Forgive me, heavenly Father, for I have sinned against you. I bought a shirt, and some pants. I didn’t know it was a sin at the time, but  hundreds of people lie buried in the rubble of a garment building in Bangladesh. And I am part of the system that crushed them.

I know this is a complicated system. A friend of mine owns a small business in the fashion industry, and so to make sweeping judgments about how things ‘should’ be potentially threatens her livelihood even as it may (or may not) mollify my sense of guilt.

Yet something is wrong when the bottom line is not strong enough to hold up a building.

While it’s true that there are watchdog organizations who act as eyes and ears,  they require a responsive corp(se), or the system is dismembered. For what good are eyes and ears that transmit signals to an entity moving in an entirely different direction? Or, to overextend the metaphor entirely, when eyes and ears are fully detached from the mind, and from the finance endorphins?

Forgive me, Father, for I am aware of the injustices ballooned by my need for comfort. But I’m pinned to the web of need and greed and ‘it couldn’t hurt, just this one’. Stuck in my own inability to Do It Myself–which is yet another trap (speaking only for myself) of hubris seeking authenticity. I desire the delicate things that cannot hold the weight of humanity required to produce them.

Forgive me, Father.  I have sinned against You, and against my siblings. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.