Message to the Body, Given at Worship

by Omen Weaver
Powell House

Fellow Quakers, friends big and small, youth and elder alike, I stand before you this morning with a heavy heart. I stand before you with a difficult message, one that is rooted deep within spirit. I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said today and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest. This Body has enabled the voices who are the loudest, yet represent barely a fraction of our number, to disallow the betterment of our community in its goal towards a more justice invested future. What is happening in Gaza is genocide. Yes, genocide! And the monster screaming the loudest, the monster who will come for us all, is the American government. An institution that has participated in the mass murder and irreparable erasure of several peoples. We CANNOT permit ourselves to be complicit, as our Quaker ancestors were with the indigenous communities that inhabited these lands first. We are called to see the light in ALL. Not simply to select who is worthy of having spirit. Friends, as we bear witness to the abject atrocities subjected to a country whose population was 47% children, I implore you to seek out these vital truths so that history is not permitted to repeat itself.