Seth & Aubrie Drayer

November 29, 2010 Dear Judah, Your heart was supposed to start beating today or tomorrow, according to my maternity nursing textbook, but instead, I spent the day grieving the end of your incredibly short life. I don’t know how to express the feelings within me. When I began to suspect your existence just a few days ago, my heart swelled with new emotions. I felt this strange new mix of excitement, fear, joy, trepidation, and mostly love. Perhaps it was the love that surprised me the most. How could I love with such fierceness someone I had never met? How could I have such a depth of affection for someone whose face I had never seen—someone who didn’t yet even have a face? When I looked at the line on the pregnancy test, I was amazed. Suddenly, merely in looking at that positive result, I had taken on a new identity. I was a mother. You gave me a new title, and with that title, a new, sacred responsibility. And although it was not a title or responsibility that...

From fund-raising to campus outreach, I have recently spent quite a few hours on the late autumn roads between the land of the Bucks and that of the Hoosiers. In order to take advantage of the time, I listened to a great American classic recorded onto DVD: Uncle Tom's Cabin . This masterpiece by Harriet Beecher Stowe holds a privileged position in the American literary hall of fame---for it portrayed the humanness of the enslaved black man to a culture which was in great need of an education. Listening to the characters argue over the institution of slavery, I was struck once again by the glaring parallels among the great injustices which continue to plague our world. Take, for instance, the following challenge issued in Stowe's oeuvre by one cynic to a character who is decidedly against human slavery: "But what would happen if we were to set all of these slaves free? They are better off this way. They can't fend for themselves." Today we recognize such an argu...