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We are one month into a new normal… learning to live during a pandemic. Our family is one of the very lucky ones. We have our health, our jobs, and we actually like each other (well, most of the time), and I’ve come to see how liking the people under your roof is pretty crucial right now. In many ways, I am reveling in the gift of time and presence that was thrown unexpectedly upon us. We are playing more games together, two of us are making music together; we’re working in the kitchen, lingering at the dinner table, and watching the news and movies together; we are far less hurried in our days.

It’s not all rosy for sure. There is uncertainty about the future; there is loss of beloved activities – musicals, lacrosse games, dance recitals, parties, etc… We miss seeing our friends and loved ones. We get on one another’s nerves. As one family member has commented, “I mean I love you guys, but I just get tired of being with you all the time.” I get it. Overall, though, we are thriving and grateful.

Recognizing how privileged we are in this moment of history, I have been asking this question:

how am I being invited to give right now?

There is so much need; I could easily be overwhelmed. Small business owners and those unemployed are struggling. The non-profits doing so much good in the world are struggling. Many are dealing with loneliness, anxiety, and depression. The healthcare systems are overwhelmed. And the most vulnerable (and often invisible to to our eyes) are suffering the greatest — the millions of displaced peoples, those living in extreme poverty, the asylum-seekers in prison and on our borders. All of this pain and struggle is immense.

So what is mine to do right now?

We’re working this out as a family as we seek to be generous with our finances, allowing our hearts to move us as to which causes, local businesses and individuals we feel moved to support. And I’m also working this out individually, asking myself what other gifts am I being invited to share. Too often, I have given from a place of guilt and overwhelm. I’m learning that the best way to give is out of a sense of joy and freedom. Frederick Buechner, speaking of vocation, said that “the place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

I love this piece of wisdom. And I see so many people right now responding to the world’s deep hunger out of their deep gladness. It’s stunningly beautiful.

I have several friends using their sewing machines to make facemasks for those on the frontlines and for those in the community. One friend in particular is using the proceeds of the masks she sells to community members to donate masks and food to a local nursing home.

I see artists sharing freely their gifts of song-writing, music, singing, words, chalking, etc…

I see teachers offering not only academic, but also emotional support, to their students.

I see communities of faith organizing meals for homeless shelters, offering spiritual support, and sharing financial resources.

So many are volunteering their time, their resources, their creativity, their words of encouragement.

I’m seeing so much gladness and hunger shaking hands together, and it makes my heart so hopeful! This is what it means to give of our gifts. This is what it means to be a global citizen. THIS is what is means to be HUMAN!

And so as I continue to sit with this question of what is mine to give, I am touching into my gladness and the world’s hunger. I love words, especially poetry. I love listening and supporting others. Poetry and listening to others makes me glad. I also feel the hunger for hope. The hunger for inspiration. The hunger for being companioned.

I have decided to lean further into offering spiritual companionship. I am trained in spiritual direction and ecotherapy, and I want to offer these gifts to individuals and groups. For now I’ve decided to offer free spiritual companioning sessions to those seeking spiritual support at this time, especially those who are on the frontlines as healthcare workers and those who recognize the invitation to pay closer attention to their spiritual lives. There’s more information about that on my Facebook page.

Additionally, I’ve decided that I want to start sharing more of my poetry. It’s been mostly sitting silent in my journals and on my laptop, and I think many of these poems want to be shared. So I’ve decided to offer them. I don’t know exactly what they want to communicate or to whom they will speak, but I know that sharing our gladness and our gifts is good to do.

On Wednesday of this week, we’ll celebrate Earth Day. It seems appropriate to share words that inspire love and care for our planet home… for all humans, all creatures, all water, air, and land. So I’m picking up the pen and letting it move.

This Pen Keeps Moving


What is it, anyway, about the old peeling sycamore
     and the gliding blue heron
          or the hummingbird on its fluttering wheels?


Why does the weeping beech hold such powerful sway in the sky?
     Why does the ocean never cease calling?


