Interrupted and Subverted

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By Dean Hammer, on the Feast of the Massacre of the Holy Innocents (on the 135th anniversary of the Massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890)

This year’s Prayer Service and Nonviolent Witness at the Pentagon on Dec. 29th  commemorates the Feast of the Massacre of the Holy Innocents—past and present. This day is also the anniversary of the “Wounded Knee Massacre,” where nearly 300 Lakota were killed by U.S. Army soldiers on that day in 1890. The Feast of the Holy Innocents recalls Herod’s retribution against the Jewish population–seeking to destroy Jesus and all male Jewish children in Bethlehem (two years old and younger), who represent a threat to his imperial power. Jesus’ earliest years as a refugee link the biblical story (Matthew 2:16–18) to the current state sanctioned atrocities by the U.S government against people seeking sanctuary and their advocates. The witness is sponsored by the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, carrying forward the Atlantic Life Community’s ongoing witness at the Pentagon on the Feast of the Innocents since 1975.

The prayer service at the Pentagon is offered in the context of our dire times and the piercing question: Can the juggernaut of untethered corruption and mass violence be interrupted and subverted? Alligator Alcatraz, United States support for mass killing atrocities in Gaza, thousands of people in the US arrested and deported (many to unknown destinations and torture prisons) without due process, and millions of US citizens threatened with the loss of food, housing, and medical care: a dystopian time with incomprehensible suffering. The core beliefs, attitudes, values, and actions of Make America Great Again leaders and followers have fueled a degeneration of democracy in the U.S. at breakneck speed.

Paul Hawken reflects in Blessed Unrest (2007) how the largest movement to save the planet is restoring grace, justice, and beauty to the world. In this way, the Pentagon witness on Dec. 29th joins with the spirit of the Sumud Flotilla (bringing lifesaving aid and civilian protection to Gaza), and the Palestine Action (a UK pro-Palestinian direct action group, currently involved in a significant hunger strike by imprisoned members, protesting detention conditions and demanding release). Sumud is an Arabic word meaning steadfastness or perseverance, deeply rooted in Palestinian culture as a powerful form of nonviolent resistance and resilience against oppression and violence. Embracing an unwavering commitment to living with integrity and dignity amidst hegemonic power, the community of blessed unrest dares to dream and acts as a nemesis to illegitimate authority. In celebration of steadfast nonviolent witnesses, may we all find ways to honor the Holy Innocents, past and present.

Defiance in the Face of Death

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From Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, a Palestinian pastor from Bethlehem. Reposted from social media (Dec 19, 2025).

Today I had the chance to visit Christmas Lutheran Church, where I served for more than ten years—eight of them as the main pastor. Returning to a place that shaped so much of my life and ministry is never an easy experience. It carries memory, prayer and appreciation.

Under the faithful and courageous leadership of my dear friend Rev. Ashraf Tannous, the church made a deliberate and meaningful decision: to keep Christ in the Rubble—but to place it under the Christmas tree. This old-new crib spoke to me again.

The rubble remains. The broken stones are still there. The Christ child still lies among the rubble, reminding us that God chose not safety, not power, not palaces—but vulnerability and solidarity with the crushed of the earth. And yet now, rising from that rubble, stands a tree – a living tree.

For me, this is a profoundly Palestinian image—and a profoundly Christian one.

Continue reading “Defiance in the Face of Death” →

Come. Watch. Wait. Prepare.

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Tonight, Christians for a Free Palestine will be hosting a virtual community call at 8pmEST. Register here.

Advent! A coming in the middle of endings! Join CFP witnesses and friends from across the country for a time of biblical reflection, action testimony, and ritual reinforcement to conclude the “season of actions” carried out by Solidarity Circle participants. CFP Solidarity Circles across the land have been organizing their voices and bodies enjoining Chevron to cease its support for the continuing Israel-U.S. genocide against Palestinians. The hour and a half will ramp up with sharp commentary provoked by apocalyptic visioning and counsel in the biblical text. It will feature 1st person reportage from the previous week of hands-on protest against fossil fuel complicity with the Gaza genocide, and conclude with worship honoring both grief and resistance. Come, watch, wait, prepare!

Your Dress Would Not Make Anyone Bat An Eyelid

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From Dr. Farah Al-Sharif, a scholar of Islamic Intellectual History, re-posted from her Substack.

