#peace-witness — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #peace-witness, aggregated by home.social.
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The Sabbath Sabotage
They told us
holiness was neat,
pressed flat like Sunday clothes,
folded into bulletins,
spoken in indoor voices,
kept safely between hymns
and handshakes.
They told us
Sabbath was a soft thing,
a nap for the soul,
a gentle pause
before returning
to the holy machinery
of earning, buying, proving, becoming.
But Sabbath was never safe.
Sabbath is a wrench
thrown into Pharaoh’s gears.
A door barred against the market.
A candle lit
in defiance of the floodlights.
A refusal
to kneel before the stopwatch.
A holy no
rising like thunder
from tired bones.
Six days, they say,
you shall labor.
And the seventh?
The seventh is mutiny.
The seventh day
the fields are not your masters.
The ledgers do not own your name.
The inbox may howl
like a beast outside the gate,
but you will not feed it.
The empire counts bricks.
Sabbath counts blessings.
The empire demands output.
Sabbath gathers manna
and says, enough.
Enough for today.
Enough for this body.
Enough for this earth.
Enough for a life
that was never meant
to be fed into furnaces
just to keep the towers warm.
Sabbath is not laziness.
It is revolt
with bread on the table.
It is trust
with dirt under the fingernails.
It is the slave
remembering he is human.
The widow
remembering she is seen.
The ox
remembering grass.
The land
remembering how to breathe.
And maybe that is why
they sabotage Sabbath.
Because rest breaks rank.
Because silence interrupts slogans.
Because delight cannot be monetized forever.
Because a people
who learn to stop
may also learn
they can refuse.
Refuse the lie
that worth is measured in production.
Refuse the sermon
of profit without mercy.
Refuse the fear
that if we cease for one day
the world will fall apart—
as though we were the ones
holding up the stars.
No.
Sabbath is the admission
that we are not God,
and the miracle
that God is still good.
So let the engines choke.
Let the schedules stutter.
Let the tyrants call it weakness.
Let the anxious call it waste.
Let the merchants stand bewildered
before shuttered stalls
and unhurried hearts.
For this is the sabotage:
to rest in a restless world,
to feast in a famine of joy,
to loosen your fist
when all of history
has trained it to clench.
To stop.
To breathe.
To bless.
To remember
that we were not made
for endless extraction,
but for communion—
with God,
with neighbor,
with creature,
with soil,
with our own forgotten souls.
And so, on the seventh day,
we commit our small rebellion:
we light candles against consumption,
set tables against despair,
sing psalms against the grind,
and call this shattered life
still sacred.
This is no small thing.
This is how the kingdom enters:
not always with trumpets,
but with napping children,
unbought hours,
shared bread,
and a people audacious enough
to believe
that the world can turn
without their frantic striving.
Blessed are the saboteurs of empire.
Blessed are the keepers of Sabbath.
Blessed are the tired
who lay their burden down
and find, beneath the weight of all they carried,
a joy the masters could not confiscate.
For every Sabbath kept
is a crack in the idol.
Every prayer whispered at rest
is a seed beneath the pavement.
Every holy pause
is a hammer blow
against the myth
that Caesar owns time.
He does not.
The clock does not.
The market does not.
Time belongs to God.
And God,
in mercy,
has given some of it back to us.
#AntiWar #biblicalImagination #ChristianPoetry #ChristianReflection #empireCritique #faithAndJustice #holyResistance #Nonviolence #peace #peaceWitness #propheticImagination #propheticPoetry #resistanceToEmpire #restAsRebellion #Sabbath #SabbathAsResistance #SabbathRest #SabbathSabotage #sacredRest #spiritualResistance #SpokenWord #steampunkArt #symbolicArt #theologyOfRest #warMachine -
The Sabbath Sabotage
They told us
holiness was neat,
pressed flat like Sunday clothes,
folded into bulletins,
spoken in indoor voices,
kept safely between hymns
and handshakes.
They told us
Sabbath was a soft thing,
a nap for the soul,
a gentle pause
before returning
to the holy machinery
of earning, buying, proving, becoming.
But Sabbath was never safe.
Sabbath is a wrench
thrown into Pharaoh’s gears.
A door barred against the market.
A candle lit
in defiance of the floodlights.
A refusal
to kneel before the stopwatch.
A holy no
rising like thunder
from tired bones.
Six days, they say,
you shall labor.
And the seventh?
