“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe.” ~James Baldwin
The photo of this banner was captured on 4th of July in Bristol, Vermont. On the nearby green were festival vendors offering Mexican food, fried dough sprinkled with confectionary sugar, and the small fry favorite: pony rides. A long line of parents and sweaty, wide-eyed children waited for a pony ride. The ponies looked non-plussed and resolved, attached to the ride wheel with what could have been — for all the ponies’ noticing — sacks of flour on their backs. The children riding ponies mostly glowed and smiled, with here and there a giggle rending the air.
Much to some people’s dismay, so many American holidays are in historic review. I don’t intend to poke that wild stallion right now. But I will say that James Baldwin always speaks to my heart with such clarity, as does the poet, Naomi Shihab Nye. I am sharing the last stanza of her (likely) most famous poem, Kindness, here:
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