Like Ms. Oliver,
I could write a thousand poems,
and still 
my pen would not explain
how God hides herself 
in trees and birds
in water 
and desert rock
in everything ancient and everything new
in everything decomposing,
everything giving birth.


For such mysteries 
we have no words.

And yet,
this pen keeps moving.

© Annette Darity Garber

I am about to state the obvious: We are in an election year. I know, obviously. It’s impossible to scroll through social media or a news outlet without this blaring reminder. And while I tend to stay fairly quiet on social media about my political leanings, I do care quite deeply about the state of our nation, the world, and our policies, as I imagine most Americans do. I truly believe that legislation matters, and that electing leaders who care about the common good is a duty and responsibility we carry as citizens. So I watch the debates. I read articles and try to stay informed and educated and open. I have even done volunteer campaign work. But the hardest task of all is trying to keep these two virtues aflame: hope… and faith in the goodness of human hearts.

Some days, it’s really hard to feel hopeful or to believe in the goodness of my species. That’s usually when I have allowed myself too great a serving of the media diet. A large media diet, I believe, is generally bad for health. At least it is for mine. And that goes for really any type of media, but especially for the media that seeks to shock, incite anger, or scare. Like pulling away from a box of Oreos, I practice shutting off the phone or closing the screen, when I become aware that I’m starting to feel full of junk (a.k.a. anxiety/despair/numbness). And that is hard to do in an era of 24/7 news coverage, or when my phone gives un-asked-for alerts about what happened at the latest caucus or Oscars event or Superbowl. It takes self-awareness and practices (such as, meditation, journaling, and walking among trees) to step back, breathe, and remember my place in the world.

One reason I hesitate to post my political beliefs on social media is I do not want any parts of polarization. I am a firm believer that “we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike” (to quote Maya Angelou in “Human Family”), and that when we focus on our differences, instead of our similarities, we further alienate one another. There are family members and friends whom I deeply love and respect on both sides of the aisle (and in all places in between), and it is only easy to demonize a group of people when you keep them at arm’s length, or beyond! This is not to say that I don’t think some of their views are deeply misguided. But I want to caution us to be so distrusting of one another that we loose touch with the light within another’s soul, and instead look for our common ground, building from there.

I don’t believe our enemies are the opposite political party members, or a certain religious or ethnic group. Our greatest enemies are greed, fear, and a blind belief in the powers that be. I believe it is crucial to be on the lookout for fear-mongering and manipulation and to realize that certain people in power use these tactics to further polarize us from one another, while claiming they alone can save us from our enemies. I believe that we need to elect, and seek to become, people who are bridge-builders, not builders of walls and division. I believe the best leaders (and the best citizens) inspire people to come together, respond graciously to their critics, and seek to leave a place at the table for everyone, and a special seat of honor for those who are most vulnerable in society. 

After all, as I say to the children who read my book, “we are really quite the same.” Grownup friends, let’s remember that as we move through this season. 

We writers know this: stories are powerful. Telling one’s story, listening to another’s… these are some of the most powerful acts we can do today. When I listen too often to the reports in the news, my imagination grows crippled, gets lost in heaviness or gives way to numbing. But when I listen to the stories of my neighbors, like our Kurdish friends, their journeying from their homeland, devastated by warfare–their loss, their bravery, their resilience–I am moved to be a better human being. I begin not only to imagine the beloved community that Dr. King dreamed of, but I realize that the beloved community is here every time I widen the table. Every time I open my ears and heart to another’s story. Every time I walk the bridge and introduce new neighbors.

This weekend our family ate again at the wide table of our friends from Syria, a family resettled here in Pennsylvania, after fleeing their country, when their home and place of employment were bombed, and having lived displaced in Turkey for three years. We brought along new friends, so they, too, could taste the elegant flavors of eggplant, rice, and tomatoes, of cardamom mixed in coffee, of Syrian hospitality, of friendship, laughter and hope.

