of the world.”

They did go home, and Indianapolis was one of the few American cities that did not burn that night.

When we contemplate today’s headlines, some of us can hear Robert Kennedy’s voice and imagine him speaking out in our country — on the madness of gun violence, on the shame of police brutality, on the need for compassion in welcoming immigrants and refugees, on the moral necessity to seek peace instead of war, and on the divisiveness of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and all other challenges to our quest for unity. His way of communicating with others — personally or in crowds of people — was calming and inspiring.

When he spoke, he often called for peace and unity:

Surely we can learn, at least, to bind up the wounds among us and become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

— Robert F. Kennedy

Clearly, Robert F. Kennedy was loved by the everyday people of this nation — the factory and farm workers, the coal miners and the steel workers, the teachers and the doctors, the people who lived in the most modest neighborhoods as well as the people in the mansions on the hilltops. Why such an appeal? It could well be because his life and leadership were forged in the civil rights battles he faced as attorney general and in his own harrowing introspection after his brother’s assassination on November 22, 1963.

Less than five years after losing his brother, “as he lay shot and bleeding on the kitchen floor of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, he looked up and asked: “Is everybody OK?”

— Robert Morris Shrum, Director and Carmen H. and Louis Warschaw Chair in Practical Politics, UNiversity of Southern California

The books and films on Robert F. Kennedy’s life are so compelling that even persons who were not yet born then can grasp why millions flocked to rail sides as his funeral train traveled ever so slowly from New York to Washington, DC. In the midst of a nation’s despondency at losing the third great American leader, the train carrying his body was a kind of defiant last rally, a tribute not only to who he had been, but to what might have been. His daughter described that day.

A train carried his body from New York City to the nation’s capital. Crowds lined the train tracks, and waved, and cried. That train ride was supposed to be three hours, and instead it turned out to be almost seven hours. Two million people came out. African Americans in Baltimore singing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Nobody organized this; it was spontaneous.

— Robert F. Kennedy’s daughter, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

As always, we have the opportunity to grow and learn on the other side of tragic loss. We would do well to listen carefully to the plea spoken so many years ago by Robert F. Kennedy to the people grieving the death of Dr. King.

Say a prayer . . . for understanding and compassion . . . to make gentle the life of the world.

Let’s do that, right in the face of today’s angst over so many ills and wrongs. Let’s “say a prayer . . . to make gentle the life of the world.”

Amen

Change, Child protection, Community activism, Courage, Gun control, Hope, Inspiration, Justice, March for Our Lives, Politics, Prayer, Uncategorized, Violence

Dear Students Marching for Our Lives,

March 24, 2018March 24, 2018 kathymfindley

Let us pray with our legs, let us march in unison to the rhythm of justice, because I say enough is enough.”

— A Parkland shooting survivor.

Dear students,

Yesterday you sat in classrooms all over this country. Today you are marching all over this country, all over the world. Teachers, parents and other supportive adults are marching with you. We older folk marvel at your commitment and your resolve. We are proud of you. We cheer you on and pray that your efforts will bring positive change.

You are marching to demand that your lives and safety become a priority and that we end gun violence and mass shootings in our schools. You are relentless and persistent in your quest to end gun violence. You are standing tall, lifting your voices to proclaim “Enough is enough!”

Every day, 96 Americans are killed with guns. Since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School where 20 children between six and seven years old were killed by a gunman, 7,000 children age 17 and under have been killed by guns.

Today, thousands of you have gathered to call violence by its true name. You are calling out the adults. You are confronting the NRA. You are challenging all who put their own self interest above the safety of our children,You are marching today for those who died and those who live. You are marching for the children who will be in classrooms in years to come, little ones who still have the joy of innocence. You are marching for their lives. You are marching for them. You are marching for all of us, and we thank you. Our hearts are with you,

For each of you, I offer this prayer.

God who holds ouryoung in your arms of grace,

Make of us a people who hold our children in the highest esteem, who give them respect and encouragement, who take their fears seriously, who commit ourselves to their safety and protection.

Protect them, God, as they march for their lives today.

