This past Monday, I received notice of a national call to clergy—an invitation to travel to Minneapolis to take part in a day of action protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s ongoing Operation Metro Surge. As many of you have likely seen in the news, this operation represents a significant escalation in ICE’s tactics. Alongside that, escalation has been a coordinated effort by the federal administration to obscure the truth about what is actually happening on the gr

At the height of the summer of 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream.”  Nearly 200,000 people—Black and white—traveled by plane, train, bus, car and on foot to take part in the March on Washington. They gathered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, remembering that in the century prior, President Lincoln had begun the work of ending 250 years of American slavery with his Emancipation Proclamation.  On that day, the crowd gathered to l

In the Beginning…  In the very beginning— before light, before land, before anything— there was water. Deep. Formless. Chaotic. And alive with possibility. Scripture tells us that the Spirit of God hovered over those waters—a breath,  a wind, a loving presence waiting to bring something beautiful into being. And then God began to speak. God separated the waters above from the waters below. God pulled dry land out of the deep. Out of water, God formed a world. From the first p

Checkpoint crossings are an inescapable part of life for Palestinians living in the West Bank. Every morning before dawn, about 70,000 Palestinians from across the occupied West Bank pass through one of eleven Israeli military checkpoints on their way to work. They carry time-restricted permits that grant entry for the day, then require them to return home before the end of the day.  The lines of workers are funneled into cage-like lanes—overcrowded, humiliating spaces that l