Hearing the stories is hard. Knowing how many millions are still suffering, are still being crushed by terrorism, are stuck in refugee camps and countries that do not want them, is hard to hear, hard to take in. And yet, hearing the stories is also an act of healing. Like the weaving of threads, brokenness and trauma begin to be mended, every time the stories are listened to, taken in. And when they are given permission to move from the ear to the heart, something else happens, too. The mysterious work of prayer and imagination spark acts of compassionate consciousness. We are pulled into the workings of the beloved community. We are called to reimagine humanity. To envision our world anew. We begin to believe that flowers will soon grow in Syria.

With blood still wet in the streets
and guns still held to blinded eyes,
bent down at mamas, papas, children,
anyone with the wrong name, the wrong allegiance,
or lacking the impossible papers,

with bombs still dropping, 
still buried on the borders,
still blowing the limbs from bodies of brothers

with hatred still rampant
and terror still strangling
hope from the little ones' eyes

with a people still on the run, still without a home,
still unwanted, forgotten,


how could anyone
ever believe – or even hope –
that peace will reign again?
Such audacity.


Would it not be better
to turn away,
to numb,
to build walls, like the nations do,
at the edges of our hearts,
to give way to despair, or defeat,
or worse,
indifference,

or perhaps to join the resistance,
fighting violence with violence,
a merry-go-round 
of unending,
every-losing,
revenging bloodshed?


Or.... could Resistance be this?

to hold the outrageous belief
that flowers will one day grow
where bullets have been planted,

that sheep will one day graze
where battlefields now lay,

that feet will one day dance
where bodies now lie broken,

that healing streams will one day go
where rivers of blood now overflow,

That peace will reign,
peace will reign,
yes, peace will reign.


And while we hold this vision,
this prayer of imagination,
let us also
roll up our sleeves,
dig deep into our pockets,
build bridges to borderlands,
tell stories of the exiled.

Let us widen our tables
and invite our refugee neighbors,
and their bowls of rice pudding,
to our homes and fiestas.

Let us visit their wide tables, too,
kneeling as listeners and learners
to the stories that must be told.

Let us hold hands.
Let us join the revolution of peace-making.
Let us re-member the beloved community.

Let us be visionaries,
daring to believe
that love will have the final say.

...Let us plant flowers
where bullets now lay.


"Flowers will Grow in Syria"
©Annette Garber

The headline sends a shiver up my spine. My shoulders grow heavy with grief. The leaders of our nation have closed the doors, again, to our brothers and my sisters whose homes have already been stolen from them, by the hands of war. 

I think of our Syrian friends from Lancaster. I think of the women who have made the sisterhood soaps I bathe with. I think of my cousin who sees daily the trauma in the faces of the displaced people she works with. I think of Million, the man my parents shared our home with for a year, when he came in the 80’s, fleeing civil war in Ethiopia. These are not numbers. These are mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers in distant lands, who have had to flea for their lives. Never has our world held more displaced people than it does today.

And our land of the free, this home of milk and honey, who once welcomed 95,000 refugees to its shores each year, has all but shut the door on the world’s most vulnerable. We’ve locked up children in private prisons to pack the pockets of the rich. We’ve closed the door on asylum-seekers, fleeing violence. The island peoples, whose homes have been washed away, are not allowed to work here. And the refugees are all but banned. 

Lady Liberty bows her head in sorrow, in shame.

It is hard to know what to do in these troubled times. On days like this, everything seems so meaningless. Laundry. Football games. Rehearsal. The temptation to despair raises the red flag.

Today is an invitation to prayer. To lighting a candle. To sitting in stillness. To inviting the pain, allowing the tears, to holding the heaviness in my heart. I cannot shoulder it. The only place strong enough to hold this grief is the heart. And so I stay. I stay long enough until my guilt transforms to compassion, breathed out as prayers for those most vulnerable. And then I ask, “what is mine to do, today?”