Help them to know that their resilience and persistence might just change the world.

Make every city where they march a welcoming place, filled with people that open their hearts to the message our children speak.

Assure our children of the love that surrounds them and of the support that enfolds them. Assure them of our love and respect for them.

Continue to embolden them to demand change.

Infuse them with the courage to stand and the strength to speak truth to power.

Grant them an extra measure of perseverance.

Guide their steps. Ennoble their conviction.

Calm their fears and soothe their anxious hearts.

And may their reward be a world free of violence, communities infused with peace, classrooms that surround them with understanding, acceptance, protection and learning.

For your deep love for our children, O God, we give you thanks.

For your compassion toward our young who have been so deeply harmed, we give you thanks.

For your comforting presence with friends and families who have lost people they love, we give you thanks.

For your tears mingled with our own as we mourn the loss of innocence our children have experienced, we give you thanks.

For your abiding protection and mercy in our violent and frightening world, O God, we give you thanks. Amen.

*****

Fast Facts

Organizers of March for Our Lives expect millions of people to participate in today’s marches.
Acting out of their profound grief, students from across the country are fearless, empowered and motivated to speak out today as part of the March for Our Lives movement that was born out of the Valentine’s Day shooting in Parkland, Florida that killed 17 students and staff members.
President Barak Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama sent a handwritten letter to the students of Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School commending them for their “resilience, resolve and solidarity in helping awaken the conscience of a nation.”
Today, there are marches in over 800 sites across the country where students are still “calling BS.”
Marches are also taking place all over the world.
Florida students have planned a voter registration effort as a part of the march in Washington, DC.
The message of these students is “never again,”

Change, Children, Courage, grief, Gun control, healing, Hope, Justice, Politics, Violence

A Change Is Gonna Come

February 19, 2018February 19, 2018 kathymfindley

963A5A51-3EC5-464E-BAE6-A49BCFECAE4F — Emma González … ‘These young people will not sit in classrooms waiting.’ Photograph: Jonathan Drake/Reuters

Half a century ago, on March 7, 1965, state troopers beat down men and women who were participating in a peaceful march for voting rights in Selma, Alabama. That same day, radio listeners around the country might have heard Sam Cooke singing a song he had written and recorded several months earlier, but which could have been describing the “Bloody Sunday” confrontation on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

There have been times that I thought I couldn’t last for long
But now I think I’m able to carry on
It’s been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change is gonna come, oh yes it will.

In “A Change Is Gonna Come,” Sam Cooke moves from bigotry and bloodshed to hope and beauty in barely three minutes. If you listen to the record today, you will hear a story that continues to be relevant. (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wEBlaMOmKV4)

Sam Cooke’s rough, sweet voice — a voice that is blues-born and church-bred, beat down but up again and marching — still rings.

A changs IS gonna come . . .

That message of hope rings out still in these troubling days through the passion-filled voice of Emma González, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, as she addresses a gun control rally in Fort Lauderdale just days after a gunman entered her school in Parkland and killed 17 people.

A change IS gonna come . . .

We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks. Not because we’re going to be another statistic about mass shooting in America, but because . . . we are going to be the last mass shooting. We are going to change the law. That’s going to be Marjory Stoneman Douglas in that textbook and it’s going to be due to the tireless effort of the school board, the faculty members, the family members and most of all the students. The students who are dead, the students still in the hospital, the student now suffering PTSD, the students who had panic attacks during the vigil because the helicopters would not leave us alone, hovering over the school for 24 hours a day.

If the President wants to come up to me and tell me to my face that it was a terrible tragedy and how it should never have happened and maintain telling us how nothing is going to be done about it, I’m going to happily ask him how much money he received from the National Rifle Association. You want to know something? It doesn’t matter, because I already know. Thirty million dollars. — Emma González

A change Is gonna come . . .

Just hours after the mass shooting, other students turned to social media to discuss gun control.

Guns give these disgusting people the ability to kill other human beings. This IS about guns. — Carly Novell, a 17-year-old senior; editor of the school’s quarterly magazine.

