who drives our lives?

 who is driving?

how can we know who we are?

I wonder how much we are programmed 

by our genes, by our raising,

by the consequences of our choices,

I want to be as conscious as I can of the legacies

that have a share in the driving of my life,

parents and siblings certainly affect my hold on the steering wheel,

I also attempt empathic leaps

into the hopes, dreams, compromises of my ancestors,

I struggle to understand

my great-grandfather, his parents, his grandparents,

who must have been wonderful to family and friends

and who still found enslaving others to be part of their life,

further back, on another side of my family,

the Spirit drove them to forsake England

and to come to New England

to purify Church and themselves,

and woe to any who disagreed,

and who thus were not of God but of Satan,

I hear them echo in today’s divisions,

I choose a faith that expands the in-group

to “the least of these, our brethren,”

 that blesses those disenfranchised in today’s political lottery,

there is too much darkness, 

we need the Light within everyone

to shine forth and help us find our way.

by Henry H. Walker

November 25, ‘21