ACCOUNTABILITY: "The World Council of Churches"

POEM: "I Want to Know"

I Want to Know
If regime change in Iraq was good for Iraq,
If shock and awe was good for children, parents, anyone at all,
If it turned out well for American boys and girls
Soon summoned to patrol land-mined cities on foot,
And then bringing home to these shores such pain,
Such wounding, and grievances we all carry now,
Like burned-out tires around our American necks?

I want to know
If lying, flat-out lying, about weapons of mass destruction
Did any good at all for toddlers in the States,
Or teachers in Baghdad, Bethlehem, Damascus, Tel Aviv,
Or if Abu Grahib -- shame on us --
Impressed the whole wide world with
Visions of decency and democracy, a world made well?

I want to know
If the New York Times' celebration of B2 firepower
(How glorious, our weapons! How successful, our planes!
How well deserved, this destruction!)
Is something like those early days in Iraq,
How easy it all seemed, to bomb and destroy,
To take over cities and depose tyrants,
To terrorize a people, and then an entire region?

----

I want to know
If the child wailing for the father
His mother has just buried in Gaza,
For cousins incinerated at food stations in Gaza,
For a future that looks like rubble in Gaza,
If he's safer now, if he's a global citizen now,
If he'll ever sing a song or play a silly game?

I want to know
Who makes money on these things,

(Corporations, manufacturers, hedge funds, 

Universities, pensions, churches?)
On the lies that are told to set such violence in motion,
On the destruction of proud cities, and the rage of whole peoples,
And the deaths of thousands, thousands, thousands?

And I want to know

Who we will choose to be now,

Whether we will choose life now,

If we can stand before their tanks, 

Their B2s, their drones, their weapons now,

To stop them from flying, from killing,

From lying again.

23 June 2025

As the US bombs Iran

DGJ

Libre Palestina - Zaid Hilal | " ألبوم وعد فلكلور 1917 " ( Live session )

DISOBEDIENCE: "Getting Clear and Courageous Now"

Saturday Night / As Trump Decides

If you're my age, you probably remember 2002 and 2003, the fog of 9/11, the maddening lies out of the Bush Administration, the rush to conquest in Iraq.  Like me, you were probably out in the streets, saying "No War in Iraq!"  

We knew, back then, that "shock and awe" was dumb and dumber...and yet violence has a way of bringing us together, uniting a frazzled and frenzied public, and improving the political fortunes of its masters.  Sad and deadly, but true.

In a sense, Benjamin Netanyahu takes pages out of that same playbook now--pulverizing Gaza and slaughtering tens of thousands there and, when that well runs dry, when Israeli society tires of his carnage, turning toward Iran again.  As Yoav Haifawi says in Haaretz this weekend:

But suddenly, when Israel initiated the expansion of the war into an all-out attack on Iran, which will inevitably bring further death and destruction in both Iran and Israel, we began to see again the power of violence to take over the human psyche and paralyze thought. Suddenly, the automatic Israeli consensus stiffened again, with the media and the public celebrating the spilled Iranian blood. Even a sinking Europe, which had begun to show remorse in its support of the genocide in Gaza, became enthusiastic again, with Germany, France, and Britain literally begging for their share of the pound of flesh and blood.

And here we are, twenty three years later, and we're making the very same bloody mistake.  And don't be fooled; we're already complicit.  Whether or not Trump sends those B-2s to do Bibi's dirty work in the darkness.  American Presidents--including Democrats like Biden and Republicans like Trump--have refused to confront, deter, call out or de-fund the Israeli war machine.  American Presidents have refused to hold Israel (and our own government!) accountable to international law and human rights conventions.  And for this cowardice, bombs are flying over Haifa tonight, and landing in Tel Aviv, and hitting hospitals in the South; and many more are hitting neighborhoods in Iran, and traumatizing new generations of Middle Easterners--who will not soon forget.  And hungry children are being shot in food lines in Gaza.

Protests are fine.  Our voices should be loud.  But that didn't work in 2003.  And we will have to do more, to be bolder, to be smarter, this time.  

Candidates that take money from big money lobbies like AIPAC or the weapons industry should be voted down and voted out--Democrats and Republicans.  Companies still profitting in any way from Israel's apartheid system of racist control and illegal settlements in the West Bank should be boycotted.  That means you, Chevron.  

