Poetry for Humanity

Let’s Intimidate Fear

Invoking Hope

Our world is rippling with crisis.

Our societies are ruptured by rampant instability, inequality and insecurity. Conflict and turmoil endlessly roil Yemen, Syria, Somalia, and other soil in Africa and the Middle East.

Infestations range from biblical hordes of locusts devouring crops and threatening famines in wide swathes across East Africa, to “Murder Hornets” in the Western United States.

And of course the ubiquitous CoronaVirus is writhing around the planet, lashing out at individuals, taking down economies, and overwhelming health systems in Asia, Europe and pockets of the Americas.

Even worse, it portends unimaginable horror to be visited upon nations lacking the resources to fight it, the health systems to tend to its targets, and the economic resilience at the household level to avoid sheer collapse.

For the first time this Century, the Poverty Clock has ticked backwards, and my colleagues in the international development and humanitarian response arenas warn that decades of progress are in peril of being wiped off the map, along with the lives and livelihoods of millions.

The head of the World Food Program, David Beasley, has intoned that upwards of 135 million new people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by year’s end.

The good news is that people of good will are rising up.

We’ve seen heroic first responders and health care workers don masks and gloves for 18 hour shifts to save lives — or, tragically, serve without benefit of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE’s), often laying their own lives in the line of duty.

We’ve seen businesses shift production lines to manufacture items meant to preserve health and saftey. Grocery and other essential service workers stand in the gap to ensure that our seniors and the rest of us have food on our tables and supplies in our cupboards.

Researchers have kicked into high gear to find a vaccine and a cure. And humanitarian organizations are preparing for the waves of devastation rushing Tsunami-like towards the most vulnerable children and families on the planet.

In the face of this, please keep hope.

From a song my friends and I are working on:

Who knows what sorrows there’ll be

Who knows what troubles we’ll see

But I know that through it all

You still hold the cosmos and me

So stay strong, Take heart Be of good courage And see what brightness Heaven will bring

Invoke hope

Invite humility

Initiate kindness

Inaugurate change

Install justice

Instill grace

Inject courage

Intimidate fear

Intercept violence

Interject peace

Inculcate faith

Incubate dreams

Inhibit hatred

Inspire love

Find more of Jamie McIntosh’s reflections in poetry and prose on justice, spirituality, and our shared humanity on Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn