Keep on raging and dreaming, my friends

"The story of the rich man and Lazarus tells us that there is no immunity, no escape, from the general misery and contamination that afflicts our nation. We cannot make a separate peace, retreating into our own little islands of precarious peace and dubious plenty. We are not allowed to find rest until the sight of Lazarus sitting at the gate ceases to be ever before us.

Some will say that we are trying to dig up with our nails again the bones if issues long buried for most people. It may well be that most of us cannot help surrendering to the forces of the market and going through the rites of passage leading to the comfortable, vegetable life of the bourgeoisie, with middling hopes both for ourselves and for society. We wake up in the morning worrying about bills to pay and the onset of midlife desperation.

But those of us who bear the name of Christ are called to respond to a finer, higher tune and dance to a different drummer.

We cannot help but rage and dream again when the kingdom calls and the cry of the poor rises from the earth like a miserere."

Transforming Society by Melba Padilla Maggay, Filipino writer, social anthropologist, activist, and theologian

I am afraid of making a separate peace, of settling down into a comfortable state that isn't overly bothered about troubles happening around me and elsewhere in the world. I am afraid of such a betrayal--of myself, of God, of fellow humans who are suffering. For years now, one of my greatest secret fears about the future has been summed up in the visually potent image of me in middle class, small town America, with two cars, two point five kids, a white picket fence, and an overwhelming sensation of being trapped. If I were pressed on the question, yes, there's definitely justice and mercy being worked out in small town America as well, but my fear of what the image represents for me is very real. I've been accused of being an overly idealist young person and of wanting to save the world--the first may be true, the second definitely isn't because I am under no illusions that I can--but I hope fiercely that I may be raging and dreaming until the end of my days, hopefully with a little wisdom picked up along the way. Jesus, save me from myself! Help me to always hear your call and to respond.