God does answer prayers

June 24th is the new favorite holiday of all pro-life people. A poem for the occasion:

Finally, an Answer

Is this the first one:
It feels like the first real victory,
the first time we rallied
and overcame the enemy.
It feels like the first day in decades
we've breathed clean air

But is it, really,
when for the light to get here
it had to travel quite the distance,
one point in history to the next,
too far away to see at first,
now blindingly here,
leaving behind
a trail of undaunted footsteps.

Every domino set, a victory.
Every step forward, a battle won.

No,
when God was silent
He was not absent--
He was there, baton raised
breath poised,
kinetically focused,
never hasty.
Our lens is a pinpoint;
our frame too small
to realize how short our time is,
how infinitesimal the gap
between silence and sound,
between earth and sun.

So in the darkness, still I will thank Him
for the speed of light. 

All is vanity?

The past weeks in our communities seem to have been plagued by evil. Maybe it's just my childhood innocence shedding its scales, but it seems to me that the older I've gotten the heavier the weight of grief and loss in the world has become. Some days I sense a burden of things inexpressible by any language. 

Since my children were born, I've only felt this angst deepen. I know this world is passing away. I know that darkness must increase so that when the light finally banishes it, the glory of that moment will endure forever. Though this is true, I also know that even as darkness grows, hope will too. Hope will never be out-shined by darkness.

So this is my charge to you, fellow pilgrims: seek beauty, hold on to hope, have faith, be brave. Go outside in the springtime. And listen to your mom <3 

Solomon's despair, revisited

Mom said write a poem about a rose
when all I can think of is the world's
love of death.
She said,
go outside where things are still green,
somehow,
and be reminded that not all is death,
not all is lost in darkness.
There is a vivaciousness
in the vibration
of the air.
There's a residue that lingers, persistent
long after words have faded
into ink on a page.
There is life amidst this dying,
a new Spirit that brings buds to bloom.
So in the end,
a rose, or a poem, is not a frivolity.
No fleeting beauty is meaningless,
but it comes like a fragrant breeze
through a still room,
stirring whispers of long-suffering hope. 

Abortion isn't Healthcare. It's a Holocaust.

I can't stop thinking about those babies. 

More than likely you already know what I'm talking about, but if you don't: last week, the bodies of five babies were recovered by Washington D.C. police in the home of a well-known pro-life advocate. For days the pro-life community has been calling out for an investigation into their deaths, which appear not only brutal in nature (as all abortion is), but potentially illegal as well. There has been nothing but radio silence from the D.C. government in response. 

This is our holocaust. 

I do not use that word lightly. Some may think I use it inappropriately, but I don't care. The time for sparing feelings has long since passed, and abortion is a holocaust on a grander scale than any Nazi ever could have dreamed. And yet, so many of us are silent. So many are content to stand by and do nothing. So many are content to keep the truth buried inside.

And what's our excuse? Social ostracization. Unpleasant conversations. Imperfect solutions. The Germans in 1940 had better excuses than we do. 

After a week like this, it can be hard to remember that evil is destined to lose. But I still believe in the God who defeated death. 

Lament for the Five

Five.

Five children dead.

Five sons and daughters mangled, abandoned

to blood and fear, cold and betrayal. 

Five dead faces speak for millions,

and the wicked heart calls this barbarism 

beauty.

These words, these thoughts are poison,

bitter herbs and stinging bites.

But how can I write anything else

when my mind is full of them?

Words of sorrow and rage,

hateful condemnations,

silent screams. 

I am anger,

I am a blunt weapon.

I am fatigue, I am nausea.

I am everything unrighteous. My heart

turns against me.

I hate death and desire destruction.

I desire the destruction of the wicked

yet my own maladies would condemn me.

Pain and death surround me.

The pain of the innocent encroaches on my safety.

With every breath

fear and hopelessness snatch at my joy.

The dead lurk behind my eyelids.

I cry rivers of blood,

never enough to satisfy a cruel world.

But the Holy One of Israel will not be thwarted.

His hands heal their misery,

for them now just a memory, 

while left behind,

we live still, in the echoes.

Come quickly to save me,

Man of Sorrows and Prince of Peace.