Not that I want to give it any airtime, but I had not seen any intelligent responses to this so I felt compelled. I had the misfortune of watching a clip in which rabid Islamophobe Bill Maher is having a discussion with supposed “friend” of Palestine 

Ana Kasparian wherein he slings the typical gendered imperialist tropes of “where in the Middle East could you wear that dress” to which she shrinks and concedes. She agrees “jihadism” is a problem and makes a whimper about “destabilized” societies.

First of all, no one cares about your dress, Ana. I grew up in more than one Westernized postcolonial Arab city and trust me, your dress would not make anyone bat an eyelid. Even if it did, that does not give anyone license for Israelis/Americans to kill, colonize and pillage innocents as they are currently doing.

It is 2025. A genocide has been committed and you are talking about mini skirts?! Could we drop the obsession with womens’ dress? Gazan women have been sniped for their hijabs and they have been mocked for their lingerie by their genociders. Muslim men have shown more tenderness and honor than that decrepit and racist Bill Maher could ever fathom. Maybe Muslim women don’t need to dress provocatively to make a name for themselves and be heard?

Continue reading “Your Dress Would Not Make Anyone Bat An Eyelid” →

The Light Continues to Shine

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment
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An offering from Red Candle, a new organization encouraging Christians to light a red candle during Advent in solidarity with Palestinian liberation. Click here to sign the pledge. Click here to order prints from Palestinian artists. Click here for resources, including a weekly Advent devotional.

American Palestinian Kendra Savusa reflects on her own experience as a peacemaker through this piece – a red candle burning against a black background. It speaks to the loneliness many Palestinians have felt while witnessing this ongoing genocide, and the isolation many advocates have faced within their own communities. Yet the light continues to shine. This candle symbolizes the hope we find in Christ, whose love drives out every darkness and calls us to keep shining, even when it feels lonely.

An Alternative Advent Calendar

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A gift from FOSNA to help us reorient Advent around direct action for Palestine.

🍉 Sun, Nov 30 – Read the Palestinian-led call to BDS. Join the Complicit Corporations campaign (as a community.) Sign the pledge as an individual.

🍉 Mon, Dec 1 – Microsoft is perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid regime and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza – which is why Microsoft is also now priority BDS target. Before the Christmas shopping season, take the pledge to boycott Xbox. Invite a person in your life (who plays Xbox!) to join you.

🍉 Tues, Dec 2 – Eat something you consider to be a treat today. Remind yourself that liberation work is sweet and the revolution ends with dancing.

🍉 Wed, Dec 3 – Listen to Palestinian Christians. Read Kairos Palestine 1, written in 2009.

🍉 Thurs, Dec 4 – Listen to Palestinian or protest music as you put up Christmas decorations.

🍉 Fri, Dec 5 – Look up whose land you’re on: native-land.ca

🍉 Sat, Dec 6 – Watch a Palestinian documentary. Invite someone to join you.

🍉 Sun, Dec 7 – Find the nearest Chevron-linked target near your community on this map. (Note: they are not all gas stations!) Share the story of it with your network this week. Can you imagine a collective action you might participate in together?

🍉 Mon, Dec 8 – Plan a local Boycott Chevron caroling action with friends or family. Not prepared for that stage of action yet? Make a plan to play or share Boycott Chevron carols while hosting people at your house one day in Advent. Plan to discuss what you’ve learned about boycotts with them. (Shout out to our friends at CFP for these awesome caroling action materials!)

🍉 Tues, Dec 9 – Print or adapt these flyers and ask a local community or your favorite local business to pass them out over the Christmas shopping season.

🍉 Wed, Dec 10 – Read Kairos Palestine 2, published Nov 2025.

🍉 Thurs, Dec 11 – Donate to FOSNA, Sabeel, or a mutual aid campaign in Gaza. (Or all three!)

🍉 Fri, Dec 12 – Watch the boycott Chevron training from USCPR.

🍉 Sat, Dec 13 – Watch a Palestinian documentary. Invite someone to join you.

🍉 Sun, Dec 14 – Request with your church’s worship team or leadership that Palestine (not simply “Gaza”) to be added to the prayers of the people on Sunday or Christmas Eve.

🍉 Mon, Dec 15 – Tell Chevron CEO Mike Wirth you’re boycotting Chevron.

🍉 Tues, Dec 16 – Familiarize yourself with discriminatory laws in Israel.

🍉 Wed, Dec 17 – Sticker around your town. (Here are some Boycott Chevron sticker templates!)

🍉 Thurs, Dec 18 – Call/text a friend. Tell them about your direct action Advent experience so far.

🍉 Fri, Dec 19 – Make a list of 5 things you wish every kid in the world had. Begin working toward that world.