Investment accounts at universities, churches, synagogues and the rest should be purged of any holdings in companies that champion the architecture of apartheid and ethnic cleansing.  We should show up and support college students doing the hard work in their campuses.  Divestment is not as hard as it seems.  See the American Friends Service Committee, for help!  And every church, synagogue and mosque in the country should join the Apartheid-Free Movement within the next two months.  Move the needle.  Show resolve.  Stand up and be counted.

Again, it's not terribly complicated.  But it does take courage and purpose.  In 1922, a century ago, Gandhi said: "Disobedience without civility, discipline, discrimination, non-violence, is certain destruction. Disobedience combined with love is the living water of life.”  

It is time, my friends, for disobedience.  Not tomorrow.  Not next fall.  It is time for disobedience.  See the links if you need them.  And BE THE LIVING WATER OF LIFE.

IMAGINATION: "Paths to a Just Peace"

If you're at all like me, you're eager to hear the ideas of thoughtful, brave folk--who are imagining a future with concrete possibilities, a future worthy of human rights, a future beyond grievance and occupation and genocide.

Two reads worthy of your time, if you're hungry for hope, and practical thinking:

1.  Jonathan Kuttab's: Beyond the Two-State Solution

2.  A Land for All: an introduction to the work of Rula Hardal and May Pundak.

END GENOCIDE: "A UCC Resolution"

NO MORE WAR: "Jonathan Kuttab on What We Can Do"

PRAYER: "Prophets of a Future Not Our Own"

THE "ROMERO" PRAYER (in spirit, see note below)

Crew of the Madleen, June 2025

It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts; it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church’s mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water the seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something and to do it well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.

------------------------------------------------------

This prayer was composed by the late Bishop Ken Untener of Saginaw, drafted for a homily by Cardinal John Dearden in November 1979 for a celebration of departed priests. As a reflection on the anniversary of the martyrdom of Bishop Romero, Bishop Untener included in a reflection book a passage titled "The mystery of the Romero Prayer." The mystery is that the words of the prayer are commonly attributed to Oscar Romero, but they were never spoken by him. Pope Francis used the “magnificent” prayer in December 2015 in his Christmas address to the Roman Curia.

The confusion seems to have arisen from a major paper on Catholic education given by Westminster’s Cardinal Basil Hume on 6 January 1997 where he quoted the prayer but, for reasons it is now impossible to fathom, misattributed it to Archbishop Romero. His paper was subsequently published in a the ‘Briefing’ documentary service on 20 February 1997. The prayer was then picked up by Caritas Internationalis in Rome and CAFOD in London – both of whom included it (together with the misattribution to Archbishop Romero) in materials being used for their strategic planning processes in the run-up to the Millennium Jubilee. Thereafter the beautiful prayer went around the global Church and, not surprisingly, it became known as ‘The Romero Prayer’.

OPEN LETTER: "Against Facism"

SABBATICAL 25: "Judean Desert, American Temptations"

Wilderness / Sunday

I packed hurriedly, accepted the counsel of trusted friends, and left Bethlehem quickly Sunday morning.  "This time feels different," said one, at dinner Saturday night, glancing at news feeds as he waited for the check.  So he mapped my departure for me, called a car for early the next day, and reassured me that my going safely was his heart's desire.  "We need friends and advocates where you're going," he said.  Then, early Sunday, he arrived at my door--before the car and driver--as I shuffled books between my suitcase and backpack.  He handed me a bag full of sweet bread, boiiled eggs and falafel (the best falafel, I'll go on record, in the universe).  "For the road."  I've had a whole lot of bread in my time, some of it sacramental.  But this bread was the body of christ itself, salty with tears, as broken as love itself.  It would transfigure moments to come.  And days later, it promises something beyond my knowing.

Bound for the crossing between the Occupied West Bank and Jordan, known to many as the Allenby Bridge, my driver breathed a sigh of relief as we passed--without incident--one of the West Bank's most maddening checkpoints.  We whipped through the dry hills of the Judean desert.  We buzzed by Bethany, where Jesus is said to have raised Lazarus from the dead.  And we hurtled toward Jericho, passing the Good Samaritan Church--a nod to one of Jesus' most famous stories (the one where the devout fail to acknowledge the suffering of a neighbor; the one where the dismissed and disrespected Samaritan does exactly that and more).  Making a last turn toward the Bridge, my driver reminded me that we were not far from the "baptismal site"--where Jesus came out of hiding and yielded to repentance, renewal and humility at the start of his prophetic ministry.  That was Jesus' 'crossing,' I guess, as the Spirit's vocation claimed him at last.  His first surrender.

