Nuns have been serving the actually downtrodden for centuries before this historical moment, wherein the downtrodden aren't real people, just tools of rhetoric and otherwise might as well be cigarette butts. All the work-hell of the last year does have blessings - I would certainly rather identify with the butts, was trained by nuns to do so as a habit of mind.

This used to start on campus, Porter and Fargo, and I and coworkers and our kids and students would walk behind the huge contigent of nuns in drag, which wasn't a fuck you, t'was an homage to NUNS who, like the nurses they made, "never refused to serve". No matter what. Even your enemy, when hurt, demands that of you(r soul). And I was proud of that, looooooong before Blowhard showed up as if he invented homophobia 🙄

 

I am renewing some vows.

And just as I am coming to that conclusion, Priest emails. He'd like to catch up. My heart rate doesn't skyrocket. I would like to catch up too. Tell him what all my own ducklings are trying to pull off here with the first/only whole school dedicated to health humanities, my kind intentionally wedded to the sciences and living under one roof, built together. It might burn down with us all in it, at any moment, that is true. Even likely. But. Still. They built that. I raised them to, and then they actually did it. I am not the dean of it (that'd be the person I gave the gen ed title to), but to me that is better. ALL of them have titles that I invented, then did for a year or two, then relinquished to them (and the stipends) as soon as they understood the job enough to take it. I don't care about titles and lines on my CV. Why would I? (Do I look like a rat?) That others thrive, mission driven so to withstand This Damned World, that's what I worked for (nearly to death). 

It's a hell of a thing, to be able to breathe some ways of purpose back into crumbling spirits. 

People who measure success in other ways, I am in no place to judge. They pay their prices as I do mine. They probably are exhausted also, just for different wishes. 

I am too scrawny to do much of what I love to do. Climbing mountains is currently unsafe. Even swimming, I'd need a spotter. I am not at that parade, I would be a risk, and the EMTs who are posted don't need to be bothered by low blood sugar when at any moment, bullets might fly or a car might plow through. After all this time of teaching resilience to others, I have almost completely depleted my own. 

I pray I'll bounce again. I always have, though this time has taught me not to take any part of me for granted. I might turn into Scrawny Robot Butter Chicken 🤖🧈🐔. Yikes 😬. No telling where is the line on that from which I wouldn't be able to come back. I pray that I dug my heels in soon enough this time 🙏 

hallelujah - ryan bingham

He had imagined these nurses would end up hardened from seeing endless hordes of ravaged human forms whose warped faces upon closer inspection often revealed a neighbor or a friend, but Marylyn was tender with him, with herself. This is her special thing, he decided: to send people home—whatever that meant. Ocean Vuong (prompt: what does it mean to be tender?)