We need to do something. We need to get out there and be politically active. Congress needs to get over their political bias with each other and work toward saving children. We’re children. You guys are the adults. — David Hogg, 17, a senior; Stoneman Douglas student news director

Wherever you bump into someone, there is the fear that they’re the next shooter, and every bell is a gunshot. I feel like some change is going to come of this. — Daniela Palacios, 16, a sophomore at another Broward County High School at her first protest.

A change IS gonna come . . .

And it will be our bold and compassionate children who will lead this nation into that change. Like so many Americans, I was disconsolate when watching the TV news of yet another school shooting. But then I started watching the students, and I saw the girl with the buzzcut, Emma González, wiping back her tears, mourning her dead classmates while demanding change.

Like her schoolmates, Emma is in trauma, but she is organizing. She and many of her classmates are directly challenging the donations of the National Rifle Association to Trump and other politicians. There will be school strikes. There will be organized resistance. These young people will not sit in classrooms any more. They refuse to become another tragic statistic. “We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks,” said a weeping González.

As I remembered this week what happened at Sandy Hook, at Columbine, at Westside, a school in my own state, I remembered feeling anger and despair. But today, for first time in a long time, I feel hope. I see true leadership as kids are standing up for one another and fighting for their lives.

Let us stand courageously beside these children, our children, and do what we can to create change . . . letters to Congress, phone calls, posts on social media, marches and demonstrations, hand-lettered signs, letters to the editor, VOTING for change. What can you do?

Emma González, Daniela Palácios, David Hogg, Carly Novell . . . and thousands of other children who are crying out, ENOUGH!

They give me hope.

A change is gonna come!

May God ennoble each of us to make it so.

List of School Massacres by Death Toll, Wikipedia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_massacres_by_death_toll)

Hate, Love, Martin Luther King, Jr., peace, Politics

Only Love Can Drive Out Hate

January 14, 2018 kathymfindley

010B6CB7-43B5-47B7-B92B-C87DF5750866 It was almost shameful that President Trump on January 12th signed a proclamation honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In all honesty, I cringe at his signing of this proclamation. I cringe because the president honors Dr. King while dishonoring Dr. King’s legacy.

I can imagine that Dr. King’s words echoed through the Oval Office during the signing, in a whisper heard only by persons of love and good will.

If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.”

We’ve learned to fly the air like birds, we’ve learned to swim the seas like fish, and yet we haven’t learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters…”

― Martin Luther King, Jr.

I cringe because I heard the words that the president said about “shithole countries.”

Why do we want all these people from Africa here? They’re shithole countries … We should have more people from Norway.

– Donald J. Trump

In his remarks, Mr. Trump, who has vowed to clamp down on illegal immigration, also questioned the need for Haitians in the United States.

Instantly, many Democrats and some Republican lawmakers called out the president. Republican United States Representative Mia Love, a daughter of Haitian immigrants, said the comments were “unkind, divisive, elitist, and fly in the face of our nation’s values,” and she called forTrump to apologize to the American people and to the countries he denigrated.

Another Republican Representative, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who was born in Cuba and whose south Florida district includes many Haitian immigrants, said: “Language like that shouldn’t be heard in locker rooms and it shouldn’t be heard in the White House.”

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said the president’s comment “smacks of blatant racism, the most odious and insidious racism masquerading poorly as immigration policy.”

A wave of international outrage also grew against the president’s vulgar language as the president of Ghana, President Nana Akufo-Addo, said that he would “not accept such insults, even from a leader of a friendly country, no matter how powerful.”

The Ghanian president tweeted an unflinching defense of the African continent — and of Haiti and El Salvador, countries that Trump also mentioned in the Thursday meeting with a group of senators at the White House.

In addition to Ghana, the government of Botswana said Trump’s language is “reprehensible and racist,” and said it has summoned the U.S. ambassador to clarify what he meant.

Senegal’s president, Macky Sall, said in a statement that it was “shocking” and that “Africa and the black race merit the respect and consideration of all.” His West African nation has long been praised by the United States as an example of a stable democracy.

