Waiting and hoping and...

In Spanish, to wait, to hope, and to expect are all bundled up in the same verb: esperar. In the church year, waiting, hoping, and expectation are bundled up in one season: Advent. I found a lovely Advent calendar online. I won't describe it - you have to go check it out.

This Thursday (December 1) is World AIDS Day. It's been thirty years since AIDS first reared its head on this planet and it hasn't taken a break or even slowed down since. The primary project of my job here in Detroit is building an HIV prevention program through the congregation I work in. Tomorrow night we will hold the Detroit World AIDS Day Commemoration at a local seminary.

One thing I've learned and run into a lot is the idea that my generation is desensitized to the real catastrophe that is HIV. We have never known a world without it; the first effective antiretroviral cocktails came out when we were in grade school. It's not a death sentence anymore. And in a lot of ways, that has lowered the stigma - in some arenas. And yet the stigma is still SO strong in other arenas that people are afraid even to talk about getting tested, much less enter into further conversation.

I got tested a couple weeks ago. It seemed like a thing I ought to do, given that a part of my job is stressing the importance of testing. It took fifteen minutes and a prick that I didn't even feel - and it was free! (The sheet with my result - negative - hung on the fridge for several days. :) And the great leaps that have been made in the realm of testing and prevention are a huge deal. You used to have to wait weeks, worrying, as your blood was shipped every which way. Now, not so. And yet all the testing and prevention resources in the world aren't worth a lot if your church or your school or anyone has you too afraid to accept them.

Bridging that gap is so important and the church absolutely MUST take a role in that process. Not only in getting resources to people, but in calling out the pharmaceutical companies that ensure that there is an ever-newer recipe for Viagra, but puts an honest-to-God HIV vaccine as a lower priority. We need to start (and keep) being prophetic on this. (And that means we have to talk about...sex, friends. In church. But Lutherans are awkward from square one, so this shouldn't be that big a deal.)

In some ways we know what it is we are hoping and waiting for and in some ways we don't yet. That image keeps forming in us, together.

Entretanto, esperamos.