from the I-55 | chicago, il
I can always hear them before I see them.
In a kind of protest against the natural patterns of a storm, the sirens shriek before the blue and red lightning bolts flash. I never have to look up — only out and around because that’s where we need them, on ground level. Not the sirens, but the answer that the sirens sing: emergency responders to bring the (right?) response.
I am always pierced with emotions like shock, sadness, and anxiety only for them to float away untethered from my past or present reality. It still feels humanizing, for my first response to be instinctual emotions. I would have had to run out of any drip of empathy, not to mention love for my neighbor, to respond to the blaring icon speeding past me with nothingness.
On one hand, I’m blessed to have never had to press nine nine one and wait and suffer. A shiny Walgreens print of me from sometime in ‘09 on a field trip in front of a firetruck marks the last time I stepped into an emergency responder vehicle. Crossing one of those active thresh-holds for most anyone else is to experience protection or pain. When my ear drums are struck with the notes of a familiar tune, I genuinely can’t quite place what it means. With no personal memorialized history, I’m left imprinted with a question mark and questions marking every. single. siren.
The city pulses with life, and life pulses with risk. It’s no more dangerous here than there. In fact, the “safest” beats are where the police, firetrucks, ambulances, et. al. fly to fastest. If not your beat, likely it’s your quiet suburb, policed and protected against social ills (is that politically correct?). Take a moment to acknowledge yet another manifestation of systemic inequality. But besides, it’ll be okay because help is on the way. Well, I can’t promise you help is on the way, the response will be right, nor that it will all be okay. In full honesty, I deeply admire the men and women risking their lives for the lives at risk across the cities and scapes of this nation. I just wonder how much you and I risk for those on the margins, falling through the cracks as we speak.
Siren after siren, my concern has not waned. Sometimes after sirens, I send a little wisp of good wishes and weak hope. This is not enough, to turn passively while a disembodied system tries to address the need. The call is often and now. Far more valuable than the materials and makings of our bloodied hands is the command to seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in the knowledge of and faith in God alone.
Is my cry for justice a prayer loud enough to drown the sirens, the lights, and the brokenness in a city full of precious souls? The next siren I hear blazing before flashing, I will be reminded of the Divine, of my inadequacy, and of the only Help who is the Way.