Light, Please guide us out of this long, hot summer! Summer ‘26

Lettin’ your light in! A Crack in the rubble and how it pours over us on a dark week.

I’m finally sittin’ down to write this out. It’s a travel missive from YAF. Writing on the last week of July, hotter than a pizza oven out here. I’m still tryin’ to process what I saw back East. You know I’ve been out West for over a decade now—got used to the big skies and the quiet—but I had to fly into D.C. for conferences last Thursday. I hadn’t been to the Capitol since ’08, back when you could just… walk up to things. I gotta tell ya, the second that plane started its descent, a real heaviness settled in my gut. Not just nostalgia—a profound sorrow, like I was landin’ in a foreign city I used to call home.

As we drove from Reagan National (DCA), I think about Virginia booming I barely recognized this place. We passed National Guard troops on street corners and around monuments like lamp posts. Now, I’m a Jersey boy—not easily spooked. Seein’ armed soldiers patrol these hot streets – our own capital? It hit different. It felt less like a city; more like a garrison. I kept thinkin’, How did we get here? It’s like we’ve forgotten that basic truth “they shall beat their swords into plowshares” (Isaiah 2:4). Instead, we’re plantin’ our black bayonets out front in center.

We passed the Labor Department. I nearly choked. Hangin’ from that building were two enormous, Stalin-esque banners—one of Trump, one of Teddy Roosevelt. I’m not talkin’ about a little plaque, I’m talkin’ full-on personality-cult murals. I thought of my South Jersey Quaker school teachings about Anthony Benezet. He’d look at that and say, “This is the fruit of a pride that has turned from the Inner Light to the outer spectacle.” He spent his life remindin’ powerful men that authority is stewardship, not a throne. How did we get here? We got here when we stopped seeking leaders as humble servants. We’re askin’ them to be celebrities. 

We traded a quiet voice of conscience for loud glare of gaudy banner.

Walking toward Dupont Circle. More troops. ICE agents. Secret Service. It was like a military occupation, not a tourist trip. When we finally tried to get near the White House, they herded us into this tiny pen—a little viewing area—where you could barely see the People’s House through a sixteen-foot fence. I’m standin’ there with Aussies, Colombians, families from all over, all of us cranin’ our necks like we were lookin’ at a caged animal. And I was horrified.

The White House is the people’s house. Lafayette Square is our public square. You can’t lock that up any more than you can lock up the wind. John Woolman—that gentle tailor from Jersey—he would’ve wept. He believed that the accumulation of power and wealth was a spiritual sickness, a “canker” that hardens the heart. He’d say, “When a leader fears the people more than he fears God, he builds a wall not for safety, but for separation. And that separation is the death of community.” How did we get here? We got here because we let fear of each other replace faith in each other. We forgot that the Light of Christ is in every single person on the other side of that fence, and we started treatin’ our fellow citizens like potential threats.

That evenin’, we walked to the Lincoln Memorial to watch the sunset—figurin’ we could at least get some peace there. I stood on those historic steps, lookin’ toward the Monument, and thought about Lincoln and the sacrifices to preserve this Union. I thought about Dr. King, standin’ in that same spot, callin’ us to live up to our promise. But instead of a reflectin’ pool, I saw federal troops fencin’ it off. And I asked myself, What happened to the America these monuments represent?

And this is where the Query comes in, the one that kept ringin’ in my head:

Query 1: Have we so abandoned the testimony of equality that we now believe the government is a fortress for the few, rather than a garden for the many?

Query 2: Are we so consumed by our own comfort that we allow the symbols of our liberty to become barricaded, while we just shrug and scroll?

Query 3: And finally, what does it profit a nation to secure its buildings, if it loses the soul of its democracy in the process?

The Founders—most of whom were influenced by the very same Quaker principles of liberty and conscience—they created a government based on the radical idea that no president is a king, no leader is above the law, and no individual owns this country. That is the America I believe in. That is the America worth fightin’ for. But seein’ it like this, I realize we can’t sit on sidelines. We can’t just hope someone else saves us. Democracy does not defend itself any more than a garden will tend itself. I think of the koan “Even on the top of bald pat mountain – fresh weeds appear.”  Free people must tend it.

We must organize. We must protest. We must speak out—even when our voice shakes. We must hold our elected officials accountable like we’re holdin’ a friend to a promise. We must support those fightin’ in the courts. And we must vote like our democracy depends on it, because, friend, it absolutely does.

We cannot surrender our country to authoritarianism. We cannot become numb to what is happenin’ before our eyes. We cannot allow fear, exhaustion, or division to silence us. “Let your yea be yea, and your nay be nay” Right now, our collective “nay” to this military madness needs to be louder than any banner. Our Nat Guard out there that I met agrees.

The White House is a people’s house. Our Constitution belongs to all of us. Any future of an American democracy is ours to defend—not with swords, but ballots, with strong unshrinkable voices, and with that unshakable belief we can testify to that there is that of God in every one of us, even those in power. We just have to remind ’em of it.

God help us all, and may the Light guide us through this long, hot summer. Summer ‘26