The African Union, which is made up of 55 member states, also spoke against Trump’s remarks.”Given the historical reality of how many Africans arrived in the United States as slaves, this statement flies in the face of all accepted behavior and practice,” said spokeswoman Ebba Kalondo.

Paul Altidor, Haiti’s ambassador to the U.S., called Trump’s comments “regrettable” and based on “clichés and stereotypes rather than actual fact.” He also noted the insensitivity of its timing, coming the same week as the eighth anniversary of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 people.

El Salvador’s government on Friday sent a formal letter of protest to the United States over the “harsh terms detrimental to the dignity of El Salvador and other countries.”

A spokesperson representing the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned President Trump’s “shocking and shameful” comment, saying: “I’m sorry, but there’s no other word one can use but racist.”

On January 13th, The Washington Post published an article by Karen Tumulty that calls out President Trump’s misunderstanding of this nation’s immigration history.

There is far more to the latest controversy surrounding President Trump than the vulgar and implicitly racist language he used to draw a distinction between desirable and undesirable immigrants. Trump’s choice of words also revealed a deeper and more substantive truth about how the president views — and misunderstands — America’s unique relationship with its immigrants.

Trump’s words, with their racial connotations, also suggest he wants to return to what has come to be regarded as one of the more shameful and xenophobic periods of immigration policy.

In 1924, a set of laws was passed that set quotas limiting the number of people admitted to this country based on where they came from, with a goal of preserving the United States’ ethnic homogeneity.

“The premise of national origin quotas was that some countries produce good immigrants, others produce bad immigrants,” said NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten, author of the 2015 book “A Nation of Nations: A Great American Immigration Story.”

“There were actually ‘scientific’ studies purporting to categorize countries according to the quality and characteristics of their people, and the quotas were devised in part on the basis of the testimony of ‘expert’ opinion,” Gjelten said.

There are so many voices of reason, voices that cry out for dignity, respect, unity and love, speaking out against the president of the United States. So it is with sadness and shame that I celebrate the day of remembrance for Dr. King. On his day in 2018, I hear more intensely all that he taught us about so many things, and I hear what he shared with us most profoundly — the power of love.

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says “Love your enemies,” he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition.

― Martin Luther King, Jr., from Strength to Love

This week, I heard a provocative statement: that hate speech is not about who Donald Trump is. Rather, it is about who we are. The statement opened up some questions for me:

How do I respond? What does it mean for me to stand with those who are marginalized?

Is it not my responsibility to stand up to persons in seats of power when they promote hate, racism, xenophobia, exclusion and hostility?”

Will I set my face towards love and my heart towards the world as it is seen through the eyes of Jesus? Is it not up to me to be a part of creating — in our nation and in our world — a “beloved community?”

For “hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.” Was

Change, Courage, grief, Gun control, Mourning, peace, Perseverance, Politics, Violence

How Long, O Lord?

October 4, 2017October 4, 2017 kathymfindley

Design The mass shooting in Las Vegas leaves us enraged. And confused. And heartbroken.

Heartbroken describes us best as we find ourselves dealing with an inescapable and horrific truth that our world is not a safe place. Once we take that into our souls, we begin to live life as victims, refugees from all that is good. The television news is filled with the stories of heartbroken people whose loved ones were gunned down at a “fun-filled” event. As people of faith, our lives are interwoven with the lives of the victims and survivors of the Las Vegas tragedy. So yes, although we were not there and did not experience the massacre, we are heartbroken, too.

We are heartbroken because of lives lost. We are heartbroken because brothers and sisters must mourn the death of persons they loved. We are heartbroken because those that survived the Las Vegas shooting now live with relentless survivor’s guilt. We are heartbroken because a healthy family event filled with music violently lost its melody. We are heartbroken because violence reigns in the world. We are heartbroken because we do not have the moral, ethical, spiritual and political will to change the climate of violence through responsible weapon control legislation.

