Floods of Loss, Floods of Hope

A small man, walking alongside the seemingly huge reporter, speaking of his every day life, without frills, but rich with a purpose, to make life safer, even possible, for his brothers and sisters, the Ugandan kuchu
David Kato murdered with his dream on his lips. So much is on the move this morning. First came the expected floods of abundant rivers, seeking old homelands and then came the surge of people into their streets, refusing 30 years of disdain not only from their own leader but from America as well, the governments doing balancing acts that weighed heavily against the longings of the Egyptian people. Arms and more arms, the tear gas canisters that thump into the chests of the protesters, an Australian reporter told us, in the first morning of this world change, here, see, and he held up to the camera the empty canister and read "made in Pennsylvania." A fruit vendor in Tunisia, tired of ordained famines and relentless struggle for daily life, sets his skin aflame, and the roar spills into realms of aristocracies asleep in their never questioned right to live well. I awake and David is lost, the American evangelicals have done their work well, pleasing their version of god. The death of a man who loved without force, murdered by internationally encouraged bigotries; the chosen death of a man on his own street, trying to light a larger fire of hope, and he did. I awoke to a world on the move, all turned liquid it felt. The students running through the dark London streets, thousands flooding down the main avenue of their Mid-East nation-states, Cairo and Alexandria, cities heavy with fables and tales of human invention now glow with the force of a collective human imagination. For me, in the midst of these huge flows of possibilities, I keep David always in my mind. He must be able to live and love in whatever worlds rise from the floods.