Try to Make it to the Morning

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By Hala Alyan, a poem called “The Interviewer Wants to Know About Fashion,” re-posted from Literary Hub (October 17, 2023)

 “They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.”
—Ayelet Shaked

Think of all the calla lilies.
Think of all the words that rhyme with calla.
Isn’t it a miracle that they come back?
The flowers. The dead. I watch a woman
bury her child. How? I lost a fetus
and couldn’t eat breakfast for a week.
I watch a woman and the watching is a crime,
so I return my eyes. The sea foams like a dog.
What’s five thousand miles between friends?
If you listen close enough,
you can hear the earth crack like a neck.
Be lucky. Try to make it to the morning.
Try to find your heart in the newsprint.
Please. I’d rather be alive than holy.
I don’t have time to write about the soul.
There are bodies to count.
The news anchor says oopsie.
The Prime Minister says thanks.
There’s a man wearing his wedding tuxedo to sleep in case
I meet God and there’s a brick of light before each bombing.
I dream I am a snake after all.
I dream I do Jerusalem all over again. This time,
I don’t shake my hair down when the soldier tells me to.
I don’t thank them for my passport.
Later my grandfather said they couldn’t have kept it.
You know that, don’t you?
I don’t know what they couldn’t do.
I only know that enormous light.
Only that roar of nothing,
as certain and incorrect as a sermon.

Hala Alyan is the author of the novel Salt Houses, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize. Her latest novel, The Arsonists’ City, was a finalist for the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize. She is also the author of four award-winning collections of poetry, most recently The Twenty-Ninth Year. Her work has been published by The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, Lit Hub, The New York Times Book Review, and Guernica. She lives in Brooklyn, where she works as a clinical psychologist and professor at New York University.

A Response to Rev. Barber on Palestinian Resistance

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By Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler, re-posted from Mondoweiss, a source of news and opinion on Palestine, Israel and the US

The Bishop William Barber, II, of the Poor People’s Campaign wrote an Op-Ed that appeared in The Guardian on October 13, 2023, entitled, “We must say an emphatic ‘no’ to Hamas a thousand times“. I feel compelled to respond to that Op-Ed. I am hesitant to challenge a friend and a colleague, but on this issue, I must.

I understand Rev. Barber’s need to thread the needle, but in a time like this, we need truth-telling and not outrage when it is politically expedient to do so. As Bishop Barber decries and mourns the killings and atrocities carried out by Hamas, he makes the same error that he has made in the past, by diminishing — and at times ignoring the horrendous history of settler colonialism endured by Palestinians. I am not suggesting equivocation, where a massacre by Hamas in Israel is justified by the long history of Palestinian dispossession and oppression. But I am advocating for the consistent and equal acknowledgment of the long pain and suffering of the Palestinian people. Rev. Barber has not done that historically or even in the structure of his Op-Ed, where he mentions Palestinian suffering in a secondary position to the recent attacks upon Israel.

Rev. Barber seems to want to excuse 75 years of oppression and harm perpetuated by the Israeli regime and aided by a general silence from the world. Through the years, Israelis, Palestinians, Muslims, Christians, and Jews have worked to draw attention to the gross violence and injustices of Israeli occupation. Yet, it seemed that the world was not interested in war crimes, or the genocidal pogroms carried out against the Palestinians. In most cases, the death of a Palestinian child, or the eviction of a Palestinian family did not even amount to a footnote in the concerns of the U.S. government or many religious leaders, including Rev. Barber. Click here to read the rest on Mondoweiss.

Exposed

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By Tommy Airey

I am re-reading Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham jail.” MLK wrote the letter 60 years ago to white Christian and Jewish leaders. He lamented their lukewarm acceptance of the racist system. He lamented that they were more interested in order than justice – and that they were content with a kind of peace that forced the oppressed to accept their plight. MLK explained that the nonviolent actions that got him arrested were not creating tension, but simply bringing to the surface the tension that was already there for too long.

