You came back from El Salvador with the preferential option lodged in your heart
Had to endure Catholic Social Teaching deadness
You had to be ready for ridicule*
You know there’s no safe, neutral, objective standpoint
To do your journalism
You have to be ready for ridicule
You know how your heart breaks
For the human beings deemed and denigrated as a less-than Other
You have to be ready for ridicule
In academia, the church, the USA
But not of it
You have to be ready for ridicule
*from Ed Sanders’s poem, You Have To Be Ready for Ridicule
