Where Does it Hurt?

later that night

i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the
whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?  

it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.

-excerpt from “what they did yesterday afternoon” by Somali poet Warsan Shire

Where does it hurt?

Millennia since King Herod was so threatened by the birth of Jesus that he commanded the death of every toddler boy in Bethlehem.

Five years since we watched our nation’s capital attacked.

One year since wildfires tore through eighty square miles across Los Angeles.

Three months since ceasefire, with over fifteen hundred Palestinians killed or injured by Israel’s ceasefire violations.

Seventy-five days after a group of Buddhist monks began a peace walk from Texas to Washington DC.

One week since the people of Venezuela and the United States woke up to new uncertainty.

Days after we prayed and sang of our hope in Christ and the light that has risen upon us.

Where does it hurt?

Everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere. It hurts in our hearts. In our gut. In our very bones.

It hurts everywhere.

Even as we hold so tightly on to the hope of the light of Christ in one hand, the grief we have collected in the other hand is heavy, sticking, and exhausting.

This is the moment when we, as people of faith, bind our hearts and hands together. We hope together. We grieve together. We call for accountability together. We rebuild together. We get there, together.

I write this on Wednesday evening, as colleagues and communities here in Portland and across the nation are gathering in vigil and lament to grieve the killing of legal observer Renee Nicole Good by immigration enforcement agents in Minneapolis on Wednesday morning.

Bystander videos circulated to my inbox by early afternoon, showing the unnecessary gun violence from the enforcement agent who killed Good as she was driving away. Even more gut wrenching was the nonchalance with which agent reacted to their own use of lethal violence.

It is not the first time a protester has been killed and then lied about by the government. Kent State. Jackson State. We have decades of this history.

It is not the first time someone has been killed in the street by enforcement. Philando Castile. Walter Scott. Tamir Rice. Eric Garner. Michael Brown. George Floyd. Silverio Villegas González. We have lost so many.

And it hurts.

When life is taken, when families are separated, when children are bombed and starved, when dictators oppress, when fires rage, when care is withheld, when our loved ones are sick, when any one of our siblings across the world suffers, it hurts.

It hurts because we know the sacredness of human life; the incredible gift that God has shared with us through each breath we breathe, through the love we are privileged to share, through the grace that is poured out upon each one of us, through the responsibility we have to one another.

“Violence cannot heal violence. We denounce all forms of dictatorship, oppression, and assaults on human dignity—wherever they occur and by whomever they are perpetrated.”

“Across our nation, we are witnessing a troubling willingness to normalize violence as a tool of order and to resist accountability as though it were a threat rather than a safeguard. The church must say clearly: power that is unexamined, unchecked, or unaccountable stands in tension with the way of Jesus Christ.”

These words come from two different bishop’s letters released today, one from the Council of Bishops addressing the events in Venezuela and the other from the bishop of the Minnesota Annual Conference on Good’s death in Minneapolis. 

Bishop Plambeck continues, “this word is spoken not in condemnation, but in love. Love for communities living in fear. Love for institutions that must be called back to their highest purposes. Love for a nation whose soul is shaped, for better or worse, by the choices it makes in moments like these.”

She calls on the congregations of her Annual Conference to be places of refuge and prayer in the days ahead. At First Church, we too are a place and a people of refuge and prayer.

We pray for Los Angeles as they continue to grieve and rebuild.

We pray for Washington, DC as they remember the violence of the insurrection.

We pray for Venezuela, who went from suffering the rule of an authoritarian dictator to the now unknown.

We pray for Gaza, still suffering, still dying, still hungry.

We pray for Renee’s partner and 6-year-old son as they face the impossible all while under the scrutiny of debate as to whether her death was ‘deserved’ or not.

We pray for all who are scared: immigrant families and business owners, terrorized communities, citizens fearing their own country’s use of power.

We pray for the sacredness of human life and the preservation of human dignity.

We pray for freedom from the unconscionable and morally hollow.

We pray for a better tomorrow than today, in my neighborhood and in yours.

We run our fingers across the atlas, feeling its heartbeat, the heartbeat of every beloved human therein.

We pray for humanity
            For compassion
                        For conscience
                                    For justice
                                                For me
                                                            For you

            For peace.
            For peace.
            For peace.

We pray with sighs too deep for words, trusting that the Spirit intercedes, because it hurts everywhere.

We take a breath, and we pray together.  

We pray with our hearts. With our words. With our hands. Our feet. Our votes. Our testimonies. Our activism. Our attention. Our conscience. With the Holy Spirit’s succor, we pray.

And we are not alone. Together, we pray. Together, we persist.

Whatever you are carrying, however you are carrying it, you are not alone. Call each other. Check in on one another. Embrace each other this Sunday.

You are not alone.

With love, and love, and love,
Pastor Karyn