The other night I found myself typing into the search bar, “how to live through a genocide.” I wanted advice for me, a bystander. The results were mainly studies and articles about the Jewish Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide. One linked to a book I read in high school, Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculée Ilibagiza. I considered checking it out from the library to re-read, but I’ve had a difficult time reading for extended amounts of time recently. Once a month for the past three months, an email from the library pops into my inbox telling me that the book I’m less than 50 pages into is automatically renewing. I don’t pick it back up to try again. Instead I read a new article. (There are links galore in this post. Don’t ask me how many tabs I keep up at one time.) I want to stuff my mind with ideas so I don’t have space to ruminate on the horrors unfolding in front of me.
I have nothing poignant to say about the death and destruction at the hands of imperial powers we are watching play out in real time all day long. I spend my days mostly wavering between two feelings: one is feeling absolutely insane that I have to go about my regular little life. Going to work, answering and sending emails, cooking, walking my dog, spending time with friends, talking about Gaza with some people, avoiding it but feeling guilty about not bringing it up with others, and ignoring my inclination to break down in tears at my desk.
The other is despair. Pure hopelessness. I tell myself that it is a privilege to despair. The Palestinians living through this genocide do not have the luxury to despair. They must keep hoping to stay alive.
I have never been in despair about the world. Enraged-I’ve been enraged by the world, but never despair. I cannot afford despair…you can’t tell the children that there is no hope. -James Baldwin
Baldwin names another feeling I allow myself to sink into at night: anger. I’m livid, furious, exasperated, outraged, horrified, indignant, fuming at every single person and system who allow this suffering to continue. My heart has been broken over and over again since October and if yours hasn’t, I beg you to reconnect with your humanity.
I try to rationalize. I tell myself, “Historically, we are living in the least violent time period.” It doesn’t help because it doesn’t match my lived experience. There are senseless murders in my DC community, senseless murders of activists in Central America, senseless murders of refugees, senseless murders of Palestinians. “Senseless murder” is a journalistic misnomer. Murder should never make sense. I know that if it does, then I am losing my soul.
If you feel similarly, I’m here to process with you. We can support each other and grieve together. An idea I’ve been toying with is starting a small-group sharing space (probably virtual) where we can name our emotions around what we’re witnessing with a possible end goal of moving to action or not having any goals and simply allowing it to be a space for reflection.
As I have nothing insightful or helpful to say, I will leave you with someone smarter and holier than me, Dorothy Day, who wrote this reflection in September 1971, after the Attica prison uprising.
Now reflection begins which does not seem to lead to less repression or any mitigation of the brutality and savagery, or of the cold cruelty which makes up the lives of prisoners and guards to a great extent. The main complaint of the rioters was that they were not treated as men, but as beasts. They were thrown into prisons and forgotten. Nobody cared. Eighty-five percent of the prisoners at Attica were black or Puerto Rican.
All this morning the words have been in my mind, “What you have done to the least of these, my brethren, you have done to me.” How hard and terrible a thing is the Christian religion, which teaches us that those who take the sword will die by the sword, that we must forgive our enemies, who are to be found in “our own household,” Jesus Christ said.
We call ourselves Christian, we citizens of the United States, the majority of us, but no one would ever know us as Christians. Reflect on the life of Jesus who came to call sinners, who was born in poverty, who lived as a worker for thirty years. He was an itinerant teacher, walking the roads of Palestine, who hungered and thirsted and was fatigued to the point of exhaustion, who was tempted in all things like us but He did not sin, because He was also God. As the apostles said, we are called to be other-Christs, we are called to put off the old man and put on Christ, we are told to see Christ in our brother. Hard sayings and who can understand it. Only the Spirit can teach us. It is some comfort to remember those further words, when Christ himself died because His whole way of life was revolutionary–He spoke them from the torture in which He hung, nailed as He was to a cross–“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” And He also said to the thief dying by His side, “This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise.”
I am afraid of what is before us, because what we sow we will reap. It is an exercise in courage to write these words, to speak in this way when it is revolting to consider how much we profess and how little we perform. God help us.
Links To Click On When You’re Bored At Work
Palestine
Reflections on the National March on Washington for Palestine.
A reflection on Cardinal Pizzaballa’s statement about peace in Palestine.
Marie Dennis’s thoughts.
7 steps to end the cycle of violence in Israel and Palestine.
I’ve been reflecting on Thomas Merton’s “Letter to a Young Activist” over the past few months and it remains pertinent to today.
Notre Dame student protestors demands. I’m so proud of the young people for standing up in such public demonstrations on and off campuses. They inspire me. Here are some student reflections from the encampments.
Sign-on letter from US Catholics on Israel-Palestine that is open for endorsements. Add your name!
Substack does a weird thing where if you link to another substack post it embeds itself instead of directly linking. Below are three substacks I have read and appreciated:
Art
A rallying cry to respect craft.
Art as a form of reflection created by a religious sister before she took her took vows.
If you’re not familiar with the quilts of the women of Gee’s Bend, get familiar and delight in their talent!
I’ve fallen in love with the art of Allan Rohan Crite.
“Architects and designers must reckon with their role in the past and future of mass incarceration.”
Art Liturgy in Santa Fe.
I loved sifting through the art presented at this year’s Venice Biennale.
Everything Else
On the importance of community for birthing mothers.
Butterflies will always be incredible creatures to me, and in this case, tools of transformation.
A tragic story of isolation, conspiracy theories, and unnecessary suffering.
Sadly, my social worker friends have been raising this alarm bell for years.
As a Flannery O’Connor fan, I’m interested in the new movie, Wildcat.
Is saying hi to your neighbors a climate solution? Maybe!
I prayed half of this novena to support migrants before I forgot (which is a pretty regular occurrence for me.) There are some beautiful prayers here!
Things That Are Bringing Me Joy
Weddings and newly born babies. Here and in Palestine, Haiti, DRC, Sudan, and in every little pocket of the world where, by God (and in spite of the oppressors) life persists.
Every time I talk to or see a friend I haven’t spoken to in a while I am filled with gratitude. Community saves me time and time again.
My baby garden I’ve been tending to since February. I planted an absurd amount of nasturtiums because I read that pests will eat them instead of the veggies, but joke’s on me because only flowers and weeds will grow in the clay-filled soil I inherited! I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
paz y bien,
Maeve
