Magda is about to compete in her first triathlon. Last week, the five-year-old brought her Palestine flag to training. Her dad suggested that she put it in her basket so she wouldn’t drop it. Magda told him, “I’m gonna carry it so that people see it.”
By Tawfiq Zayyad, the mayor of Nazareth until his sudden death in 1994
In Lidda, in Ramla, in the Galilee,
we shall remain
like a wall upon your chest,
and in your throat
like a shard of glass,
a cactus thorn,
and in your eyes
a sandstorm.
A poem from Jimmy Santiago Baca, who grew up in an orphanage and lived on the streets as a teenager and was incarcerated at 21 when he was convicted on charges of drug possession. He served five years in prison, where he learned how to read and write poetry while locked up in isolation.
If it does not feed the fire
of your creativity, then leave it.
If people and things do not
inspire your heart to dream,
then leave them.
If you are not crazily in love
and making a stupid fool of yourself,
then step closer to the edge
of your heart and climb where you’ve been forbidden to go.
A poem by Eric Martin.
Eric teaches classes on theology & social movements in Los Angeles, and is the author of The Writing on the Wall: Signs of Faith Against Fascism.
Every Good Friday, a motley crew of radical disciples walks the streets of Detroit with a large, awkward wooden cross. They stop at “stations” where life is being crucified in the city. This year, these Detroiters are homing in on the image of rubble. Empire is bombing Gaza. Empire is bulldozing ghettos. It’s part of a settler-colonial supremacy story that seizes land for wealthy and powerful elites. Ad agencies and mainstream media and political parties – and, yes, Christian churches – play their part in hiding the collateral damage. As Palestinian pastor Munther Isaac proclaimed in his viral Christmas sermon, the crucified are buried under the rubble. Christians are called to join Jesus in there. To work. To bear witness. To worship. As we wait expectantly for Something Else to resurrect the dead and discarded into newness of life. The post below is the introduction to Detroit’s Good Friday Stations of the Cross Walk. [artwork above: Lucia Wylie-Eggert]
For more than forty years, we have placed a wooden cross against the brick wall on the backside of the Manna Meal soup kitchen. We pass the booklets, ring the gong, raise our voices, and read these words. Then we walk. Together. On this journey of repentance. A word in the ancient context that referred to a soldier switching sides during a battle.
We walk the streets of Detroit asking:
Where is Christ crucified today – and what does it mean for us to repent, to switch sides and join him in the rubble created by empire?
Each year our route is different and distinct. The faces of victims and executioners rise up to us from a particular time and place. The imperial powers that we recognize today are the same and not the same as before – and they are all threaded together, entangling us in a settler-colonial web of death and domination. We name them again. We name them anew.
Continue reading “Carrying the Cross towards the Rubble”From Dr. Karim Wafa Al-Hussaini, Indigenous historian and poet with a PhD in African-American History
A fifty-year-old poem of Lucille Clifton – still conspiring for our hearts in a whole new year.
By Dean Hammer, a poem offered in the spirit of World Peace Day, which is January 1 in the Catholic Church
Why have our history books lied
When millions of BIPOC
Hostages brutally died
Of Euro-settler ruthless bellicosity.
We don’t want more of the same
No more genocide in God’s name
Neo-Nazi forces grow again
Far-right fascism teach children not to refrain.
Radical Discipleship 