The seventh is mutiny.
The seventh day
the fields are not your masters.
The ledgers do not own your name.
The inbox may howl
like a beast outside the gate,
but you will not feed it.
The empire counts bricks.
Sabbath counts blessings.
The empire demands output.
Sabbath gathers manna
and says, enough.
Enough for today.
Enough for this body.
Enough for this earth.
Enough for a life
that was never meant
to be fed into furnaces
just to keep the towers warm.
Sabbath is not laziness.
It is revolt
with bread on the table.
It is trust
with dirt under the fingernails.
It is the slave
remembering he is human.
The widow
remembering she is seen.
The ox
remembering grass.
The land
remembering how to breathe.
And maybe that is why
they sabotage Sabbath.
Because rest breaks rank.
Because silence interrupts slogans.
Because delight cannot be monetized forever.
Because a people
who learn to stop
may also learn
they can refuse.
Refuse the lie
that worth is measured in production.
Refuse the sermon
of profit without mercy.
Refuse the fear
that if we cease for one day
the world will fall apart—
as though we were the ones
holding up the stars.
No.
Sabbath is the admission
that we are not God,
and the miracle
that God is still good.
So let the engines choke.
Let the schedules stutter.
Let the tyrants call it weakness.
Let the anxious call it waste.
Let the merchants stand bewildered
before shuttered stalls
and unhurried hearts.
For this is the sabotage:
to rest in a restless world,
to feast in a famine of joy,
to loosen your fist
when all of history
has trained it to clench.
To stop.
To breathe.
To bless.
To remember
that we were not made
for endless extraction,
but for communion—
with God,
with neighbor,
with creature,
with soil,
with our own forgotten souls.
And so, on the seventh day,
we commit our small rebellion:
we light candles against consumption,
set tables against despair,
sing psalms against the grind,
and call this shattered life
still sacred.
This is no small thing.
This is how the kingdom enters:
not always with trumpets,
but with napping children,
unbought hours,
shared bread,
and a people audacious enough
to believe
that the world can turn
without their frantic striving.
Blessed are the saboteurs of empire.
Blessed are the keepers of Sabbath.
Blessed are the tired
who lay their burden down
and find, beneath the weight of all they carried,
a joy the masters could not confiscate.
For every Sabbath kept
is a crack in the idol.
Every prayer whispered at rest
is a seed beneath the pavement.
Every holy pause
is a hammer blow
against the myth
that Caesar owns time.
He does not.
The clock does not.
The market does not.
Time belongs to God.
And God,
in mercy,
has given some of it back to us.
#AntiWar #biblicalImagination #ChristianPoetry #ChristianReflection #empireCritique #faithAndJustice #holyResistance #Nonviolence #peace #peaceWitness #propheticImagination #propheticPoetry #resistanceToEmpire #restAsRebellion #Sabbath #SabbathAsResistance #SabbathRest #SabbathSabotage #sacredRest #spiritualResistance #SpokenWord #steampunkArt #symbolicArt #theologyOfRest #warMachine -
The Sabbath Sabotage
They told us
holiness was neat,
pressed flat like Sunday clothes,
folded into bulletins,
spoken in indoor voices,
kept safely between hymns
and handshakes.
They told us
Sabbath was a soft thing,
a nap for the soul,
a gentle pause
before returning
to the holy machinery
of earning, buying, proving, becoming.
But Sabbath was never safe.
Sabbath is a wrench
thrown into Pharaoh’s gears.
A door barred against the market.
A candle lit
in defiance of the floodlights.
A refusal
to kneel before the stopwatch.
A holy no
rising like thunder
from tired bones.
Six days, they say,
you shall labor.
And the seventh?
The seventh is mutiny.
The seventh day
the fields are not your masters.
The ledgers do not own your name.
The inbox may howl
like a beast outside the gate,
but you will not feed it.
The empire counts bricks.
Sabbath counts blessings.
The empire demands output.
Sabbath gathers manna
and says, enough.
Enough for today.
Enough for this body.
Enough for this earth.
Enough for a life
that was never meant
to be fed into furnaces
just to keep the towers warm.
Sabbath is not laziness.
It is revolt
with bread on the table.
It is trust
with dirt under the fingernails.
It is the slave
remembering he is human.
The widow
remembering she is seen.
The ox
remembering grass.
The land
remembering how to breathe.
And maybe that is why
they sabotage Sabbath.
Because rest breaks rank.
