On a day that is exquisite with trees filling space with buds and leaves,  and birds singing and sweeping through the air, I read this from Heather Cox Richardson:

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed his state’s new voter suppression law last night in a carefully staged photo op. As journalist Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer pointed out, Kemp sat at a polished table, with six white men around him, under a painting of the Callaway Plantation on which more than 100 Black people had been enslaved. As the men bore witness to the signing, Representative Park Cannon, a Black female lawmaker, was arrested and dragged away from the governor’s office.

I put it with the news of a week or so ago. in a decree approved by Pope Francis, the Vatican said that priests cannot bless same-sex unions, describing such relationships as “not ordered to the Creator’s plan.”

The church said, “The blessing of homosexual unions cannot be considered licit”.

In my lifetime, I’ve seen change, and then, these two things happen and I’m caught in a collision of what seems to be so obvious, evident and true – the need for equality and freedom for all, and then there’s these broken and disintegrating steps unaligned with what I believe the majority of people think and feel.

We can know this is a last gasp effort to leave control in the hands of a few, and still it’s hard, and yet, people are gathering in vigils of solidarity and peace.   I focus there and on opening leaves and birds calling and building nests.