Today, I will write. I will raise my voice about the injustices of our nation. I will speak on behalf of the refugee, the immigrant, the earth. I will invite my friends and families into spaces where they can hear the stories and make friends with “the other.” I will listen to the stories of the immigrant students I work with. I will not shrink back when they cry, reliving the trauma of the earthquake, of their move to the US, of the loneliness and the struggle. I will continue listening, continue telling stories, and continue praying,

“Oh God, what is mine to do, today?”

• To learn more about the refugee crisis and donate to resettlement and aid, visit: CWS.org

• To meet a refugee family resettled in the U.S. and participate in a cross-cultural experience in Lancaster, PA, visit: Bridge: Global Experienced Local

• To support the rebuilding of war-torn places like Syria, so refugee families can return home, visit: Preemptive Love

Home

I grew up knowing the world needed saving. Once when I was nine or ten, I wrote a message of salvation, or so I thought, onto a piece of paper, rolled it up, tied it to a blue helium balloon, and let it go. I watched it float over the corn and alfalfa fields across the street and disappear, praying that it would reach some boy or girl who needed saving from the torments of hell.

I’m older now, and my ideas of salvation and hell are different, but there’s something of that little girl that I’ve always retained. There’s the belief that the world is broken and hurting, and the strong impulse to be part of its healing.

When I became a mother, the knowledge of the world’s pain became infinitely more intense. I’d hear a baby crying in the grocery store and would have to track the cry down to see for myself that the child was okay. If I witnessed a parent being harsh with their child, I’d feel sick to my stomach for days. When I learned about the genocide happening in Darfur, I didn’t sleep as well at night.

The first time I learned about sex-trafficking was when my son was five months old. We were over at our neighbors’ house for dinner. Our friend shared with us a fact that I was blissfully ignorant of: there were children who were captured and kept as slaves, slaves for sex. Children who were raped for adult pleasure.

Sometimes the body reacts to information faster than the mind can process it. I remember how the bile rose in my stomach. I broke into a sweat. My heart started pounding, and I couldn’t breathe well. I told my husband and our friends that I needed to run home for something. I ran through the front door; grief and anger overwhelmed me. I ran for the stairs. My body needed something to fall on, a toilet or a bed. The stairs caught me instead, and the sobs heaved out, along with my screams at God. Why?! Why?! Why?! No! No! No!

It would be several more years until I would learn about International Justice Mission, until I would feel that there was any hope for these children at all. I would learn that sex-trafficking existed not only in developing nations that lacked the legal infrastructure to protect the vulnerable, but even in the United States. I felt helpless and devastated.

It’s been fifteen years since I first learned about human-trafficking. I’ve spoken with students in high school, even some in middle school, who now know about this terrible phenomenon of human exploitation. Awareness has grown tremendously. They know about child labor, bonded labor, all forms of modern day slavery. The statistics are staggering, but I now have hope.

I also now believe every-day-people, like myself, can be a part of the healing. I believe that every small drop counts in making an ocean of peace and justice. Two drops become a trickle. A trickle becomes a stream that becomes a river and eventually builds into an ocean. I believe that the world is in desperate need of healing, and that each person is invited into discovering what sort of drops they can add to that healing process.

When I wrote Quite the Same, it was with the same wishful intention of sending a message of hope to children who were suffering around the world. The magical letter that travels the globe from one child to another is the letter that I would send to every child who is hurting to let them know that they are cared about, that they are not alone in their suffering. They are as connected to myself and to other children as the blue yarn is connected to the beige yarn in the old afghan that is wrapped around me as I write. This world and its inhabitants are intimately connected—more the same, than unalike. And that, I hope, is what young readers will learn.

The drop that I am now focusing on is to raise money for International Justice Mission by donating the proceeds of Quite the Same to this brave organization, while inviting young readers to a greater global consciousness and empathy. I couldn’t do this by myself. This intention has been amplified as others—friends, family, and strangers—have donated their resources to raising funds to publish the book, have bought copies to share with their nieces and nephews and libraries, and who have helped me to develop a website and to get my books into more hands. Human-trafficking won’t end by one person’s efforts. Injustice is big and greedy. But all of us, one drop at a time, one book at a time, one person at a time, can help heal the world.