Because silence interrupts slogans.
Because delight cannot be monetized forever.
Because a people
who learn to stop
may also learn
they can refuse.
Refuse the lie
that worth is measured in production.
Refuse the sermon
of profit without mercy.
Refuse the fear
that if we cease for one day
the world will fall apart—
as though we were the ones
holding up the stars.
No.
Sabbath is the admission
that we are not God,
and the miracle
that God is still good.
So let the engines choke.
Let the schedules stutter.
Let the tyrants call it weakness.
Let the anxious call it waste.
Let the merchants stand bewildered
before shuttered stalls
and unhurried hearts.
For this is the sabotage:
to rest in a restless world,
to feast in a famine of joy,
to loosen your fist
when all of history
has trained it to clench.
To stop.
To breathe.
To bless.
To remember
that we were not made
for endless extraction,
but for communion—
with God,
with neighbor,
with creature,
with soil,
with our own forgotten souls.
And so, on the seventh day,
we commit our small rebellion:
we light candles against consumption,
set tables against despair,
sing psalms against the grind,
and call this shattered life
still sacred.
This is no small thing.
This is how the kingdom enters:
not always with trumpets,
but with napping children,
unbought hours,
shared bread,
and a people audacious enough
to believe
that the world can turn
without their frantic striving.
Blessed are the saboteurs of empire.
Blessed are the keepers of Sabbath.
Blessed are the tired
who lay their burden down
and find, beneath the weight of all they carried,
a joy the masters could not confiscate.
For every Sabbath kept
is a crack in the idol.
Every prayer whispered at rest
is a seed beneath the pavement.
Every holy pause
is a hammer blow
against the myth
that Caesar owns time.
He does not.
The clock does not.
The market does not.
Time belongs to God.
And God,
in mercy,
has given some of it back to us.
#AntiWar #biblicalImagination #ChristianPoetry #ChristianReflection #empireCritique #faithAndJustice #holyResistance #Nonviolence #peace #peaceWitness #propheticImagination #propheticPoetry #resistanceToEmpire #restAsRebellion #Sabbath #SabbathAsResistance #SabbathRest #SabbathSabotage #sacredRest #spiritualResistance #SpokenWord #steampunkArt #symbolicArt #theologyOfRest #warMachine -
The Sabbath Sabotage
They told us
holiness was neat,
pressed flat like Sunday clothes,
folded into bulletins,
spoken in indoor voices,
kept safely between hymns
and handshakes.
They told us
Sabbath was a soft thing,
a nap for the soul,
a gentle pause
before returning
to the holy machinery
of earning, buying, proving, becoming.
But Sabbath was never safe.
Sabbath is a wrench
thrown into Pharaoh’s gears.
A door barred against the market.
A candle lit
in defiance of the floodlights.
A refusal
to kneel before the stopwatch.
A holy no
rising like thunder
from tired bones.
Six days, they say,
you shall labor.
And the seventh?
The seventh is mutiny.
The seventh day
the fields are not your masters.
The ledgers do not own your name.
The inbox may howl
like a beast outside the gate,
but you will not feed it.
The empire counts bricks.
Sabbath counts blessings.
The empire demands output.
Sabbath gathers manna
and says, enough.
Enough for today.
Enough for this body.
Enough for this earth.
Enough for a life
that was never meant
to be fed into furnaces
just to keep the towers warm.
Sabbath is not laziness.
It is revolt
with bread on the table.
It is trust
with dirt under the fingernails.
It is the slave
remembering he is human.
The widow
remembering she is seen.
The ox
remembering grass.
The land
remembering how to breathe.
And maybe that is why
they sabotage Sabbath.
Because rest breaks rank.
Because silence interrupts slogans.
Because delight cannot be monetized forever.
Because a people
who learn to stop
may also learn
they can refuse.
Refuse the lie
that worth is measured in production.
Refuse the sermon
of profit without mercy.
Refuse the fear
that if we cease for one day
the world will fall apart—
as though we were the ones
holding up the stars.
No.
Sabbath is the admission
that we are not God,
and the miracle
that God is still good.
So let the engines choke.
Let the schedules stutter.
Let the tyrants call it weakness.
Let the anxious call it waste.
Let the merchants stand bewildered
before shuttered stalls
and unhurried hearts.
For this is the sabotage:
to rest in a restless world,
to feast in a famine of joy,
to loosen your fist
when all of history
has trained it to clench.