Wipe the tears from my eyes.

Let me write of beauty and love.

Let me sing songs of hope,

courageous ballads.

Let me dance and be joyful.

No more songs of lament

will flow from my lips,

no tears then

Except tears of laughter when I see You.

You, always before me,

just in your anger. Eager in mercy.

Perfect in goodness and

inescapable.

Let me rejoice and find in You my salvation.

find out more about how you can fight the evil of abortion at liveaction.org

Let's talk about IVF

Is in vitro fertilization a moral or ethical practice, and should I, as a pro-life Christian, support it? Perhaps you've never asked, or been asked, this question before, but it's important for us, as principled individuals, to have a clear and well-defined philosophy on any Life issue. 

For the purposes of this post, IVF is defined as the process by which a mother and father's egg and sperm are combined to create a new life outside the womb, and then that new life is either implanted in the womb or frozen in a kind of stasis until the parents decide what should be done with it.

This practice is wrong. It is not ethically consistent with either a pro-life or a Christian Life ethic, and we need to start thinking about it more critically.

Before going further, I want to fully acknowledge that this is a sensitive and painful topic. I've heard many families' heartbreaking stories about infertility, and I know that the decision to attempt IVF is not made lightly by anyone. Feel free to disagree with me on this, but regardless of the difficulty, I think my claim is valid. Here's why:  

On a basic level, IVF is both selfish and wasteful. Selfish because it creates tiny humans who are then subject to the will of others, the question of whether they will have a chance to grow answered not by natural means, but by the parents' choice. Wasteful because even in the most hopeful of circumstances, it is generally accepted and even expected that not all babies created through IVF will survive to be born, or even be implanted in their mother's womb. This has created a consumerist attitude toward IVF babies, where their futures are determined either by convenience or desperation. 

A mother who experiences one successful pregnancy may decide she doesn't desire to repeat the process with her leftover embryos. She may die, or develop health problems that make it unwise for her to become pregnant, before having the chance to bear all her children. On the other hand, a mother may choose to implant the last of her IVF children only because the process hasn't been successful yet. The result is either that the remaining babies are never prioritized for a chance at life, or the one successful pregnancy leaves behind it a trail of miscarried siblings. 

Those miscarried babies are precious lives lost, every one a tragedy. And those extra embryos, the ones never implanted, are often left behind in "storage," never to be implanted unless a new family comes to adopt them from their biological parents. 

Creating a human and then essentially putting them into cryo-sleep until it suits you to give them a chance at growing (possibly never) is unethical, no matter one's reasoning. IVF treats human lives as products. There is no dignity in it for the person created in the process. 

And the industry itself displays an ironic callousness toward unborn lives, regardless of how the parents feel about their embryos. Use of IVF is always accompanied by the basic assumption that not all embryos created this way will survive--and if those children do miraculously beat the odds, it actually complicates the situation further. Parents are warned against implanting too many of their children at a time, lest those babies actually grow and the pregnancy become threatening to the mother's health. 

In this case, many OBGYNs will advise their IVF patients that "selective reduction"--ending the life of one or more of the growing embryos--is a desirable way to prevent too many of them from surviving until a dangerous point. So not only are babies selectively chosen for life during the implantation process, they are also often selectively marked for destruction if the process is too successful. 

Even if we leave all these extenuating circumstances behind, even if you acknowledge the humanity of your artificially created children, and desire them all to survive and be born, does that justify the selfish act of suspending them in limbo? Does it justify creating a buffer of multiple babies out of the statistically-supported fear that less than half of them actually will survive? 

There is, perhaps, somewhat of a gray area here in which one might make a moral case for creating and implanting only one embryo at a time, simulating the circumstances of most natural pregnancies. But even then the question becomes: where does it end? A single embryo created through IVF has only a 47% chance of surviving a pregnancy. That's about twice the usual risk to the embryo as in a natural pregnancy, which is why so many parents choose--and many doctors advise-- to create and implant multiple babies at a time. 

Every child, from zygote to newborn and beyond, is a unique and beautiful creation. IVF cheapens that creation by causing society to value them less, and view them as products rather than people. Children created through IVF are of the same worth as every other child created in the image of God. They are not potential children, they are children. Children created to become essentially the unwitting subjects of a lab experiment. The question posed by this experiment: will this baby live or die?

