Put It All Down

by Yelena Tower

Put it down: the phone, the pen, the keyboard. Sit with yourself a minute.

What's missing? What are you holding onto? grasping? rejecting?

White nationalism, harassment, greed, and fear... these elements are rising. When will we have courage to speak?

Fake news pours from every faucet, and the real news hurts. It's easy to retreat. It's easy to get lost when we try to escape.

The world is changing; it's not an infinite supply; it swirls and rattles around us. We don't want to look to the realm of nightmare and open up that cellar door. No, we are right, and that rightness kills us. We scuffle back into our closets and hide from the light.

What is it like when we ignore God?

What happens in our bones and our blood?

What goes through our minds' corner edges as we're drifting off to sleep?

Where are our hearts when we overschedule our days?

And what's left on the deathbed when we die?

Take out our hearts, wrap blankets around them and sit quietly for what they'll show us. Because they won't show us solid and clean; they'll show misplaced rage that our friend messed up the dates, smoldering twigs and insults that flare up at a backward glance, deep piercing fear that we can't pay our bills, anger at something we can't understand. We're braced for the worst, determined to ride out the storm, buried in the sand or slumped exhausted on our beds.

Somewhere or other we drew up our anchors, and now our ships, they drift.