To stop.
To breathe.
To bless.
To remember
that we were not made
for endless extraction,
but for communion—
with God,
with neighbor,
with creature,
with soil,
with our own forgotten souls.
And so, on the seventh day,
we commit our small rebellion:
we light candles against consumption,
set tables against despair,
sing psalms against the grind,
and call this shattered life
still sacred.
This is no small thing.
This is how the kingdom enters:
not always with trumpets,
but with napping children,
unbought hours,
shared bread,
and a people audacious enough
to believe
that the world can turn
without their frantic striving.
Blessed are the saboteurs of empire.
Blessed are the keepers of Sabbath.
Blessed are the tired
who lay their burden down
and find, beneath the weight of all they carried,
a joy the masters could not confiscate.
For every Sabbath kept
is a crack in the idol.
Every prayer whispered at rest
is a seed beneath the pavement.
Every holy pause
is a hammer blow
against the myth
that Caesar owns time.
He does not.
The clock does not.
The market does not.
Time belongs to God.
And God,
in mercy,
has given some of it back to us.
#AntiWar #biblicalImagination #ChristianPoetry #ChristianReflection #empireCritique #faithAndJustice #holyResistance #Nonviolence #peace #peaceWitness #propheticImagination #propheticPoetry #resistanceToEmpire #restAsRebellion #Sabbath #SabbathAsResistance #SabbathRest #SabbathSabotage #sacredRest #spiritualResistance #SpokenWord #steampunkArt #symbolicArt #theologyOfRest #warMachine -
The Hemorrh Age
We live now
in the Hemorrh Age,not the age of honest wounds
tended by trembling hands,
not the age of scars
that speak of healing,
but the age of the open vein,
the praised rupture,
the sanctified split.Everything is torn
and taught to remain torn.The old ligaments of neighborliness,
frayed.
The sinews of patience,
snapped.
The small capillaries of mercy
burst one by one
beneath the pressure
of opinion, spectacle, grievance, noise.We are leaking.
Trust runs into the street.
Language pools beneath the door.
Truth is carried away
on a thousand little red channels
no one bothers to close.And everywhere
the merchants of division
move among us
with clean white gloves,
smiling,
holding their polished instruments,
whispering that this incision
is necessary,
that this cut is clarity,
that this tearing apart
is what it means
to be awake.They call hemorrhage conviction.
They call hatred discernment.
They call contempt wisdom.
They call cruelty a kind
of courage.And we, half-dizzy,
half-devout,
watching our common life
soak through the bandages,
mistake the spreading stain
for a flag.Even the holy things
are not spared.Altars become platforms.
Prayer becomes signal.
Prophets are drafted
into factions.
The wounds of the world
are trimmed and displayed
for effect.
Compassion is made to perform
beneath bright lights
until it no longer knows
how to touch a body
without first finding a camera.How strange,
that a people can perish
not by a single blow
but by endless bleeding.
Not by invasion
but by laceration from within.
Not by silence
but by the shriek
of everyone opening
everyone else.We have become
students of severing.
Apprentices of fracture.
Curators of the unsutured.Every difference
a knife.
Every slight
a blade returned.
Every memory
reopened.
Every sorrow
milked for more.No one asks now
how to heal a wound.
Only how to name it,
frame it,
share it,
weaponize it,
keep it wet.And still—
still somewhere beneath
this failing body,
beneath the fevered rhetoric,
beneath the hot blush
of tribal wrath,
some quiet stubborn tissue
tries to knit.A hand reaches.
A voice lowers.
A stranger refuses
the sweet narcotic
of contempt.
Someone binds what they did not tear.
Someone stays near
what others abandoned.
Someone chooses
not victory,
but mending.Perhaps that is how
an age survives itself.Not by denying blood.
Not by pretending
there was never injury.
But by kneeling at last
beside the opened body
and saying:Enough.
Let the wound close.
Let the pressure ease.
Let mercy return
to the smallest vessels.
Let the torn muscle remember
its first design.
Let us become again
something more than our bleeding.For if this is
the Hemorrh Age,
then let there also rise
against it
the tender and stubborn saints
of suturing,the keepers of bandages,
#civicDecay #collectiveTrauma #commonGood #cultureOfContempt #division #HemorrhAge #mediaManipulation #mending #Mercy #neighborliness #outrageCulture #peaceWitness #Poetry #polarization #politicalSpectacle #propheticArt #publicDiscourse #Reconciliation #SocialFragmentation #socialHealing #SpiritualReflection #Tribalism #woundedSociety
the washers of torn flesh,
the enemies of spectacle,
the last believers
that a body
still can heal. -
Who Will Be Romero Today?
