Today, I’ll walk, without fear, to the Good Shepherd Anglican Church, and freely make my way through the Stations of the Cross.

In the West Bank, indigenous Palestinian Christians, should they have applied for the few permits available, and gone through the indignity of interrogation, will brave the heavily armed checkpoints, the ritual abuse, and should they escape being arbitrarily being turned back, they’ll worship in Jerusalem, at Christianity’s most holy site. And despite the diminishing numbers of Christians left in the militarized West Bank, despite the horrors, the razing of Gaza, they will pray. For Easter is a time of hope, the timely message that life defeats death. It’s a profound act of resistance in the face of an overwhelming occupying force.

A week before Easter week, as the Israeli “Defence” Force bombed another “humanitarian safe zone,” we marched, we chanted.

What do we want?
Ceasefire.
When do we want it?
Now!

Is this not the most reasonable of demands, a simple request not to be killed?

How many children have to die?
Before you call it genocide.

We chanted for the boy in Gaza, who, when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, said, “Children in Gaza do not get to grow up.”

In our thousands in our millions
We are all Palestinians

Empathy is the ability to wear the clothes, enter the home,
listen to a mother tell the story of her child whose heart burst
from the deafening sound of a 2000 lb. bomb.

Netanyahu you can’t hide
We charge you with genocide

In Hitler’s Germany, the billboards read, “The Jews are our Misfortune.”
In Netanyahu’s circle, the refrain is heard, “There are no innocents in Palestine.”
…and just like that, genocide is justified.

From Canada to Palestine
Occupation is a crime

Slowly, Canada has been reckoning with the atrocities of its colonialist past.
140 years ago, came the North-West Resistance, and Ottawa
looked to the west and hanged Louis Riel for treason.

In Palestine: mass expulsion 76 years ago, leads to 55 years of occupation,
and the creation of the largest open-air prison in the world,
where the IDF regularly “mows the grass,”
and we wonder why a “gang” came to power?

And today, even as the ICJ and the ICC call out the war crimes, name it genocide, Canada still supplies the “settler-colonial” regime (UN) with military goods (see Ploughshares Feb. 24).

(In yesterday’s Canadian Election debate, “Poilievre said the focus should be on defeating Hamas and taking on Iran. He then pivoted to “the rampaging riots targeting Jewish communities” in Canada, an apparent reference to pro-Palestine protests.” Carney wasn’t much better. Only Singh seemed to catch the gravity, and called Canada’s treatment of Palestinians “frankly, disgusting”. And added that Carney has not “acknowledged that what’s going on in Gaza has now clearly become a genocide”)

Every time the media lies
Another child in Gaza dies

I’m guilty. Before reading the 75-year history (by both Jewish and Palestinian historians), I dismissed it as all too complicated.

A willfully ignorant Western media, where all discussions begin with October 7, is convenient for the empire.

The heart that mourns for Palestine, grieves for Gaza,
aches for the West Bank, must also break
for the people of Israel.

It’s the oldest tribal story: the oppressed forget their history,
become the oppressors, become synonymous with their victims,
and lose their soul.

And we are enablers. Weapons suppliers. When the nations of the world (in order, United States, United Kingdom, France, India, Canada, Italy, Serbia, Netherlands) support the live-streamed erasure of an ancient people and their land, deal with the greatest moral issue of our time through political tinkering, the globe stands self-condemned. The earth itself must groan for liberation.

The people who march understand futility.
They chant to preserve some moral fidelity.

---

 

 

I’ve eyed the inland surge of a heavy surf,
and shuddered at the thought of its undertow.

I’ve shivered in a late-summer prairie scene:
bronze waves of wheatgrass,
suddenly chromed by a charge of lightning.

But today I hear the thunder of edict and order,
the chilling spray of manifesto, as from a winter ocean;
and I’m driven to consider the particular valour
of .33 percent of our population—

the everyday resolve of people who’ve glimpsed
their freedom, felt a germinating joy,
in moving beyond the binary map—

not without turmoil, not without
a complexity of sorrows, most know little about:

and not without stepping into a firing-line of deadly phobias—
the Baptist preacher who wishes them “shot in the back,”
the Christian congressman crying, “demons,” “mutants,”
and the calmer, more efficient legislators,
who “only know of two genders.” All useful ammo
for a barrage of policies aiming to eliminate trans folk.

I claim to follow the light of the world,
but today I feel some excrescence in me
advancing to match the hate I see.

And when I say, “I follow the way of a shepherd,”
I find within, a brewing animosity to Christianity,
its use now, as an exclusionary force.

I read, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst
after righteousness,” and I’m filled with indignation
at a so-called “…nation under God.”

I contemplate salt and light, a lamp on a hill,
…and then recall sitting in a coffee shop,
while at a table across the isle, whole communities
of the human family were whittled away
under the razor chatter of the willfully ignorant, and I,
throwing my stones of silence, became a lie.

All this talk and intention, and in moment,
I’m just a twin, hating, yet furtively wearing
the coordinate clothes of empire.

Shall I strike my own cheek? turn the other,
expose the slack mouth of my complicity?

How will I learn to lock arms with those who refuse to bow,
who stand in the light of their own right to be?
Will I wait until they come for me?

I know every brewing storm carries the seed of its own demise,
but what does one do in a series of storms?

I know, “Blessed are the pure in heart,” is not
for the faint of heart, “for they will see God,” not in
some future rapture, but in the here-now faces of the erased,
the locked-out, the deported.

I know every act of resistance carries no guarantee
other than the pain it invites. No guarantee,
other than the soul it ignites. No guarantee,
other than retaining our humanity.

 

 

The time has arrived to walk to the river,
twos and threes, with our tea candles cupped,
melted onto tiny boats of birch bark.

And beneath the bowed and grieving trees,
kneel at the edge, release our tenuous fires
to the water’s flow, watch our loose rosary
of lights, form a luminous line and sail
around the dawning bend.

 

 

I’ve heard the advice about learning to forgive yourself,
good advice, and indispensable as ibuprofen.
I’ve had occasion to forgive myself,
but I’ve not really had to learn.
A privilege of growing up loved. And a mixed blessing:
for when it comes to affection, I expect more
than I deserve.

Mom, you died before I thought to ask
about the clothes you gave me to wear,
and the patches sewn on:
like the comfortable orthodoxy of heaven,
or faith in the labour of unseen angels.

Or like silence—
being the best way to settle arguments.
I picked that up; used it as a sidearm,
carried it for too many years.

Or like the artful swerve in you,
your open yawn, meeting your sister’s gossip.

Or the unexpected fire beneath your serenity.
The way you slowly turned away from the pot,
your back to the stove, looked across the family table,
and the history of patriarchy—and much else—
withered in your gaze.
And though you turned back to stirring the gravy,
it was a flash—now featured in the halls of justice.

I could never find the right word,
for your kind of loneliness, or was that simply the sigh
between your 1000 tasks?

And while you had words for me—
for my ability to out-disappoint your other children,
every time I come to write the words tender,
understanding, there you are.

Thank you, for the security of your kitchen, where
I’ve secretly watched for your own hidden wings.
Thank you for the eternal grip of your smile,
which I’ve never doubted, which has spoiled me,
yet fitted me for the long haul: living
with the unresolved, finding sufficiency
in what’s incomplete, and how not having
everything I want is part of being happy.

Today, in the mortuary of Christianity,
where nations jockey for Jesus, arm themselves with God,
I thank you for your bannerless faith, where I remain
a believer in your kind of Christ—
a small kingdom of goodness and mercy, taking root,
and humming beneath the surfaces of the world.