In 2026 America, we are being sold a cheap, brutish, ugly, superficial, violent view of the world.
We are told that our world is one in which you #FAFO. One in which failure to obey a man with a gun means certain, justifiable death.
We are told that this world is the only world possible. And sometimes that seems true, as I write to you from Minneapolis, where on Thursday I found myself retracing my steps: driving the less than five miles from my Minneapolis home to a nearby neighborhood in South Minneapolis. Less than six years ago I biked here, wearing my clergy collar, to attend a clergy protest and prayer service after the murder of George Floyd.
Half a mile away from that murder, this week brought another killing by a uniformed officer. This time, they killed a 37-year-old white mother. Then they descended upon the high school next to my church, where students were tear-gassed and two teachers were taken away, school windows broken, teenagers in tears.
We lit candles that night at church. Again, the next day, on Thursday, we donned our clericals and stoles and bowed our heads. How could we? How could we not? Even though my kids are home from school because the Minneapolis School District deemed our streets to be unsafe for children due to ICE. Even though as I write these words, I am late to pick up my son.
We are told that there is not enough for everyone, and so you have to take as much as you can for as long as you can, and if that means cheating other people—well, then you’re the smart one and the other people, the ones who can’t afford their heating bill: They’re suckers.
We are told that our only protection comes in dollar bills and hunks of metal, that our best knowledge and wisdom are housed in cold and costly data centers. That what is most beautiful is most expensive and most altered, by surgeons’ knives or digital filters.
We are told we don’t know any better and that there are evil people trying to take what is rightfully ours and so we have to purge ourselves of them and their blood.
The blood we share.
What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!
Kill or be killed.
More for me.
We cover the sounds of internal screaming with caustic laughter and memes. We use throwaway words meant to distinguish them from us, the real humans.
Domestic terrorists. Antifa. Crazy. Unhinged. Mob. Riot.
They slow down the video and watch her die, frame by frame. It’s not so much what they say they see but what they don’t see, what their eyes shield them from so that the terror inside won’t take over, make them realize the call is coming from inside the house.
They analyze tire tracks and footprints.
Her blood is all over the airbag.
As a mother, I’ve long known that when you bear children, your DNA is irrevocably changed. Your blood is forever mixed with their blood, your genes utterly altered. And so the blood on the airbag is not only hers but theirs, the ones who live on without her; the one who has to go back to elementary school without his mom, her and his blood still running through his veins, though now her fingers are cold as ice.
The murder scene is marked by tire tracks and bullet holes, and also stuffed animals. One looks like a white unicorn, its turquoise mane blowing in the frigid air. There’s a brown bear with sad eyes.
As a mother, I know that these animals had names. Have names.
They moved with mother and child across the Midwest. As she persevered and got her English degree at Old Dominion University in Virginia, much older than her classmates, but with undeniable talent as a writer.
As a poet, she won the 2020 American Academy of Poets Prize for this work, On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs, in which she describes donating Bibles to thrift shops and mentions “the piddly brook of my soul.”
As though she knew in America today you have to fight for your soul. Especially as a woman. Especially as a working-class person. Especially as a mother. And yet, even though her soul felt like a “piddly brook,” she claimed it nonetheless. So that no one could say that she was disposable, even though they did, and so that no one could take away her humanity, even though they tried to, right away, and they didn’t let the doctor check her pulse or clear the road for an ambulance.
Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
The Apostle Paul wrote these words to the Church at Philippi, in what is today northern Greece, about 30 years after Jesus was executed, via crucifixion, by a cheap, brutish, ugly, superficial, violent Roman Empire, led by priggish, insecure, authoritarian white men who likened themselves to gods but paid homage to religion when it suited their pursuit of power.
When Paul wrote these words, he was a designated enemy of the state, and though it hadn’t killed him yet, it surely sought his humanity. They called him an agitator and a rioter, a dangerous foreigner who practiced a minority faith. More than once Paul had to prove his citizenship in order to evade Roman pursuit, and still he wrote most of his letters in chains, on house arrest or in prison, until they finally executed him, via beheading, around five years after he wrote those words.
So Paul’s command here is no flowery platitude, nor an excuse to look away from carnage and blood and bullet holes and stuffed animals and orphaned children. Rather, his truth and honor and justice and purity and pleasure and commendation and excellence and praise are reserved for what they rooted in reality, pain, sacrifice, and hard-fought grace.
This is true: Renee Nicole Good did not deserve to die.
This is honorable: The community of Minneapolis gathered that night, the next day, to champion her humanity and hold fast to our commitment to our neighbors.
This is just: That those who kill are violating the Sixth Commandment and are outside the bounds of law and morality, and thus must face investigation and take accountability.
This is pure: That children are born naturally loving every human they meet.
This is pleasing: We have inherited, from the Black Church in America, through all of the injustice it has faced, and all of the lies told about it, a vision of the Beloved Community. We have seen, in fits and starts, in visions and Spirit-filled awakenings, a promised future, and what we see we can believe.
This is commendable: That 24 hours after Renee was killed, clergy from a wide variety of faith backgrounds, hundreds of us, came to stand at the site in Minneapolis and cry out for hope, justice, peace, and love. We embraced one another and held fast to the truth that perfect love casts out fear.
This is excellent: A local elementary school not far from the shooting was home from school Thursday due to safety concerns from ICE’s presence in Minneapolis. That is not excellent. But excellence is the parents at that little elementary school in South Minneapolis, who gathered their kids together and marched around the neighborhood in support of their immigrant neighbors. Because kids know we are better together. Even though these are the same kids who witnessed a school shooting blocks from their home at Annunciation Catholic School less than five months ago. Because we will not let each other bear our pain alone.
This is praiseworthy: Real bravery trumps its cowardly imitator every single time. The pen is mightier than the sword—the biggest assault rifle, the heaviest body armor, rippling muscles to mask crippling insecurity inside. You cannot fake being brave. And so ordinary Americans, mothers, fathers, children, teenagers, immigrants, pastors, put their bodies together and stand as a line against the onslaught of tyranny.
Where do you stand? With them, or with the Lie?
