“Everything this year is about who gets to breathe.” -Elizabeth Stark

As the 20th century African American poet Claude McKay said of lynchings, “if we must die,” let us not die like penned hogs.

I say

if we must burn, let us nobly burn so that our Western flora, fauna, homes, towns, loved ones may not be lost in vain.

Dear God,

Thank you for Divine Timing.

Last year the California fires that have become an inevitable result of the climate crisis hit us in the latter part of November. This year, they hit so much earlier. For every parent, that has been so hard on our families. So early in an already disrupted school year, things are even more disrupted. Children can’t be together inside because of COVID and now they can’t be together outside because of the smoke. Those of us who are fortunate enough not to be evacuated, losing our homes or running for our lives, are all cooped up together. As a mother–an essential worker–the stress is overwhelming. I can’t get my bearings.

But You know what would be harder on our family? Four more years of Tr*mp. That would be harder on every family on the planet. Thank You for giving us this unwanted gift early. Early enough that it can factor into the presidential election. Since the climate crisis is not going away. Since fire season is a brutal part of our autumn now. Thank You for doing everything You can to expose it in time to be one of the many factors that creates decisive victories in November.

I know we have not ended up with the presidential candidate that many of us would have wanted. Joe Biden is no Bernie Sanders and no Elizabeth Warren. And Kamala Harris is no Shirley Chisholm. But all praises due to our movements for getting them on board with the Green New Deal.

God, in these moments where the fascist power of the man in the White House just seems so massive and difficult to topple, I just thank You for exposing the cracks in the façade: paid actors at the rallies, his own family calling him out of his name, his attorney telling all the business, the whistleblowers at the ICE concentration camps. As people step up to bravely tell the truth, thank You for all that You are exposing so far and all that You will expose.

Please infuse every one of us the willingness to do our part. To mobilize the electorate and push for a Biden/Harris landslide. And a strong mobilized nation to push them to do the right things for racial justice and to address the climate emergency and the pandemic and the economy and the crisis of care. As we come together to support those who are now houseless, grieving, displaced by the fires, let us build a nation that takes care of every person who is houseless, grieving, and displaced, and a world that learns how to care for and welcome every climate refugee around the planet.

All these solutions are connected. The Green New Deal and defunding police are just the beginning.

Fire is a force of destruction. As it destroys homes and people and animals and trees, it has destroyed some of our health and our safety and our peace and our daily life. Let it also destroy any hope of a second term for D*onald Tr*mp.

The days sometimes look dark. Literally dark. Because the sun can barely get through the smoke. But we need to know that the sun is still there. Even if we can’t see it. And You, like the sun, continue to work on our behalf, pushing us toward love and justice. Thank You for all these painful and difficult gifts. And we will receive them in our march to victory.

Ashé.