Hello stranded pilgrims. I left you in the wilderness while I went off preaching. The sermon the Sunday before last, “Collateral Damage” is the Pentecost 15 reading in Year A. It shares the first lesson with Year W. What looks like a grand heroic episode in which David rescues his kidnap wives and the wives of his main focus is in fact the aftermath of his savage brutality and, having killed the womenfolk of the people who kidnapped his. Note that their retaliation did not take the same lethal form as David’s. The psalm is a plea for rescue that could have been prayed by David’s women or the women of the enemies he made. In many conflicts we are all praying to the same God. The epistle emphasizes that God is able to rescue us from every terror and the gospel teaches us how to pray, offering a model that emphasizes our daily lives and does not look past tomorrow. Together, these lessons emphasize human vulnerability and the fragility of life and especially, the vulnerability of women in every age. Black women have lived leaning on God and only God for more than 400 years on this continent. The community that Jesus charged us to build is to be a safe one for all humans, from all humans.