Human lives are not ours to control and manipulate. The humanity of IVF babies demands dignity. A pro-life person knows this. A Christian knows this. 

So we cannot be casual about IVF anymore. We can't be casual about the commodification of life. We should be champions of selflessness and patient endurance of trials, even the heartbreaking trial of infertility. We should be champions of adoption--including the adoption of the children who have spent their entire lives frozen in test tubes, waiting for the chance to be born. 

If you are struggling with infertility, my heart hurts for you in your struggle. God's heart hurts with you. But suffering has never justified injustice. Together we should fight to create a world in which the value of every human life is fully acknowledged. 

No, you can't be a Christian and be Pro-Choice

Many calling themselves Christians disagree with me. They say any number of well-intentioned things, things which come, ultimately, from a love of the world and a reluctance to divide themselves from it. And the "Pro-Choice Christian" answer sounds good to the world. It sounds like empathy, and understanding, and freedom of choice, and freedom from suffering. It sounds like caring. It sounds like love. 

But it's not the duty of a Christian to reconcile her faith with the world, and it's not indicative of faith in God to seek the world's answers. So in this issue, as with any important question, I'm asking God. What does His word have to say about this situation we find ourselves in? What do I know of God, what does the example of Christ tell me about how I should live my life? 

I know that God is omniscient and omnipresent. I know he sees all of us in our individual circumstances and knows us completely.

I know that God loves His creation, and created humanity to be in relationship with Him. I know that apart from that, we will always be lost, wandering in search of a soul-filling love.

I know that God hates evil, in all its forms. He hates the evil that makes us hurt each other in anger. He hates the evil that causes us to seek our own comfort above anything else. He hates lies, and greed, and unfaithfulness, and selfishness, and disobedience. He hates pain. He hates murder. 

I know that in my own sinfulness I have nothing to offer God. I know that it would be just for me to die in my sins. But I also know that God created a way, in Jesus, for our relationship to be restored, and gave me a shining example, in Jesus, of what that restored relationship should look like. 

I know that Jesus is the perfect Son of God. I know that He commanded me to love God, and love my neighbor. I know that He calls me to turn from my sin and follow Him. I know that He chose a miserable death rather than leave me in my hopelessness--that greater love has no one than this.

What does this tell me about abortion?

It tells me that God is a God of truth, not of easy answers. It tells me that the truth is sometimes, if not often, painful. It tells me that all the suffering we experience in this world is because of sin, and because of the evil that lurks in our own hearts. It tells me that my own heart is untrustworthy, and if I listen to every natural instinct I have, it will lead me to destruction. 

It tells me what love truly looks like: 

It is unconditional. 

It is self-sacrificing.

It is moved by compassion. It does not rejoice in the suffering of others, but endures pain in order to do right by others. 

It rejects fear, rejects selfishness, rejects simple and quick solutions. It forgives even when the offense is unpardonable. It forgives even the evil of abortion, if indeed abortion is evil.

God is Love. These three words are true, yet this simple phrase is used by many to justify selfish and sinful acts. But if I truly believe God is love, then I must trust that His answer to this question is better than the one I'd come up with on my own. I must trust that no complexity can excuse evil. I must trust that He sees the situation in its wholeness, and knows what it requires better than I or anyone ever could.

God sees every struggling mother. He sees her in her pain, in her terror of the unknown, in her hopelessness and doubt. He sees the woman he knit together in her own mother's womb, fearfully and wonderfully, grown into a mother herself and fearful of what that means. God sees in her the broken heart that has led her to this choice. He sees in her the possibility for strength, bravery, and beauty that He will give to her, if only she could reach out her hand and take it. 

And God's sight does not end where ours does, with the veiled outline of new life, impossible to grasp fully because we are so limited by our eyes. God sees the new life budding inside every mother's womb. He sees a new child, one whose every cell is numbered and known by Him. He sees that child, in all its unfathomable smallness, and loves him or her with the same love that caused Him to visit a womb Himself, in the form of the baby Jesus. 

