Thank you all—every one of you—who has supported my being at PSR for this past year: for your prayers for me and my work here; for those of you who provided support, letters, messages, goody-boxes; for those of you loving and supporting Miguel back home; for every single prayer. For all these kindnesses and expressions of faith and confidence, particularly when I was short on both, I will forever be grateful. 

As I go into year two, I covet your continued prayers, even as you are in mine, often mindful of how you have inspired me, encouraged me, sustained me.

Thank you for how you live out the call of justice in your own lives and for how you affirm and support my own.

With love and abundant hope

Todd

 

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I cannot believe it has been three-hundred sixty-five days since I left Texas.

Since I left home on a wing and a prayer that I was doing the right thing.

That the right thing was heeding the Voice inside me.

A Voice, only gaining in strength, compelling me to seek justice.

For it is justice that has become the burning desire of my heart.

A heart not at peace because we are not all of us experiencing peace.

“No justice, no peace,” too few of us chant; so here I am for a season to learn.

To learn how I, how the church, how people of faith can do better.

And by better I mean stop repeating the mistakes of the past.

A past littered with lynched bodies, second-class treatment of women, abuses by empire.

An empire which continues today to trample women, immigrants, transgender people.

People who are made in the very image of the divine, every last one of us.

Each one precious and holy and deserving of dignity and respect.

Respect that eludes them, damning the very institution founded on the words of Christ.

Words that say love your neighbor—every neighbor.

Your Muslim neighbor, my trans neighbor, our undocumented neighbors.

A neighbor, a stranger among us, the sick, the vulnerable, the poor.

They are the downtrodden and we honor God only when we lift them up.

For by lifting them up we are fulfilling the potential of our creation.

Created by a God who only ever wants for us to love and feel love and be love.

For it is love that compels me to learn how to do better, to be better, to inspire better.

Better from a creation who has the potential to change the world.

A world desperately in need of every single one of us.

Three-hundred sixty-five days a year.

 

Amen