But we have been heartbroken before, far too many times. Orlando, Fort Hood, Killeen, Virginia Tech, UT Austin, San Bernardino, Sandy Hook, among others. We have been heartbroken before, and nothing changed. Our broken hearts did not result in courageous spirits willing to persevere, persist and insist on creating change in our culture of violence.

Dan Hodges made this very sad statement in 2015.

In retrospect, Sandy Hook marked the end of the U.S. Gun control debate. Once America decided that killing children was bearable, it was over.

The facts, though, convict us of irresponsibility and refusal to effect change. The Guardian published a chart — America’s Gun Crisis in One Chart — that reveals the troubling truth: 1,516 mass shootings in 1,735 days. (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/oct/02/america-mass-shootings-gun-violence) The chart, updated on October 2, 2017, reports 1,719 deaths and 6,510 injuries.

People of faith lament and grieve, asking God for answers. Like the Prophet Habakkuk who prayed for help in a time of trouble, we cry out to God.

How long, O Lord, must I call for help, and You will not hear? I cry out to You, “Violence!” Yet You do not save.

Why do You make me see iniquity,
And cause me to look on wickedness?
Yes, destruction and violence are before me;
Strife exists and contention arises.

– Habakkuk 1:2-3 NASB

I would never presume to know the mind and heart of God, but I imagine that God’s answer to our question, “How long, O Lord?” might sound something like this.

How long, you ask. Long enough for you to stand courageously for what is right. Long enough for you to develop the political will to seek change through advocacy in the halls of Congress. Long enough for you speak truth to power, constantly and persistently until a new day of peace and safety dawns in your nation. Do not cry, “Peace, peace where there is no peace.” Instead cry out, “Change! Change! Change now, because God desires to comfort your broken heart and wills for you a world of safety, well being, and holy peace.”

May God grant us the courage and the perseverance to make it so.

Change, Christian Witness, Courage, Freedom, Hope, Justice, peace, Perseverance, Politics

Persevering Hope

July 16, 2017July 16, 2017 kathymfindley

PAX

(pɑks ; päks; pæks ; paks). noun

1. the Roman goddess of peace, identified with the Greek Irene

2. sign of peace

The Reverend Jennifer Butler was wearing a white clergy stole with Pax embroidered over a cross and an olive branch. Enlight126 She Was singing as police officers restrained her, arms behind her back, both thumbs held tightly together with plastic straps. Next to be arrested was The Reverend Traci Blackmon, who chanted “justice, mercy” again and again as police restrained her and led her away.

The Charlotte Examiner described the event, The March to Save Medicaid, Save Lives.

Capitol Hill police arrested the president of the North Carolina NAACP on Thursday morning after he led a protest of the Senate’s proposed health care repeal-and-replace bill.

Rev. William J. Barber II, who was protesting in his role as president of Repairers of the Breach, was released from jail by 2 p.m. On that morning, July 13, 2017, Dr. Barber and other faith leaders led a group of about 50 people to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office in the Capitol.

The group gathered a few blocks away at 10 a.m. and walked to the Capitol, chanting and singing along the way. Eleven protesters were arrested.

Reconciliation: The Heart’s Repentance

June 21, 2017 kathymfindley

The long and arduous presidential campaign left behind a fractured nation. The political parties displayed unprecedented enmity between Democrats and Republicans. The citizenry followed their lead, and the result was broken relationships among friends and even within families. My own family exchanged sharp and hurtful words during the campaign, words that continue to affect our relationships.

We have made enemies of other nations. Some among us have made enemies based on race, culture, gender, national identity, religious practice, sexual orientation. And we remain divided and hostile, with no apparent desire to reconcile. And yet, we desperately need true reconciliation.

The Biblical concept of reconciliation suggests the presence of spiritual, divine intervention that creates reconciliation in the hearts of those who are estranged. Reconciliation assumes there has been a breakdown in a relationship, but through the heart’s repentance, there is a change from a state of enmity and fragmentation to one of harmony and fellowship.

It is going to require the heart’s repentance to restore a climate of unity, mutual respect, love and peace. Michael Curry, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in America, offers these insightful thoughts about reconciliation.