If you believe what God has said, that humankind has been created in His very image, then you must include every human being in that image, as He does. God--Love--does not look with disdain on the smaller, the weaker, the more vulnerable. He does not dismiss the humblest of us. He does not ask of what use we can be to him, in our imperfection. He does not measure our worth by what we can be, or what we will become; rather, He measures it by what we are--loved with an eternal, unconditional love, and created in that love to be a part of His story. 

Created, in that love, to be saved and redeemed for no other reason than that it pleases Him to love us fully and completely.  

Jesus gave his life for us when we were at our worst. He called us friends as we sat around his table, plotting to betray him. He chose us and saved us, rather than leave us in our misery. How can we, then, as recipients of that incredible grace, demand that our very children die for us when they are at their most innocent? How can we deny them the same love that Christ demonstrated for us when he went to the cross? How can we take the life, in brutal and murderous fashion, of a precious human being, created in God's own image? 

There is nothing, nothing of the strong, faithful, self-sacrificing Christ in abortion. There is nothing of Him in the fear and pain and selfishness that drives many women to seek the destruction of their offspring. There is nothing of faith in that choice. Abortion is the very antithesis of the life-giving hope that Christ has given us.

So no, you cannot be a Christian and support abortion. 

You can wrestle with the complexities of human suffering, you can question how best to help those who are struggling with unplanned pregnancies. But you cannot claim Christ and abortion in the same breath without lying about one of those things. 

This question will divide us. It will separate us from the world, and sometimes from each other. But that is what Jesus said would happen as time went on--those faithful to Him would be revealed by their fruits. And abortion is not a fruit of Jesus' death-conquering Life. It is a fruit of Satan, of sin,
and of the evil, corrupted world we live in. 

Anything that is of darkness is not of God. And as followers of Christ, we are called to love only the things of God. To call an evil thing good, to make room for it in your heart, to support and cheer for it, is to deny Jesus. Without Jesus we walk in blindness, but once we have been given the Spirit of new life in Him, and our eyes are opened to the truth, we are still accountable to love and seek that truth. 

A choice, then, lies before us. Faith or fear? Hope or cynicism? Jesus, or abortion? It can't be both. Choose wisely. 

Pro-life is pro-choice. Pregnancy is pro-woman.