(Above, Tel Aviv, Friday Night)

Leading toward the Allenby Bridge itself, we found a curling, anxious tangle of cars, buses and trucks--all of them waiting for a gate to swing open, and hoping to make it through Israeli security, and then Jordanian security, before the whole process shut down for the day.  We waited in that anxious, crawling mass of vehicles for something like 4 hours.  Which seemed like forever.  The sun, bright; vegetation, sparse.  

And I had lots (and lots) of time to think.  About Zoughbi's bag of bread and falafel.  About Gaza, and famine, and genocide.  About the war just beginning between Israel and Iran, and what it might mean for dear friends in Bethlehem.  And about the Judean desert; about Jesus and the tempter; the temptations that prepared him (somehow) or motivated him (perhaps) for the soulful work of community-organizing and community--building that awaited him and all who would follow.  The heartbreaking vocation of the children of God.  

Temptations, Mine (1)

In Bethlehem the previous night, I'd struggled to find any meaningful sleep--saddened by the new wave of state-sponsored violence, screaming rockets in West Bank skies, and doubly saddened that the war had cut my visit in Bethlehem short by 10 days.  I'd felt some sleepless shame, I confess, around my own privilege--the privilege that allows me to jump the tracks when danger hits close to home, the privilege that so often hides me in American pulpits and summer cabins and even the scaffolding of "advocacy" and "peacemaking."  Dear colleagues at Wi'am have moved me with their tenderness and laughter, and their devotion to one another in a terrible time.  I count them now, not only as friends, but as sisters, brothers, wayfaring siblings in resistance and faith.  Leaving them as sirens sounded in their streets had seemed cowardly.

Waiting for that first gate, I had another thought, Jesus then haunting my weariness.  For I too, it seemed, would face a couple of temptations now.  In a desert of a different sort.  But temptations just the same.

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tested by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over he was famished. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’ ” (Luke 4)

I will be tempted, returning home, to dismiss the importance of community-organizing, community-building and truth-telling in my American context.  My soul has been shaken, touched, even transfigured by the friendship of Bethlehem's faithful--mediators, social workers, writers, priests, guides, advocates.  This leaves its mark now, a holy mark, on my life.  But I will be tempted now to locate my work in THEIR streets; I will be tempted (even by love) to over-identify with these dear, brave, beleaguered Palestinian friends and to forget that MY urgent work, MY faithful resistance, MY service must speak truth to power, even take truth to power, and trust satyagraha in the midst of an American struggle.  The Apartheid-Free Movement!  FOSNA's effort to get Christians into the West Bank to see for themselves!  Congressional accountability in every district!  Clearheaded conversation about what antisemitism is and WHAT IT IS NOT!  And full-throated gospel preaching!

I have heard one message consistently, clearly and often.  From Rifat Odeh Kassis at Kairos Palestine to Dalia Qumsiyeh at the Balasan Initiative for Human Rights.  From Tarek Zoughbi at Wi'am to the Right Rev'd Richard Sewell at St. George's College in Jerusalem. From Ariel Gold with the Fellowship of Reconciliation to Crystal McCormick with Christians for a Free Palestine.  Every dear soul I've met over the past six weeks insists that America bears more than enough responsibiity for the madness of occupation, the grotesque project of genocide in Gaza, and ongoing hostilities between Israel and so many other nations in the region.  American diplomacy has failed every test.  American money has subsidized just about every conflict.  American industry has profited over and over again.  

Things in America are now so twisted; power is so corrupted; money is so idolized and enshrined in governance--that it's easy to want to escape it all, to bail on my responsibility among my own people, to yield to powers and principalities that seem eternal and beyond transformation.  But that would be the temptation, right?  To mistake Zoughbi's work for my own; to so cherish Lucy and Diala and Imad and Usama and THEIR work that I miss the prophetic edge of my own faith and the urgency of witness in the West.  The Day of Jubilee!  The Economics of Grace!  Human Rights for Human Beings!  

