Profound peace

Justice shall flower in his days,
and profound peace, till the moon be no more. — Ps 72:7

“Profound peace” — this is what we prayed for in the psalm for Epiphany.  Not just peace, a simple cessation of hostilities, but a peace so deep, we could not claw our way back to war. Not just peace, tenuously enforced with threats, but a just peace. 

We prayed for that peace, for justice, as the US went in with guns blazing to decapitate the government of Venezuela. It was hard to avoid the irony.

The government would have us believe that this invasion, police action, whatever, is to protect us from fentanyl (which their own data says is not produced or trafficked from Venezuela). Venezuela does traffic some cocaine, but even if every cocaine related overdose in the US could be attributed to this route (and it’s not among the top three sources) the number of cocaine overdose deaths is about the same as the number of people in the US who die from hunger each year. (More than 20,000 people in the US died from malnutrition in 2022.) The current administration didn’t think that suspending SNAP benefits to the hungry last fall was an emergency, so why is this? 

Could it be that feeding the hungry doesn’t make for stirring military videos? 

_________

For two weeks of the entire US military budget, we could fund a full year of SNAP benefits. 

There hasn’t been much support for addressing drug addiction either.

What do you think of our news coverage?

The little box popped up in the lower left of my iPad screen, “What do you think of our news coverage?”

The article was headlined “Name, phone, address…” and described a Ukrainian mother writing her name and phone number on her very young child before they evacuated. Just in case. Just in case they were separated.  Just in case her parents were killed. She would have her identity, know a bit about her parents, just in case.

What do I think of this news coverage? I am mortified by it. I am unable to keep my voice from cracking as I try to talk to my own child, home on a brief visit, standing in the kitchen — an adult. I want to say that I remember the time he went to a protest where they told him to write his name and a contact on his arm in black Sharpie. Just in case. I want to say that if we were fleeing such destruction that I could see myself standing in the kitchen grabbing the Sharpie I keep in the pencil cup on the counter, writing names and phone numbers on my children. Just in case. But now I am weeping openly, and I cannot choke out the words out to explain why. So I flee the room. 

What do I think of this news coverage? I think that I am weeping again as I write this.