Insufficient

Lamenting the dead

Last week, I met a friend for a long overdue coffee, and we talked about our kids and school--and then we grieved, ached, and cried over the atrocities in Gaza, the dead children, the thousands under the rubble, the mothers wailing in mourning and desperation, as people around us wrote emails, caught up with friends, wrote in their notebooks, drank lattes and matcha and chai. 

I drove home after, singing along to nostalgic music that used to make me dance, staring at the sunset. The sky was beautiful. I wondered if Mike and the kids were seeing it as they drove home from Georgie’s play therapy appointment. Pink and dark blue rose up over the horizon as the sky above me grew dark. I was overwhelmed by it. 

I wondered if Gaza had such beautiful sunsets. I’m sure they did, or even more stunning. What if I were a mother in Gaza, staring at that sunset in the distance, cradling the lifeless body of my child? I became furious at the sunset. What right did anything in this whole world have to be so beautiful, so joyful, while the world is burning, while newborns die, while children lose their mothers and fathers and uncles and grandmothers and everyone they have ever known?

Days later, before the temporary “ceasefire” ended, I saw a video of a group of Palestinians joyful over ma'loubeh, something I’m sure they had not cooked in weeks, a group of people gathered round a table as the dish was released from its pan and inverted onto a large plate. There were wide smiles and guttural cheers of unbridled joy. I was overcome, and released so much gratitude into the ether, that joy still existed, among all of the destruction. 

This weekend, I saw the most horrific image that I have ever in my life encountered. Over the last weeks, I have seen more dead bodies, maimed children, than I ever thought possible--and even with those experiences, something about this video stole all of the breath within my body, felt as though stopped my heart. Hot tears poured down my face, and I fought off waves of nausea, sickened not by sensory disgust, but with anger, with grief, with abject rage at a genocide I feel powerless to stop. I choked out to Michael what I had seen, and could not believe the words coming out of my mouth. How was such evil possible?

Within my moral system, a permanent ceasefire is the only option, the bare minimum. My heart breaks for hostages separated from their children, parents, families, loved ones. This horrific destruction will not bring them home. It will not destroy Hamas, or whatever grows out of Hamas from the young people who have watched their homes and families obliterated without remorse. Any entertainment of the idea that it can do either of those things is misguided and wrong. 

My faith stirs within me a deep pacifism. My faith also stirs within me the deep, abiding belief that God is the god of the oppressed, above all others. God’s true purpose is liberation of all. Forced displacement, family separation, and unrelenting and unrepentant killing are an anathema to God. 

I pray. I believe authentically in prayer, though I have always struggled with it. But I also believe that prayer can be insincere and performative without action, should God ask that of us. And I believe that God is calling us to action. 

I have no idea, absolutely no idea, exactly what that looks like. I think it means bearing witness. It means speaking to others. It means using whatever platform we have to share God’s will to stop the seemingly unending slaughter. 

My faith prohibits me from being silent. As James Cone said, “When [the church] has tried to speak for the poor, it has been so cool and calm in its analysis of human evil that it implicitly disclosed whose side it was on. Most of the time American theology has simply remained silent, ignoring the condition of the victims of this racist society.” 

I shall not be silent. I shall not be cool and calm. When I put my children to bed at night, and their bodies lay against me, warm and relaxed, I will shake with despondency at the fact that my safety is completely unearned, a product solely of oppression and war machines. 

I don’t know how to end this writing, a disjointed bundle of grief and faith. As I write, Hilde and Mike are laughing as Hilde distracts Mike from making dinner. Winnie is playing Mike’s electric guitar. Georgie is decompressing from dance class with a show. What the fuck did I do to end up here and not there. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. 

If it’s something you do, please pray with me. Please act. Please tell me what to do. Please speak to everyone you know, no matter how hard and how contentious it may be. Scream and cry and yell before you go to work, before you pick up your children from school, in the spaces between the laundry and the dishes and the emails and bedtimes. 

Help. Somehow, someone, somewhere, please help. 

Have mercy, Lord, for we are sinners in your sight.