And democracies--bound in covenant and care--that feed the hungry, welcome the wandering stranger, provide for the widow and orphan, and study war no more.  

And that, all of that, is what Love requires now.  I will be forever unsettled and motivated by friends in Palestine, by their commitments and stories and cries for justice.  But I will resist the temptation to take up their cause, because they are brilliantly and uniquely capable of doing that for themselves.  What they ask of me, what they need from us, is to build movements at home that respond to theirs, and honor theirs...movements that take on the hard work, the prophetic work, the absolutely critical work of de-colonizing American politics and liberating the warrior economy from its addictions and greed.  

Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.  To justify (or ignore) American militarism every Sunday morning, in the name of patriotism or congregational unity, is to miss both Jesus' message and the costly grace at its core.  My friends in Bethlehem have their work to do--loving a fragmented and traumatized community; but you and I have ours to do too.  In New Hampshire.  In Washington.  In New York.  And it's going to cost us something.

Temptations, Mine (2)

Issa Amro, after an attack by settlers in Hebron

As I sift through two months of stories in places like Hebron, Bethlehem and the Old City of Jerusalem, I may also be tempted to give up on religion itself.  Whether or not you locate yourself in a faith tradition, you too may be familiar with this one.  For in so many ways religion now justifies cruelty and vengeance; and in so many ways it fails to address the aspirations of dear people, decent people, human communities in crisis.  Who needs it?

And Sunday's news out of Minnesota only intensifies our suspicion that the Sermon on the Mount no longer matters to the American church.  That these assassinations could be meticulously planned by a 'devout' Christian pastor no longer surprises us.  That Christianity itself seems to have given its blessing to a culture of grievance, video-game theology and hubris no longer shocks us.  Maybe we'd do well to bag the whole religious project, and look for common ground elsewhere.  There are plenty of wonderful people, principled friends, doing a world of good beyond the boundaries of religion and faith.

And this is a temptation, to be sure.  From Texas to Minneapolis, in Torah studies and Quranic interpretations: we find meanspirted pastors justifying genocide; we find divisive theologians turning one faith against another; we find systems of belief promising paradise to some while consigning many to endless suffering.  And on top of all that, there's a growing suspicion that Christian institutions (at least) are incapable--if they once were--of standing up to nationalism, racism and xenophobia. 

Rafah, 2024

So while I fully understand that the crisis facing Palestine (and the Middle East) is existential now, that it's about occupation and apartheid and geo-political power, it's easy to believe that religion stands in the way of meaningful progress, courageous negotiation and lasting reconciliation.  It's true enough in the American context (where Mike Huckabee and John Hagee embrace hubris and conquest as gospel); but it's just as possible to see in Israel, Palestine and the Middle East at large.  There's Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich and so many right-wing Jews in Israel's government.  Preaching hatred, expulsion and ethnic cleansing.  Courting apocalypse.  And there are clearly Muslim clerics as well, fanning flames of distrust, seeking purity and power at the expense of collaboration and unity.

To be honest, then, it will be tempting for some of us to give up not only on religion, but on God.  The whole thing becomes something of an embarrassment.

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered him, “It is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God,

    and serve only him.’ ” (Luke 4)

At just this point, however, I return to my good friend, Zoughbi Zoughbi in Bethlehem, and his consistent refrain: "Yes, religion can be used to oppress and this has always been so.  But we believe it can also be, for us and for all, a source of resistance, imagination and renewal."  Almost predictably, he would add: "And that will be up to you and me."  I recall his exhaustion after long nights at the hospital with ailing neighbors.  I remember his joy in yucking it up with Muslim friends he trusts ("Tell me," he'd beg me, "which one of us is the Muslim and which the Christian?  Ha!").  And I marvel even now at his faith, his surrender, really, to One whose only passion is human kindness, collaboration and justice.  Not creeds and codes and secret handshakes.  

And there was that one day at Wi'am, in early June, in conversation with his staff in the shade of his beloved walnut tree...when I opened up my laptop...and played them all Mahalia Jackson's "Precious Lord, Take My Hand."  A song that makes the hairs on my neck stand on end, even to this day.  And I reminded them that Martin Luther King called Mahalia from time to time, on an old rotary phone, when he needed a prayer, a hymn, a blessing.  And she'd sing to him on the line: 

When the dark­ness ap­pears

And the night draws near,

And the day is past and gone,

At the riv­er I stand,
Guide my feet, hold my hand:
Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.