Romero Rally Flyer 1990On this day we remember Archbishop Óscar Romero, murdered on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass. The church remembers him not simply as a tragic victim, but as a martyr whose blood was joined to the blood of the people he refused to abandon. Vatican sources still name him what so many already knew him to be in life: a “voice of the voiceless,” assassinated at the altar because he would not stop speaking for the poor.
Romero was killed soon after one of the most fearless sermons of the twentieth century. Addressing soldiers and police, he said that they were killing their own campesino brothers and sisters, and that God’s law stood above the commands of violent men: “Thou shalt not kill.” He declared that no soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God, and he ended with that thunderous plea: “In the name of God… cease the repression!”
That is why Romero remains dangerous. He did not speak in abstractions. He did not bless power from a safe distance. He did not soothe the conscience of empire. He named the sin directly. He named the victims directly. He named the moral responsibility of those ordered to carry out injustice. And for that, he was silenced by a bullet at the altar. Yet even in death he was not silenced, because martyrdom is a form of speech the powers of this world do not know how to answer.
Ten years later, in 1990, his name was still summoning people into the streets. The flyer for the Washington march commemorating Romero’s assassination called for an end to U.S. war in Central America, a march from the Capitol to the White House, and even nonviolent civil disobedience after the rally. It named the demands plainly: end U.S. aid to El Salvador, withdraw U.S. advisers, stop repressing the people, end the war against Nicaragua, lift the trade embargo, normalize relations. That call was real, and it was public. It survives in archival collections even now.
And I remember that day not as a line in a history book but as something lived in the body. Ten years after Romero’s assassination, I was arrested outside the White House after I and other activists built a miniature Central American village there. We were trying, in our small and vulnerable way, to make visible what policy papers and patriotic speeches tried to hide: villages, families, campesinos, the poor, the disappeared, the threatened, the dead. We were insisting that Central America was not a chessboard for Washington, but a place of human beings made in the image of God.
Read the rest of the essay at PeaceGrooves.
#AntiWar #ArchbishopRomero #assassination #ÓscarRomero #campesinos #CentralAmerica #ChristianPeacemaking #ChurchAndState #civilDisobedience #ElSalvador #ElSalvadorCivilWar #faithAndPolitics #humanRights #immigrantJustice #Immigration #Justice #LiberationTheology #Martyr #martyrdom #Mercy #Nicaragua #Nonviolence #peaceWitness #propheticWitness #Refugees #remembrance #Romero #Sermon #solidarity #USForeignPolicy #USIntervention #WhiteHouseProtest -
Who Will Be Romero Today?
Romero Rally Flyer 1990On this day we remember Archbishop Óscar Romero, murdered on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass. The church remembers him not simply as a tragic victim, but as a martyr whose blood was joined to the blood of the people he refused to abandon. Vatican sources still name him what so many already knew him to be in life: a “voice of the voiceless,” assassinated at the altar because he would not stop speaking for the poor.
Romero was killed soon after one of the most fearless sermons of the twentieth century. Addressing soldiers and police, he said that they were killing their own campesino brothers and sisters, and that God’s law stood above the commands of violent men: “Thou shalt not kill.” He declared that no soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God, and he ended with that thunderous plea: “In the name of God… cease the repression!”
That is why Romero remains dangerous. He did not speak in abstractions. He did not bless power from a safe distance. He did not soothe the conscience of empire. He named the sin directly. He named the victims directly. He named the moral responsibility of those ordered to carry out injustice. And for that, he was silenced by a bullet at the altar. Yet even in death he was not silenced, because martyrdom is a form of speech the powers of this world do not know how to answer.
Ten years later, in 1990, his name was still summoning people into the streets. The flyer for the Washington march commemorating Romero’s assassination called for an end to U.S. war in Central America, a march from the Capitol to the White House, and even nonviolent civil disobedience after the rally. It named the demands plainly: end U.S. aid to El Salvador, withdraw U.S. advisers, stop repressing the people, end the war against Nicaragua, lift the trade embargo, normalize relations. That call was real, and it was public. It survives in archival collections even now.
