I am confined and cannot escape; my eyes are dim with grief . . .
You have taken from me friend and neighbor — darkness is my closest friend.
(Psalm 88:9;18)

What to say when one’s heart hits a wall as thick and cruel as the apartheid wall that snakes through much of Palestine. A wall of horror that stills the tongue because bearing witness to genocide and sitting with one’s own complicity leads to an awful silence.

Gaza. Four miles by 25 miles, exactly the same size as Detroit.

Imagine you are here in Southwest Detroit and bombs are being dropped. Where would you and your family flee? To Eight Mile? Alter Road? Telegraph?

Imagine incessant bombing for six months in a space the size of Detroit, where 70 percent of the homes have been destroyed. A place where babies, mothers, fathers are shrouded in cement.

Ashes and dust during this Lenten season.

In the United States, the mark of the cross is often the mark of the beast. Ethnic cleansing, war profiteering, genocide sanctioned by twisted theology and wrapped in the American flag.

Jesus loves you, Palestine, for our weapons tell you so.

And have for a very long time.

Imagine, a school like Cass Tech that has almost 2,500 students. Imagine all those students at a school assembly. Now, multiply that number 13 or 14 times to get a sense of the number of dead in Gaza.

Then, let go of numbers and statistics and think of one child.

One pair of shoes. One pink barrette. One journal filled with hearts. One bloody body wrapped in white linen.

Think of all these little ones and their families.

Think of them and lament.

We are at at a place that transcends language.

Silent like an ancient olive tree, weeping, watching, waiting.