Reconciliation isn’t just singing Kumbaya and everyone being nice. Reconciliation is about the hard work of working through our differences, maybe acknowledging them and not changing them, necessarily. Working through our differences, honestly and with integrity, and sometimes repenting of where our differences or my differences or yours has actually hurt relationship and not helped the human family.

Shall we just leave everything as it is? Shall we allow the distance to continue between us and those we have lost because of our differences? Shall we accept a fractured world and the divisiveness that now assails us? Or shall we instead commit ourselves to the holy work of reconciliation?

Our sacred calling is to restore peace within the human family, creating a world that can nurture our children and grandchildren, striving for genuine reconciliation among those from whom we are estranged, restoring peace and a community of love, transforming fractured and hurting humanity. This is what God implores us to do.

. . . This is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

2 Corinthians 5:18-19

Freedom, Politics

One Nation under God

February 4, 2017February 4, 2017 kathymfindley

The Statue of Liberty is pictured from the Staten Island Ferry at twilight in New York

I sometimes tire of hearing talk about being “one nation under God” in a nation whose leaders want to exclude and divide. In these difficult days, our President has signed an executive order to ban persons from several countries from entering our country. Protesters object in the streets and at airports throughout the country, seeking to hold fast to the promise represented by the Statue of Liberty. We must not forget that Lady Liberty stands in New York harbor lifting her light to all the world. And on a plaque at her base, these words are inscribed:

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Bishop Steven Charleston writes what it means to be one nation under God. He says that ours is a holy calling, compassionate to all who seek refuge, caring for those who are poor, protecting those among us who are most vulnerable. These are his words:

One nation under God. What would that be like? I think any nation striving to live such a holy calling would be compassionate to all those in need, caring for the poor, healing the sick, protecting the most vulnerable. It would seek wisdom, supporting its schools and teachers. It would defend itself and help its friends, but never cease striving for peace. It would turn from greed and honor God’s creation. It would respect the dignity of every citizen and strive for reconciliation, finding unity in diversity, strength in mercy, authority in justice not promised but practiced.

– Steven Charleston

Dignity, diversity, strength, mercy, justice, compassion . . . May these words always define us as a nation. May God rebuke the leaders who seek to obliterate these values. And may God touch the hearts of our leaders, urgently summoning them to help make us truly one nation under God.

Change, Courage, Politics

The Women’s March in Arkansas

January 21, 2017 kathymfindley

Historic photos of my brothers and sisters in Arkansas as they march for justice and equality

Change, Freedom, Politics

The Swelling Current

January 21, 2017 kathymfindley

Yesterday during the inauguration of Donald Trump. I felt as if I were drowning. My own “swelling current” was threatening to overtake me. I allowed myself to become anxious about all the harmful changes the new administration might make.

Today I will pray for the Women’s March on Washington where women will raise their voices for the rights of all women. The group will march west on Independence Avenue SW to 14th Street SW, then they will turn north on 14th Street to Constitution Avenue, then march west on Constitution to 17th Street NW to The Ellipse. Organizers say the event will be a peaceful gathering to “promote women’s equality and defend other marginalized groups.”

More than a quarter of a million women and men will march in our nation’s capital, with other marches taking place in more than 600 “sister marches” planned across the United States. Some of the biggest expected in Boston, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Women and men in cities around the world — including Sydney, Berlin, London, Paris and Cape Town, South Africa — are also marching in solidarity and in opposition to the values they think Trump represents

Protesters march on this day to raise awareness of women’s rights and other civil rights they fear could be under threat under Donald Trump’s presidency. Two of my friends will take my name with them to the Washington march, representing my personal fear that the Trump administration will eliminate Violence against Women Act funding. Most importantly, today we march and pray in protest of Trump’s past comments about women.

So while I nurse my feeling of drowning, I recall the comforting words of this hymn:

When I tread the verge of Jordan, bid my anxious fears subside.
Bear me through the swelling current, land me safe on Canaan’s side.

– Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah, Text by William Williams, 1745.

What a compassionate promise from God found in this hymn. I will rest on that.

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