And I remember that day not as a line in a history book but as something lived in the body. Ten years after Romero’s assassination, I was arrested outside the White House after I and other activists built a miniature Central American village there. We were trying, in our small and vulnerable way, to make visible what policy papers and patriotic speeches tried to hide: villages, families, campesinos, the poor, the disappeared, the threatened, the dead. We were insisting that Central America was not a chessboard for Washington, but a place of human beings made in the image of God.
Read the rest of the essay at PeaceGrooves.
#AntiWar #ArchbishopRomero #assassination #ÓscarRomero #campesinos #CentralAmerica #ChristianPeacemaking #ChurchAndState #civilDisobedience #ElSalvador #ElSalvadorCivilWar #faithAndPolitics #humanRights #immigrantJustice #Immigration #Justice #LiberationTheology #Martyr #martyrdom #Mercy #Nicaragua #Nonviolence #peaceWitness #propheticWitness #Refugees #remembrance #Romero #Sermon #solidarity #USForeignPolicy #USIntervention #WhiteHouseProtest -
Who Will Be Romero Today?
Romero Rally Flyer 1990On this day we remember Archbishop Óscar Romero, murdered on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass. The church remembers him not simply as a tragic victim, but as a martyr whose blood was joined to the blood of the people he refused to abandon. Vatican sources still name him what so many already knew him to be in life: a “voice of the voiceless,” assassinated at the altar because he would not stop speaking for the poor.
Romero was killed soon after one of the most fearless sermons of the twentieth century. Addressing soldiers and police, he said that they were killing their own campesino brothers and sisters, and that God’s law stood above the commands of violent men: “Thou shalt not kill.” He declared that no soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God, and he ended with that thunderous plea: “In the name of God… cease the repression!”
That is why Romero remains dangerous. He did not speak in abstractions. He did not bless power from a safe distance. He did not soothe the conscience of empire. He named the sin directly. He named the victims directly. He named the moral responsibility of those ordered to carry out injustice. And for that, he was silenced by a bullet at the altar. Yet even in death he was not silenced, because martyrdom is a form of speech the powers of this world do not know how to answer.
Ten years later, in 1990, his name was still summoning people into the streets. The flyer for the Washington march commemorating Romero’s assassination called for an end to U.S. war in Central America, a march from the Capitol to the White House, and even nonviolent civil disobedience after the rally. It named the demands plainly: end U.S. aid to El Salvador, withdraw U.S. advisers, stop repressing the people, end the war against Nicaragua, lift the trade embargo, normalize relations. That call was real, and it was public. It survives in archival collections even now.
And I remember that day not as a line in a history book but as something lived in the body. Ten years after Romero’s assassination, I was arrested outside the White House after I and other activists built a miniature Central American village there. We were trying, in our small and vulnerable way, to make visible what policy papers and patriotic speeches tried to hide: villages, families, campesinos, the poor, the disappeared, the threatened, the dead. We were insisting that Central America was not a chessboard for Washington, but a place of human beings made in the image of God.
Read the rest of the essay at PeaceGrooves.
#AntiWar #ArchbishopRomero #assassination #ÓscarRomero #campesinos #CentralAmerica #ChristianPeacemaking #ChurchAndState #civilDisobedience #ElSalvador #ElSalvadorCivilWar #faithAndPolitics #humanRights #immigrantJustice #Immigration #Justice #LiberationTheology #Martyr #martyrdom #Mercy #Nicaragua #Nonviolence #peaceWitness #propheticWitness #Refugees #remembrance #Romero #Sermon #solidarity #USForeignPolicy #USIntervention #WhiteHouseProtest -
Who Will Be Romero Today?
Romero Rally Flyer 1990On this day we remember Archbishop Óscar Romero, murdered on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass. The church remembers him not simply as a tragic victim, but as a martyr whose blood was joined to the blood of the people he refused to abandon. Vatican sources still name him what so many already knew him to be in life: a “voice of the voiceless,” assassinated at the altar because he would not stop speaking for the poor.
Romero was killed soon after one of the most fearless sermons of the twentieth century. Addressing soldiers and police, he said that they were killing their own campesino brothers and sisters, and that God’s law stood above the commands of violent men: “Thou shalt not kill.” He declared that no soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God, and he ended with that thunderous plea: “In the name of God… cease the repression!”