Zoughbi teared up that day, wept quietly as Mahalia sang to King, as she sang to lovers of life everywhere, sang to nonviolent believers and champions of resistance fearing for their lives.  In Bethlehem.  In Atlanta.  In Memphis.  And right there, in the shadow of the walnut tree, it hit me all over again: this God is, for Zoughbi and his team, Love itself; this God is the bestower of plenty in a land of sorrows; this God is the way-maker Christ whose mercy is true strength, whose compassion is true wisdom, whose trust is in grace alone--not victory, not vengeance, not even progress.  One friend singing to another.  Her faith restoring his purpose.

Religion, then, can be "a source of resistance, imagination and renewal."  And yes, indeed--that'll be up to us.

God Almighty said: "Humankind!  We created you from a pair of a male and female, and made you into nations and tribes that you may know each other.  The most honored of you in the sight of God is the most righteous of you." (Al Hujurat: 13)

My dear Muslim friends remind me that that this one verse is something like the key to their own spiritual practice, an invitation to relentless compassion and curiosity in God's world of wonders.  "That you may know each other."  Whatever the tradition, the Divine is so fully and fearlessly committed to us, so kindly and powerfully able to protect us from hatred and despair, that we have no need to use or manipulate others in our own journeys to wholeness and peace.  God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble (Psalm 46:1).  We have only to learn one another's names, rejoice in one another's joys, bear one another's sorrows.  And that, Zoughbi might say, is precisely how religion can again serve us, and serve all peoples, in our yearning to be free of violence and at one with one another.   God's world of wonders.

Pulling Back the Veil

Things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered.
We most hold each other tight
And continue to pull back the veil. (Adrienne Maree Brown)

Rather than giving in to those peddling hate, rather than ceding religion and mystery and grace to frightened minds, I choose Zoughbi Zoughbi and Mahalia Jackson. I choose Al Hujurat 13 and the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  And I choose Adrienne Maree Brown.

"We must hold each other tight," she says, "and continue to pull back the veil."  This is the religious task, the vocation.  We must love one another so deeply, so defiantly and delightfully--that the Spirit herself is said to blush in our presence.  And then we must pull back the veil--to see behind the walls that some would design to divide us, to recover our curiosity and our capacity for forgiveness and imagination.  Their walls are not eternal, not even close.  We must pull back the veil to see again, even as Bartimaeus sees again: that mercy is on the move, that mercy is worth our sacrifice and our devotion, that mercy is God.

And so...

Returning to the States tonight, I choose Moses standing before the burning bush, removing his sandals, and trusting that the Presence he encounters there is beyond his control, but committed to his people's liberation.  I choose Moses knowing that I too will be called to say and do hard things: even to demand that Pharaoh let the people go.  And knowing there will be unnerving wilderness journeys still ahead.

I choose Jesus emerging from the Jordan, soaked to the bone, aware of a Spirit falling from beyond the horizons of his knowing, from deep within traditions of prophets and visionaries and troublemakers.  I choose Jesus on whom that same Spirit proclaims Love, Love, Love...forever marking him as Beloved.  Not just for one tribe.  Not just for one religion.  But for all.  

And I choose to lean into my faith so boldly, so completely, that there is space for us all: those who doubt and those who believe; those who dance wildly and those who sit completely still; those who love Torah and those who love the Quran, those who eat at kosher tables and halal tables and communion tables and tables of plenty the whole wide world around.

And even so, the tempations are with us always, right?  There is no conquering them finally.  Yet faith is such that every encounter with the tempter is opportunity and grace; to be tempted is to be called, and to be human, and to be drawn deeper into the work of solidarity and kindness, liberation and discipleship.  There are no earthly guarantees in all this.  But there is Love, One Love, unbending and unbroken.  And that is enough.  It will be always enough.

Then the devil led him to Jerusalem and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written,

‘He will command his angels concerning you,

    to protect you,’

and

‘On their hands they will bear you up,

    so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ”

Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time. (Luke 4)