🍉 Sat, Dec 20 – Watch a Palestinian documentary. Invite someone to join you.

🍉 Sun, Dec 21 – Join the Freedom Church of the Poor’s Longest Night service tonight (6p ET / 5p CT / 3p PT; join here) or spend a moment in quiet lament for all who we have lost on the way to liberation.

🍉 Mon, Dec 22 – Eat another treat today. Remind yourself that liberation work is STILL sweet.

🍉 Tues, Dec 23 – Write your Congressperson a Christmas card! (Here’s an example to get you started.)

🍉 Wed, Dec 24 – Name Palestine in your local Christmas Eve service. (Get creative! Submit it in a prayer request form. Wear a keffiyeh to worship. Bring it up in conversation with your pastor, leadership board, or congregation.)

🍉 Thurs, Dec 25 – Begin to organize your community (church, town, business) to become Apartheid Free in 2026.

Rosa Parks. 70 Years Later.

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An excerpt from Tommy Airey’s “The Desperate Need for Non-Charismatic People.”

Today marks the 70th anniversary of forty-two-year-old Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on that Jim Crow bus in Alabama. It was not a spontaneous act. It was not a mid-life crisis either. It was the choreographed move of a community conspiring against a system built and maintained by racial segregation.

Rosa Parks was the spark that lit
the 381-day movement wildfire called
the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Rosa Parks was not new to the movement.
Rosa Parks was true to the movement.

In her early twenties, Rosa Parks courageously stood up to a white man attempting to rape her while she was working as a nanny. “If he wanted to kill me and rape a dead body,” she wrote years later, “he was welcome, but he would have to kill me first.”

In her early thirties, despite blatant efforts to threaten and intimidate her, Rosa Parks launched “The Alabama Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor” to defend a 24-year-old Black mother and sharecropper who was gang-raped by six white boys.

In her early forties, a few months before she refused to give up her seat, Rosa Parks attended a two-week training facilitated by Septima Clark at the Highlander School in Tennessee, one of the only places in the South that dared to host integrated meetings.

Highlander was started during the Great Depression by a white man named Myles Horton, a Union Seminary graduate who sought to multiply democratic leadership through the training of what he called “non-charismatic people.”

Myles Horton used this jargon to challenge the wide-spread belief that a just society would only come about when a well-intentioned, good-looking, smooth-talking alpha male was in charge.

Myles Horton knew that mustard seed revolutions spread through well-organized communities of peers, where everyone has a role, especially soft-spoken seamstresses like Rosa Parks and public-school teachers like Septima Clark, whose father was born into slavery.

Myles Horton knew that transformative leadership does not drip down from on high. It percolates from below.

Thanksgiving is Under Occupation

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation2 Comments
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From Nichola Torbett, Associate Director of Kirkridge Retreat & Study Center

Dear friends,

Gratitude is certainly a great thing—a spiritual practice, a discipline of noticing the gifts we receive. Festivals of gratitude honor the generosity and abundance of the earth and reinforce human interdependence with the more-than-human world. They have the power to restore relationship.

In this country, at this time, what we have as a festival of gratitude is Thanksgiving. How does that land for you? How is this holiday for you?

I know that so many of those reading this email are spiritual deep-divers. I’m wondering if Thanksgiving rings hollow for some of you, if you find yourself longing for something with more authenticity and depth.

After digging into the history of this holiday, I’ve come to think that Thanksgiving is “under occupation.”

Continue reading “Thanksgiving is Under Occupation” →

The Body’s Instinctive Knowing

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From Ailey Jolie, a psychotherapist blending the principles of depth psychology, relational somatics, intersectional feminism, and interpersonal neurobiology. Re-posted from Substack here.

There is a dangerous misunderstanding circulating in the wellness world right now. Nervous system regulation has become a catchphrase; casually tossed into conversations and stamped onto nearly every offering in the self-help space. In every corner of wellness, we are taught that if we breathe deeply enough, ground consistently enough, and meditate just a little longer, we will be able to meet every hard and harsh moment life throws our way with serene neutrality. I want you to know: this isn’t true.

Beneath this false promise lies something far more insidious. In our rush to self-soothe, we risk severing ourselves from something sacred; the body’s instinctive knowing. True somatic work was never intended to make us endlessly calm. It was designed to return us to right relationship; with ourselves, with the world, and with the irreducible wisdom that lives within sensation.

That wisdom does not always whisper ‘be still’. Sometimes, it says this is intolerable. And sometimes, it demands that we rise.