Prophets Needed, Inquire Within

On the next four years (and beyond)

I didn’t watch. We were out with the kids all day, but I wouldn’t have watched, even if I had been home. I was aware, though, even while I was enjoying the very best part of my day. (In case you want to know, it was when my newly-minted seven-year-old gathered up all the balls for the gravity funnel at the museum, looked me dead in the eye, and said, “You ready to party?”)

In light of this moment, I have been thinking a lot about prophets, both recent and ancient. I have read an awful lot of St. Óscar Romero’s homilies for various devotionals I’ve written. And every one is a tour de force of Scriptural exegesis, impassioned and spiritually-informed exhortations for peace and reconciliation, and current (usually horrific) events placed within the evergreen frame of the gospel.

And yet, certain points are repeated, over and over again. Because they had to be. I have spent a lot of time in the past few months wondering if he ever got tired of repeating those truths again and again. Because, in all honesty, at times I have been so discouraged that I have wondered what the point is of saying the same thing over and over.

I wish I could tell you that Romero’s hopes were realized and that El Salvador is now a place of peace. But I can’t. The cross, to me, means solidarity with our suffering so much more than it has anything to do with salvation. But the resurrection stands. And it was the resurrection that Romero hoped in. A resurrection that exists, even if we can’t see it. Even if we won’t see it, in our lifetimes, here on earth.

I was thinking in the evening of this really odd phrase Jesus uses when speaking to the Samaritan woman in John’s gospel. “The time is coming and is now here,” he says. I couldn’t explain to you how the time could be both coming and already here, but I know it to be true.

I don’t know what the next four years (and beyond) will hold. But I do know that the time is coming and is now here when we will need to stand up for our threatened and demonized neighbors. The time is coming and is now here when we must look the truth in the eye and speak it aloud, again and again and again. The time is coming and is now here when our words must take on flesh as actions. The time is coming and is now here when we are going to need to work extra hard to envision and shape a more loving version of us, all of us.

A friend of mine sent me a message yesterday asking me if I had a prayer for this day. At that moment, I was up to my elbows in Legos, but I love that she called me to the work. Here is the prayer I wrote.

After I shared it and got back to cooking dinner, I remembered one more important thing (ain’t that always the way?): a prophet is always an irritant to empire. And Lord have mercy but do we have an empire on our hands.

I am comforted by Jen Bloomer’s gorgeous prints about roots and connection. Her creative home is called Radici Studios, from the Italian word for “root.” Our English word “radical” derives from the same Latin source. To be radical is to get the root of something, but I also think that to be radical means to be rooted in each other. We’re going to need each other. This I know.

I choose a guiding word for each year, or, well, they sort of come to me, more than I actively choose them (with apologies if this sounds too woo-woo). Sometime in the late fall I knew the word for 2025 was “roots.” Let’s be connected. Let’s be radical. Let’s be prophets. The time is coming and is now here.

(As a funny final note, I dropped off of social media a few days ago for a hiatus while I finish this dang book. I have to say that as someone who is committed to considering faith and current events as a double-exposed photograph, this is kind of a ridiculous time for me to drop off the grid. I’m under no illusion that my presence is super necessary for anyone, but I’ll be around when I can. Big hugs.)

As Romero said, ¡Adelante!
Cameron