  Pregnancy is a positive good. 
        That this statement is controversial is in itself a tragedy.
But that’s where we are now, and I think it’s because women, in general, have lost touch with their roots.
Interestingly, though the feminist movement has absorbed multitudes of women into its ranks over the past century, femininity itself seems to have lost value to our society.
Meekness is equated with weakness. Subtle, patient guidance loses every time to domineering, aggressive bossiness. Cultivating a peaceful home offers no economic return. Loving submission and service are seen as outpourings of an oppressed spirit, rather than a grateful heart. 
And the most feminine quality of all—mothering, that act of nurturing one’s own offspring, giving of oneself, laying down one’s desires for the good of a dependent child, is now seen as an affront to women. Mothers, we are told, are held back by this degrading natural process.
Men, being free from this biological process of bearing children, are naturally freer than women, and women should seek to shed the oppressive garment of childbearing and become more like men—aggressive, demanding, rational. Children are parasites, burdens, thieves and freeloaders, and women can only elevate themselves by pushing their children downward. Abortion is necessary to ensure the equality of men and women, because women can only be empowered if they are able to do everything exactly like men. Women should put themselves first, in all things, and we should applaud the self-interest of successful women.
And so we are encouraged to grow up, to be our own heroes, to break tradition and seize control of our own destinies. Young girls, so often instinctively drawn to baby dolls and playing house and making cookies in pretend kitchens, are indirectly told that those desires are wrong. That their innate femininity is a curse they need to break free from, so they can have a career, see the world, make history.
The result is a society of women who are so disconnected from their innate feminine desire to mother, to nurture, it is hardly a surprise that they are willing to treat their own helpless babies with such callous disregard as to destroy them through abortion. 
But what if mothering, nurturing femininity was seen as an asset, rather than a weakness? What if our unique ability, as women, to bear and rear our children, is the legacy we are so hungry for? What if our natural desire to mother can be our biggest feminine strength, no matter our stage in life?
Pregnancy and motherhood come with responsibilities, that’s for sure. Becoming a mother means leaving some selfish and childish desires behind. But responsibility is a mold that can shape us into something beautiful. 
You are here because someone is your mother. No matter where you ended up along the way, you began inside your mother, and she carried you until you were ready to see the world. That kind of self-sacrifice, no matter what other flaws your mother may have, was a gift to you—the opposite of selfishness. Becoming your mother, in that uncertain beginning, was for her the first step toward the kind of love no one can even quantify. Whether she chose to see that journey of love through the rest of your life or not, whether she chose herself over you in years to come or continued to love you sacrificially, the very act of bearing you was one of love. And that, in itself, is a good, good thing. A miraculous opportunity, one that only a woman can take—and one that should never be wasted.
In the end, motherhood is defined by choice, but not in the way we tend to see it now. Becoming a mother is not always the deliberate and thoughtful act that it should be. A mother doesn’t always choose her child in the way that one chooses a car or a house. Before a child is created, you are not a mother; as soon as that individual human life erupts inside you, you are a mother, and you make every choice thereafter as a mother—even the choice to terminate that child’s life. 
The real choice in mothering, then, lies in how we respond to motherhood when we receive it. Will we choose to love, to grow, to accept the responsibility that comes with our womanhood, to open ourselves up to the beauty and the life inside us? Or will we choose to abandon that gift and deny its possibilities? 
Some say that in terminating a pregnancy, the mother is only saying goodbye to the possibility, the potential of a child. This is not so.
In reality, there already is a child existent, vibrant, new. The choice to terminate only eliminates the possibilities that await that child in his or her future. It doesn’t erase your child. It doesn’t erase your motherhood. It simply ends a process that could have been the beginning of everything good in your life, and leaves you bereft, the mother of a dead offspring. It takes away all future choices. 
The choice to embrace a child, then, does exactly the opposite. It gives way to the future and all its forks in the road. It proudly accepts the mantle of motherhood, rather than trying to hide it. It denies the selfishness of fear and replaces it with hope. It makes a mother stronger, more loving, more selfless, more in tune with every good thing we are made to be. It gives the child a chance to choose his or her own path. 
In abortion there is only one possibility. In the life of a new baby, there is nothing but possibility ahead. Embracing life, then, is actually the most pro-choice you can be. 
       To the woman afraid to have her baby: you may get an inkling of it now, but you have no idea the untouchable, all-forsaking love you are capable of until you’ve held that child in your arms. There is no strength stronger than that of a woman whose love enables her to give up her life for her child. There is no human force more empowering than the love-fueled courage you will find within yourself as you contemplate the life growing within you.
        Don’t give up on your motherhood. 

An irrepressible conflict

It's a disturbing trend I've seen recently that in pro-choice rhetoric, pregnancy is commonly likened to slavery. 

Pro-choice ideology claims that women are oppressed by their babies, that pro-life people want to exert control over vulnerable women's bodies, and that anyone who defends life is essentially a modern-day slaveholder. There has never been anything more ironic than this ludicrous erroneous comparison. The abortion industry vilifies children and embraces the destruction of vulnerable innocents for the cause of convenience; that, in itself, is the definition of oppression and exploitation. 

It is, in fact, the logic of the abortion-defender that most closely resembles that of America's pro-slavery champions in the 1800s. 

Let's compare the two, shall we?

Pro-choice argument: Fetuses are sub-human, pre-human, not "people." They cannot speak, cannot hear, cannot see, cannot (up to a certain point) feel pain, and cannot form memories. They are unaware of their surroundings. Humans in the early stages of development are not as worthy of protection as adult humans, or even newborn infants. 

Slavery rhetoric: Slaves (i.e. Black people) are not fully realized persons. They have low moral intelligence and are uncivilized, unteachable, and brutish. Therefore, their lives are less valuable inherently than white lives, and they were destined to be subordinated. 

"In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life..." -James Henry Hammond, 1858

Pro-choice: The woman has authority over her own body, which includes the fetus inside her, and it is not immoral to use that authority however she pleases. The fetus is utterly dependent on its mother for life. The woman's power is an asset to her; it gives her permission, even the right, to dominate the fetus.

