I’ve been sitting with a song this week. It’s structured like a prayer, and it it names names. Not in the abstract. It calls out the anxious, the houseless, the addicted, the bullied, the grieving, the queer kid still in the closet, the mother of a Black son, the parent who buried a baby, the worker, the lonely, the ones at the border.

It doesn’t say “everyone.” It’s specific.

That’s the move. That’s the whole move.

We’re really good at building circles. Circles are how humans organize belonging. The problem is we stop drawing the circle too soon.

A prayer, a message, a brand, a community, or a life gets reduced to a weapon the minute it’s used to mark who’s out instead of who’s in. The song’s writer knows this. They even say it plainly: words like this have been swords before. Used against people, not for them.

What if we simply focused on making circles bigger. Not bigger as a slogan, bigger as a practice. Bigger means naming the person you’d normally leave as a footnote. Bigger means ones we’ve judged before get a seat, not just the people who make your theology comfortable.

A plowshare turns the soil over so something can grow.

That’s the work. Turn the soil. Make room. Say the name. Turn the world around. Thank you for the words Spencer LaJoye

Who’s missing from your circle this week? Can you name them? Can you make your circle bigger?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhOZv5i7CHY&list=RDMhOZv5i7CHY&start_radio=1