I have my very own word...it fits how I feel this week... flermookled...just struggling within and not knowing what to do with it.  As I meandered today with Joe, I had a moment of clarity that brought no real clarity so then I knew WHY I was flermookled.

I was reminded of earlier times in my life when the world around me did not match the world within me.

The times as a child when I struggled to understand black and white water fountains/bathrooms, etc. 
The time I threw a rag at the foreman on the line at the factory where I worked (he pinched my butt one time too many); the rag flew into a vat and the line was down for an hour...😉...it was one way in 1967 that a girl could 'speak'. 
The time I deactivated from my sorority because they were a "Southern born white Christian sorority" who would not accept black or Jewish girls or... 
The time I was at Pizza Pete's in Adrian during my college years when they announced the death of M L King.
The time during Joe’s seminary years that I was on the Chicago commuter train headed to my job at Xerox in the Loop and saw the photo below of the students shot at Kent State; I wept thinking this kind of gun violence was just NOT “American”. (something, eh?)
The time my daddy said that Jimmy Carter was a "good decent Christian man and you can't have a man like that leading the country" (I remember saying, "do you hear yourself"?)!
Last week when I heard of the 1000's of folk walking for 1000's of miles, most from Honduras, remembering Vincent who handed me the sun/moon symbol pictured above this past Christmas after we spent time communicating at NOAH, part English, part Spanish, heart to heart...a story of a HONDURAN on a journey to safety.(something, eh?)
And, finally, the time while working in Grand Rapids that I met the man who had been fired as band director from a high school nearby because he was gay; I just HAD to tell him that the Christians who had lobbied for his firing did not represent the Christ that I knew (that man died shortly after that and I think I died a little too). 

I feel like I am dying a little right now. Because some of those things I lived through in my lifetime seem to be returning...with a vengeance...literally.

It really hit me when I heard the mother of Matthew Shepherd (the young gay man beaten and left to die in 1998) tearfully say at the cathedral where her son's ashes were just interred, "it feels like we are doing a U-Turn".

That saddens me beyond words.

I cannot fathom going back. I personally refuse to go back.

We are working the polls on Tuesday as we did 2 years ago. I am not certain how I will respond if I am in the minority.

Oh, I will not hurt anyone. I will not hate anyone.

I suppose I will do as I have for 71 years; I will continue to try to live so that the little corner of the world I live in matches the big world within me.

But I will be flermookled.