This letter is coming to life in those resisting the occupation of Palestinian land and the genocide of Palestinian people. MLK wrote that the movement for Black freedom was turning the monologue into a dialogue. The old Zionist monologue that mutes and cancels anyone with an opposing perspective is fading fast. People of faith and conscience are demanding a real dialogue about this situation. They are breaking the rules of what can be talked about in their families, faith communities, campuses, corporate media outlets and the Democratic Party.

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A Call for Repentance: An Open Letter from Palestinian Christians to Western Church Leaders and Theologians

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Originally posted here. Click on and sign the petition.

“Learn to do right; seek justice; defend the oppressed” (Isa 1:17).

We, at the undersigned Palestinian Christian institutions and grassroots movements, grieve and lament the renewed cycle of violence in our land. As we were about to publish this open letter, some of us lost dear friends and family members in the atrocious Israeli bombardment of innocent civilians on October 19, 2023, Christians included, who were taking refuge in the historical Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza. Words fail to express our shock and horror with regard to the on-going war in our land. We deeply mourn the death and suffering of all people because it is our firm conviction that all humans are made in God’s image. We are also profoundly troubled when the name of God is invoked to promote violence and religious national ideologies.

Further, we watch with horror the way many western Christians are offering unwavering support to Israel’s war against the people of Palestine. While we recognize the numerous voices that have spoken and continue to speak for the cause of truth and justice in our land, we write to challenge western theologians and church leaders who have voiced uncritical support for Israel and to call them to repent and change. Sadly, the actions and double standards of some Christian leaders have gravely hurt their Christian witness and have severely distorted their moral judgment with regards to the situation in our land.

Continue reading “A Call for Repentance: An Open Letter from Palestinian Christians to Western Church Leaders and Theologians” →

For a Free Palestine

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

This is from blackwomenradicals.com. Check out their site for a whole radical Black feminist reading list on a Free Palestine.

WE, WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM, WE AS BLACK FEMINISTS WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM  –– FREEDOM FROM WHITE SUPREMACY, PATRIARCHY, CAPITALISM, TRANSPHOBIA,  QUEERPHOBIA, ABLEISM, AND OTHER OPPRESSIONS –– UNABASHEDLY BELIEVE IN AND STAND IN SOLIDARITY FOR A FREE PALESTINE. 

As students of Black feminist politics and movements, we know and understand that our liberation as Black women, femme, and gender expansive people in the United States, in the belly of the imperial beast, is tethered to the liberation, freedom, and emancipation of all marginalized peoples around the world. We know that we come from long radical and revolutionary traditions of Black women and gender expansive organizers, educators, and activists who have and continue to be committed to the liberation struggles of oppressed and “Third World” peoples. 

MORE SPECIFICALLY, AND ESPECIALLY AT THIS CURRENT JUNCTURE IN GAZA AND THE WEST BANK, WE KNOW AS BLACK FEMINISTS THAT OUR POLITICAL COMMITMENTS, MANDATES, AND SOLIDARITY ARE BOUND UP AND INTERTWINED WITH THE LIBERATION AND SELF-DETERMINATION OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE. 

According to reports, more than 2,383 Palestinians are dead and 10,814 are injured. The organization, Defense for Children International–Palestine has reported that at least 724 Palestinian children have been killed by the Israeli military since October 7th. This past Friday, October 12th, the Israeli army issued an evacuation order – by way of dropping leaflets – of more than 1.1 million Palestinians in northern Gaza, giving them only 24 hours to leave their homes and move to southern Gaza toward a “safe route.” However, when many Palestinians migrated to southern Gaza, the army bombed the south part of the Gaza strip – the only road in and out of Gaza – killing and injuring hundreds. Israel has cut off Gaza from electricity, fuel, food, water, and humanitarian aid.

Continue reading “For a Free Palestine” →

Uncompromising Solidarity

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CUNY LAW JLSA STATEMENT ON EVENTS IN OCCUPIED PALESTINE (10.10.2023). The statement was originally posted on Google Docs here, but it has been taken down for violating its terms of service (which raises all sorts of important questions).

