Gerlyn Henry

For two years, in the rectory where I live, my spouse and I hosted two parents seeking asylum along with their Canadian-born child. When she was a baby, not walking or talking, I used to sing lullabies to radicalize her—songs like the “Canticle of the Turning” (based on the Magnificat) and “Here I Am, Lord.” I would rock her to the beat of these justice-inspired songs, hoping that she would come to know that God is a God of justice.

But eventually, as anyone with a child in their life knows, you get bored of the traditional kid content, and so you begin searching for something unique. YouTube had just the thing I was looking for. The video I showed my 2-year-old housemate was from Rachel Griffin Accurso, who goes by the name Ms. Rachel. In this particular video, Ms. Rachel looks right into the camera and asks the toddler, “Can you say mama?” As I held this child, so innocent, so vulnerable, beside me as she engrossed herself in language and learning, I found myself thinking about the state of the world. How did we get to a point where—for years—we idly stood by and watched a genocide in Palestine livestreamed on our devices? How did we get to a point where anti-Black racism is making an unapologetic comeback? Why are we so hyper-focused on limiting the freedom of trans folks and immigrants when the actual source of our troubles is the Epstein class?