by Joseph Nangle, OFM
Pax Christi USA 2023 Teacher of Peace
“The Lord is close at hand.” (Liturgy of the Hours – Advent invitatory)
I will not look away
Written by Caitlin Johnstone
No matter how horrific it gets,
I will not look away.
No matter how many children I see killed and injured in the most gruesome ways,
I will not look away.
No matter how much human suffering I see by keeping my eye on Gaza,
I will not look away.
No matter how many nightmares I have,
I will not look away.
No matter how many tears I shed,
I will not look away.
No matter how many reasons the propagandists and manipulators come up with for me to turn my gaze elsewhere,
I will not look away.
No matter how many insults and accusations I am tarred with for refusing to look away,
I will not look away.
No matter how much easier it would be to look away,
I will not look away.
I will not avert my gaze. I will not become distracted.
I will not lose myself to the sedated stupor or escapism.
I will not do my best to pretend that everything is normal and that life is basically fine.
Even if we cannot stop this, at the very least we can give [the victims] our seeing.
At the very least we owe them that.
The people of Gaza are suffering far more than I have ever suffered…
But in my own meager and entirely insufficient way I can try to make sure they’re not suffering on their own.
This powerful poem which concentrates on individual responses, or lack of them, lends itself to a broader social analysis. There is a whole other side to not averting our gaze especially from Israel/Gaza today. For U.S. Americans these lines are especially pertinent and necessary. Pertinent because in our privileged world it is easy to look away. There is so much noise, so many frivolous enticements, indeed so many other smaller issues that vie for our attention. We live in an insane world of distractions that the “propagandists and manipulators” throw at us to make us
“turn away.”
More, the poem is necessary for us because our country has huge responsibilities for the sufferings from which we must not turn away. Our influence in areas such as the Middle East is overwhelming. We can literally make or break political regimes, we can begin and foment wars, and we can use our power to halt them. The present disastrous conflict in Israel is a glaring case in point. We cannot look away from the role there which history has thrust on us. As U.S. Americans we owe the people of Gaza, and, yes, Israel, the assurance that in our country there are people who weep with them and are urging our government to bring its enormous power to bring about the cessation of the slaughter there.
Finally, there is a corollary to the poem as we approach the memory of a young girl giving birth in a dirty stable, in a foreign city, with only her husband attending her, a birth which turned out to be the most important happening in human history.
Christ’s birth turned out to be proof that God had not “looked away” from humanity’s need for salvation. Rather, God so loved us that the Word was sent not to judge the world but to save it. The Divine became one of us, made His home with us and endured the pain of our human condition.
Above all, our faith tells us that what came to be through Him beginning with that birth long ago “was a life that was the light of the human race; a light that shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”
All of this is beyond logic and calls for a sheer act of faith. To turn away from the darkness covering the land where Salvation History began is also to turn away from that ever-so-tiny sliver of light that began to shine in our world that blessed night and which has never been extinguished.
We not only celebrate the Lux Mundi on the Feast of the Nativity. We are evidence of it, reasons for Hope, however tenuous.
Joe Nangle OFM is a Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace and the 2023 Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace. As a member of the Assisi Community in Washington, D.C., he is dedicated to simple living and social change. Joe also serves as the Pastoral Associate for the Latino community at Our Lady Queen of Peace, Arlington, Virginia.
Blessings on Caitlin Johnstown for her superb and exquisite poem of solidarity with the slaughtered people of The Gaza and blessings on Fr. Nangle for bringing it to us in this hour of total desperation.
Our Uniparty politicians led by our own Catholic president have made us unwitting co-participants with Israel in a profoundly evil enterprise. Belgian television last night showed an eight-year-old Palestinian girl trying to keep her entrails from unraveling out of her abdomen after her shelter was bombed, while, I imagine, the Bidens, the CEOs of Raytheon, and the majority of our elected officials were trimming their Christmas trees.
David-Ross Gerling, PhD
Thank you, Fr Nangle. Your writings always resonate with my Faith in the gospels of a Jesus. I echo what David-Ross wrote.
Tomorrow I will call President Biden. Thank you, Pax Christi for giving us ideas what to do.