Slavery: The white slave owner has been given authority by God and by law over slaves' bodies, and so he is justified in using them however he pleases. His power, intelligence, and capacity give him the right to dominate lesser beings and "civilize" them.

"[The freed slave] would become an insufferable burden to society. Society has the right to prevent this, and can only do so by subjecting him to domestic slavery... We would remind those who deprecate and sympathize with negro slavery, that his slavery here... christianizes, protects, supports and civilizes him; that it governs him far better than free laborers at the North are governed." -George Fitzhugh

Pro-choice: Abortion is not murder. Murder is illegal. Abortion can't be called murder because it is legal and embedded in our society's way of life.

Slavery: Slavery is legal and embedded in the social structure of the United States and the world. Because it is widely accepted, it must not be immoral.

"...A race inferior to her own, but eminently qualified in temper, in vigor, in docility, in capacity to stand the climate, to answer all her purposes. We use them for our purpose, and call them slaves. We found them slaves by the common 'consent of mankind...'" -James Henry Hammond, 1858

Pro-choice: Unwanted fetuses will have difficult lives if carried to term and given up for adoption. It's better for them to be destroyed rather than suffer a life of poverty and adversity.

Slavery: If slaves are freed, where will they go? They do not have the skills or the capacity to care for themselves or build a quality life. It's better for them to stay enslaved, safe and provided for, than to be turned out into the street to fend for themselves.

"He the Negro is but a grown up child, and must be governed as a child, not as a lunatic or criminal. The master occupies toward him the place of parent or guardian... We presume the maddest abolitionist does not think the negro's providence of habits and money-making capacity at all to compare to those of the whites." -George Fitzhugh

Pro-choice: Abortion is a positive good--good for the mother and good for the unwanted fetus. Abortion relieves mothers of emotional hardship, financial burden, and social stigma, and saves the fetus from life in an unfair world. 

Slavery: Slavery is a positive good. It benefits masters economically and socially, and slaves are elevated by their usefulness to white people and their separation from their cultural roots. 

"But let me not be understood as admitting, even by implication, that the existing relations between the two races in the slaveholding States is an evil:–far otherwise; I hold it to be a good, as it has thus far proved itself to be to both, and will continue to prove so if not disturbed by the fell spirit of abolition... Never before has the black race of Central Africa... attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually." -John C. Calhoun

"... our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and not too much employment either... They are elevated from the condition in which God first created them, by being made our slaves." -James Henry Hammond, 1858*

Pro-life advocates assert that none of this is true; all human beings are of equal inherent value, regardless of developmental stage, ability, or suffering, and abortion is an abomination because it destroys an innocent person and allows those with less power to be dominated by those with more. Likening pro-life people to slaveholders is like calling Frederick Douglass a racist.

In 1858, William Seward described the tension between abolitionists and pro-slavery forces as an "irrepressible conflict." Whether he meant the words to be prophetic or not, he discerned that things in the slavery debate could not continue the same way without boiling over. 

To my pro-choice friends: I love you. My intent in writing this isn't to declare war on you, but
to expose the lies we're being told by the abortion industry, and to ask you, boldly: when the lines have been drawn, on which side would you rather find yourself? It's not too late to start listening to the truth.

The time to choose is now. We are approaching another crossroads in our history--much like America in 1860, headed toward the emancipation of the slaves through Civil War--a crux in another "irrepressible conflict" between life and death, freedom and oppression. Those who plant themselves in opposition to the cause of life will one day find themselves relegated forever to the company of slaveholders, Nazis, and tyrants, their cheaply bought glory tarnished, and their names forgotten.

But we, the defenders of life, will find ourselves encouraged, strengthened, approved by God, and celebrated by future generations of free people.

*There is a plethora of sources on this subject. I used three of the most well-known pro-slavery speeches from the time period, but if you know how to work Google or the Library of Congress website, you can find many more. 

Postpartum blues

 

Now that I’ve held my own son in my arms, listened to his sweet sleeping breaths, seen the tears run down his frantic face, I can’t get this sadness, mingled with joy, out of my mind.