That is why Romero remains dangerous. He did not speak in abstractions. He did not bless power from a safe distance. He did not soothe the conscience of empire. He named the sin directly. He named the victims directly. He named the moral responsibility of those ordered to carry out injustice. And for that, he was silenced by a bullet at the altar. Yet even in death he was not silenced, because martyrdom is a form of speech the powers of this world do not know how to answer.
Ten years later, in 1990, his name was still summoning people into the streets. The flyer for the Washington march commemorating Romero’s assassination called for an end to U.S. war in Central America, a march from the Capitol to the White House, and even nonviolent civil disobedience after the rally. It named the demands plainly: end U.S. aid to El Salvador, withdraw U.S. advisers, stop repressing the people, end the war against Nicaragua, lift the trade embargo, normalize relations. That call was real, and it was public. It survives in archival collections even now.
And I remember that day not as a line in a history book but as something lived in the body. Ten years after Romero’s assassination, I was arrested outside the White House after I and other activists built a miniature Central American village there. We were trying, in our small and vulnerable way, to make visible what policy papers and patriotic speeches tried to hide: villages, families, campesinos, the poor, the disappeared, the threatened, the dead. We were insisting that Central America was not a chessboard for Washington, but a place of human beings made in the image of God.
Read the rest of the essay at PeaceGrooves.
#AntiWar #ArchbishopRomero #assassination #ÓscarRomero #campesinos #CentralAmerica #ChristianPeacemaking #ChurchAndState #civilDisobedience #ElSalvador #ElSalvadorCivilWar #faithAndPolitics #humanRights #immigrantJustice #Immigration #Justice #LiberationTheology #Martyr #martyrdom #Mercy #Nicaragua #Nonviolence #peaceWitness #propheticWitness #Refugees #remembrance #Romero #Sermon #solidarity #USForeignPolicy #USIntervention #WhiteHouseProtest -
Who Will Be Romero Today?
Romero Rally Flyer 1990On this day we remember Archbishop Óscar Romero, murdered on March 24, 1980, while celebrating Mass. The church remembers him not simply as a tragic victim, but as a martyr whose blood was joined to the blood of the people he refused to abandon. Vatican sources still name him what so many already knew him to be in life: a “voice of the voiceless,” assassinated at the altar because he would not stop speaking for the poor.
Romero was killed soon after one of the most fearless sermons of the twentieth century. Addressing soldiers and police, he said that they were killing their own campesino brothers and sisters, and that God’s law stood above the commands of violent men: “Thou shalt not kill.” He declared that no soldier is obliged to obey an order against the law of God, and he ended with that thunderous plea: “In the name of God… cease the repression!”
That is why Romero remains dangerous. He did not speak in abstractions. He did not bless power from a safe distance. He did not soothe the conscience of empire. He named the sin directly. He named the victims directly. He named the moral responsibility of those ordered to carry out injustice. And for that, he was silenced by a bullet at the altar. Yet even in death he was not silenced, because martyrdom is a form of speech the powers of this world do not know how to answer.
Ten years later, in 1990, his name was still summoning people into the streets. The flyer for the Washington march commemorating Romero’s assassination called for an end to U.S. war in Central America, a march from the Capitol to the White House, and even nonviolent civil disobedience after the rally. It named the demands plainly: end U.S. aid to El Salvador, withdraw U.S. advisers, stop repressing the people, end the war against Nicaragua, lift the trade embargo, normalize relations. That call was real, and it was public. It survives in archival collections even now.
And I remember that day not as a line in a history book but as something lived in the body. Ten years after Romero’s assassination, I was arrested outside the White House after I and other activists built a miniature Central American village there. We were trying, in our small and vulnerable way, to make visible what policy papers and patriotic speeches tried to hide: villages, families, campesinos, the poor, the disappeared, the threatened, the dead. We were insisting that Central America was not a chessboard for Washington, but a place of human beings made in the image of God.
Read the rest of the essay at PeaceGrooves.
#AntiWar #ArchbishopRomero #assassination #ÓscarRomero #campesinos #CentralAmerica #ChristianPeacemaking #ChurchAndState #civilDisobedience #ElSalvador #ElSalvadorCivilWar #faithAndPolitics #humanRights #immigrantJustice #Immigration #Justice #LiberationTheology #Martyr #martyrdom #Mercy #Nicaragua #Nonviolence #peaceWitness #propheticWitness #Refugees #remembrance #Romero #Sermon #solidarity #USForeignPolicy #USIntervention #WhiteHouseProtest