December 20th

I’m going to watch it tomorrow, but this is the thing to say about today. The thing that matters to say about today. Here is a link to Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac speaking earlier today, which was live-streamed from Bethlehem. A year on from his sermon last year, because Christ is Still in the Rubble. I don’t know what to say. I know I am too silent. I don’t know how to begin to talk about bearing hope.

I see Jewish friends in pain, and fear. I see the unspeakable suffering and devastation inflicted on Palestinians. I see my ignorance. I see my silence. I see that I’ve spent almost three weeks talking about bearing hope in comfortable ways, even though I know my own versions of finding hope unbearable. I will look back on this moment and see that I stood by.

Tomorrow evening I’ll watch the video, and maybe have something to share. I have written, and wanted to write, about ways we can bear hope, and ways it is born to us. But there is something else. The ways that we destroy hope. The ways we erode it. The ways we withhold it, hoard it, waste it. The ways we take hope away from the world. I don’t want this to be my story but I can’t ignore the ways in which it is.

Bearing hope, seeking out the ways it is born, even being blunt about it being unbearable, I can say something about, can make some sense of, sometimes. But what sense is there in the days I don’t make hope, don’t bear it into this longest-night world in some way? What words do I wrap that in to make it beautiful?

[Image description: my bare feet standing on stony ground.]