In this season of renewal and self-reflection, and as we begin the year 5784, the Jewish students at the CUNY School of Law wish to express our uncompromising solidarity with the Palestinian people in their righteous struggle for self-determination. This feeling is accompanied by a profound sense of grief over the lives that have been lost. We are steadfast in our belief that Zionism – as a political ideology predicated on theft and destruction – serves to imperil both Jews and Palestinians, even though its proponents only target the latter.

In his analysis of the global anti-colonial struggle, Frantz Fanon wrote, “We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe.” Such is the case for the Palestinian people, who have, for generations, been made to suffocate under the deadly weight of the Zionist project. This settler-colonial enterprise, promoted by antisemites within the British Empire following World War I, has taken shape across decades of uninterrupted brutality. In 1948, Zionist militias unleashed a campaign of terror marked by mass murder and systematic sexual violence, razing over 500 Palestinian villages and forcing more than 750 thousand Palestinians off their native lands.

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Things You May Find Hidden In My Ear

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Art as Resistance1 Comment

By Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian poet, from his collection Things You May Find Hidden in my Ear: Poems from Gaza (2022)

i

When you open my ear, touch it
gently.
My mother’s voice lingers somewhere inside.
Her voice is the echo that helps recover my equilibrium
when I feel dizzy during my attentiveness.

You may encounter songs in Arabic,
poems in English I recite to myself,
or a song I chant to the chirping birds in our backyard.

Continue reading “Things You May Find Hidden In My Ear” →

Capitalism and Christianity are Incompatible

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Three years ago, we interviewed Dr. Bruce Rogers-Vaughn (above), an ordained Baptist minister, pastoral psychotherapist and Associate Professor of the Practice of Pastoral Theology and Counseling at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and the author of Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age (Palgrave, 2016). “Neoliberalism,” he writes, “has become so encompassing and powerful that it is now the most significant factor in shaping how, why, and to what degree human beings suffer.”

This is why Bruce presses for a “post-capitalist pastoral theology” that empowers people to resist the system (instead of adapt to it), to embrace communion and wholeness in relation to others and the earth (instead of functioning in accord with the values of production and consumption) and to pursue interdependent reliance within the web of human relationships (instead of accepting shame-based personal responsibility narratives).

Above all, Bruce prods pastors, therapists and social workers to identify the source of personal distress in the social and political environment instead of within the individual (he rejects what he calls “sophisticated exercises in blaming the victim”). Oh—one more thing about Bruce. All of his work is informed by his deep roots in southern Appalachia.

This is an excerpt from the beginning of our five-part conversation. See this for Part I, this for Part II, this for Part III and this for Part IV.

—————————————————————————————-

Neoliberalism is simply an awful word. It is almost inevitably misleading. When I first encountered this expression, I imagined it was designating some new (“neo-”) form of political or theological “liberal.” But, actually, the term originates from economic philosophy. Its first proponents—the so-called “German Ordoliberals”—coined the name during the 1930s. Today the word is used, almost exclusively by its critics, to refer to the current phase of capitalism. This phase gained political traction in the USA and the UK in the 1980s, during the Reagan and Thatcher administrations, and by the mid-1990s was the dominant way of thinking and believing that guided global economics, politics, and culture.

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Say Anew to this Festering World

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By Ken Sehested, in honor of Rev. Cindy Weber

My friend Cindy Weber, pastor of Jeff Street Baptist at Liberty in Louisville, Ky., retired last month. Tomorrow, 1 October 2023, her congregation is celebrating her ministry.

She was initially called to serve as associate pastor (1984-1991) and then as pastor (1991-present). The congregation was expelled by the (Southern Baptist) Long Run Baptist Association when Cindy was called as pastor (because she was female).

The congregation’s history traces its roots back to a ministry to the city’s “derelicts, alcoholics, prostitutes, and homeless in 1881.” In the early ‘40s, Clarence Jordan, who would later co-found Koinonia Farm in Georgia, played a role in supporting the mission.

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