I am reading a book called Amazing Grace by Jonathan Kozol, which tells the story of kids living in the poorest congressional district in the United States, a neighborhood in the south Bronx.  I don't have much to say about the book, other than a recommendation to read it with a box of tissues and an open mind if you are at all interested in America's educational apartheid and inequity.  I want to share with you the last paragraph of the prologue:

"What is it like for children to grow up here?  What do they think the world has done to them?  Do they believe that they are being shunned or hidden by society?  If so, do they think that they deserve this?  What is it that enables some of them to pray, what do they say to God?"

It's that last line that chills me.  How do they pray, and what do they say?  I think of the children this book describes:  people with nothing whom society regards as close to nothing, if noticed at all.  But these boys and girls at the kings and queens of God's kingdom.  And I have so much to learn from their precious hearts.  And to think that this book is on my syllabus for my grad program at DU.  God has a clever way of weaving himself into everything and everywhere, even where he isn't necessarily welcomed readily.

(Amazing Grace:  The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation by Jonathan Kozol)