Sadness for the silver-tongued irony of evil. Sadness for the babies so like my son, so innocent and pathetic, that have been and will continue to be treated wastefully by those who should have recognized their value.

This is not my story. It’s the untold tragedy that takes place, re-cast and re-staged, every day in our broken world.

Mother and Son

He sleeps amidst marvels.

This is life in its purest iteration,
to touch the thrumming soul of another,
to imbibe her essence
and string it alongside his own,
every vibration new and wondrous
to unopened eyes.

She is the first sound he hears,
if he hears at all.
Her beating heart, her blood
the soundtrack of his existence.
Her voice, the song he knows best.

For him, there is no choice to be made.
He has everything he needs.
He will be reluctant to leave the comfort
of her spirit-cocoon. Reluctant,
even at the prospect of meeting her
face to face,
like a fairy tale prince
following a melody through the forest.
The sound is a certainty to him,
a blessed swaddle.
He loves it with naked innocence.

She
may not be so lucky,
Disillusioned as she is
by the lovely lies she’s been told.
She may lie restless
entombed by walls cold and stifling.

Fear may take the form of words in the darkness.
I want an abortion.

He
is naive of meanings, of fear.
Cynicsm can’t reach him there.

All he hears
as her mouth shapes the idea
is not the sentence of death
but the sound most sweet to him in the world.

American Poverty

 

I’ll just start with a warning here: this poem is the product of a deeply smoldering rage. I am and always have been disturbed by the fact that a debate about the morality of abortion even exists, especially within the Christian church. Has our connection to the truth lapsed so dramatically that we can’t find it within ourselves to be enraged and disgusted by a practice that so directly defies the love and grace of God?

There should be no debate on this. It should never have become about politics, or economics, or social structure. It has always boiled down to this: that the sanctity of human life is a basic truth, and the violation of that sanctity is an abomination, always. One doesn’t have to be a follower of Christ to believe that–but if, fellow Christian, you find yourself feeling squeamish about that declaration, I’d invite you to search your heart and ask yourself: are you with Christ or against him on this truth? Is your faith bigger than your fear?

Abortion is the scourge of humanity, worldwide, and there is no room for apathy or ambivalence toward it in the Christian life, or any life that claims to be moral.

Frankenstein, Inverted
No evil exists there,
only life and the simplicity of it
a shroud of warmth and darkness.
There is no uncertainty, only blissful freedom. It is a beautiful place,
untouched by any but God’s hands.
Yet you would have it be touched by death, by
the cold metal of destruction, the liquid fire of poison
callously administered.
You would have this sanctuary disturbed, sucked dry, turned hostile and fruitless, the life within it denied
for the purpose of relief, of bloodstained freedom.
Not unless we have to, you say.
You say, no one ought to ever have to. But your words ignore the fear
that forces your hand,
the hope that cries out, unheard, even as it is extinguished.

This abomination of human creation is permitted its vile sustenance.
By decree of cowards are the most innocent among us
presented to its ravaging mouth,
though their hands have touched nothing but security,
their eyes know nothing of lust, of greed,
their hearts know only openness, only possibility.
Their mouths breathe nothing but gentle murmurs
of the dreams that enfold them.
Theirs is a mere poverty of days, of years.

A life of poverty is no life at all, you say,
meanwhile your own soul cowers behind dry eyes, flayed and bitten, beaten raw.
Its hands hold nothing but the bitterness of experience.
Its eyes see only depravity,
its heart knows only fear.

What do you have that they do not? What is your life
but hunger and longing?
The taint of loss. The fear of death, of dying
unknown. The poverty of a spirit encumbered by darkness.
If anyone deserves death it’s you.
And yet this poverty you love
you grip it tightly in pale hands
your pain is your own, you’ve claimed it and know it. Your voice gives validation to your existence. You wouldn’t trade it away for the blackness of oblivion,
not yet anyway.
And no one says you must, not yet anyway.
In the end you crave not death but the safety you once knew
and will never remember. Perhaps you’re doing them a favor,
to end it before the knowing. Perhaps you envy their silence and solitude.
Perhaps it’s better this way.
Perhaps it’s better they don’t live to become
just
like
you.