St. Columba Catholic Church, Oakland, CA (12/15/24)
Start Video at 1:16:50
December 15 Reflection
Dr. Javay Ross & Meg Bowerman
Readings: https://www.catholicgallery.org/mass-reading/151224/
Javay: Thank you, Fr. Aidan for asking us to give a reflection today, the third Sunday in Advent. We are each here as parishioners, mothers and medical professionals to share our concerns about the Holy Land.
My name is Javay Ross, I am a long time St. Columba parishioner (I actually made my first communion here) and mother of 2 spirited young boys who many of you would likely recognize, Amir who 5 ¾ and Elias who is 3 ¾. My husband Tariq is an SF Police Officer who was raised in the Muslim faith. I am a general pediatrician who trained and have worked at Children’s Hospital Oakland for the past 15 years. In my role at Children’s, I work in the primary care clinic, am an associate program director for our residency program and work as the medical director at the Alameda County JJC.
My name is Meg Bowerman, retired RN at the same hospital and mother of two grown sons, Jim and Tom and grandmother of two. I am married to Larry, raised as an Episcopalen and “still searching”.
Alternate Voices
Javay: Our Advent journey is half over…Mary and Joseph prepare to obey the law and journey afar for the census. We remember that the Palestine into which Jesus was born is not too different from the Palestine of the last 75 years.
Meg: Jesus was born in Bethlehem, under Roman occupation and military rule! He was born in Bethlehem because his parents had to register with Rome, to be taxed. After Jesus’ birth, he and his parents had to flee to Egypt to escape Herod’s slaughter of the innocent babies.
As bad as things were for Mary and Joseph during the birth of their first child, what would it be like today?
Javay: Due to the apartheid wall that completely encompasses Bethlehem, would Mary and Joseph even be allowed in the town?
Would Jesus survive his birth?
Meg: Would his house be bombed? If he were born today, would he be isolated inside his home because of curfews?
Javay: Would Mary and Joseph be able to escape to save Jesus from the massacre of the innocents?
Would Israel allow them through all the checkpoints and allow them into Gaza? Would Egypt open the Rafah Crossing so they could get away from Herod?
May these questions lead us all into a spirit of reflection and contemplation. May the God that came to Palestine 2,000 years ago come again and bring Light, Love and Peace with Justice to all God’s peoples. And may we act as partners in God’s work of liberation!
Javay: Why is this important to me?
In September of 2023, the Friday before my final Pastoral Council retreat, I headed to St. Columba to drop some items off for Ms. Susan in the Parish office. I pulled up and found a park right in front of the rectory and before getting out of my car, I paused and looked at the names on the many crosses in the front garden. To my great surprise, one of the very first crosses read “K’hmari Martin, 2/3/23.” I was shocked to find the name of a young man who I had known, loved and watched grow from the age of 6 written on a St. Columba cross. I’ll never forget the feeling of my heart hitting the bottom of my stomach. There had to be another K’hmari Martin. An adult, not a 17 yo child’s name on a cross that represented his murder in the City of Oakland earlier that year. How did I not know? How did this happen? I quickly googled this name and it was confirmed. The obituary for K’hmari Damari Martin, born June 7, 2005 and died February 3, 2023. It was real. I eventually headed back to my work desk and got the courage to call his mom to express my condolences and apologies for having not known this happened several months ago. Her first words to me, though her sobs were “I was wondering why you weren’t at his funeral. He really loved you.” You see, K’hmari was a special young man. He was the oldest of his mother’s 8 children who I got the pleasure of meeting when he was a rambunctious 1st grader. Even then, he could do no wrong in my eyes. He had a joyous spirit with the most beautiful, loving smile and a face that could make you forgive any transgression his great-grandmother was pulling his ear for. Over the next 10 years, I had the honor of working closely with his family. I will never forget the day, just a couple of years ago, that I showed up to the JJC and saw K’hmari’s name on my new patient list. It was a tough day of acceptance for me. I had to accept that the system had not only failed him but had oppressed his young life. He never really had a chance to live, he never had a chance to be free. But what does it mean to be free?
Merriam-Webster’s definition of freedom is: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action. Liberation from slavery or from the power of another. Freedom requires there be an oppressor. Sometimes that oppressor is a person or group of people, and other times it can be a system, an institution or a belief that is counter to those of the oppressed. We hear calls for freedom every day, as in the words “Free Palestine” which is so poignantly reminiscent of the t-shirts and rap lyrics you’ll read when a beloved friend or cultural figure is imprisoned in the Black community. But what does it mean to be free? This is a concept that has been on my heart since my dear church mate, Nurse Meg invited me to speak with her here today.
I will be the first to admit that I am very far from an expert on the war in Israel and Gaza. Last October, I intentionally used my privilege of American nationality and safety and security and chose to avoid as much news coverage of the October 7th Hamas attacks as well as the subsequent and now over 1 year long Israeli Defense Force response. It was not the right choice, but I used my freedom to avoid adding more trauma to a heart that was full of the stories of the traumas my patients experience on a daily basis.
You see, in my role at the Juvenile Justice Center (or the JJC as we call it), I have the honor and great responsibility of working with young people who also experience war in their lives nearly every day. I have the privilege of talking with them about their struggles and the various challenges in their lives that may have led to their detainment. Sometimes, my patients at the JJC are as young as 12 years old, detained for offenses that could keep them behind bars for much of their adolescence. Though their stories are always unique and varied, many of my patients at the JJC experience much of the same traumas as those in war torn countries, like Palestine. I practice very little actual medicine in that role, as most of these young people are pretty healthy and don’t need a neurosurgeon or brilliant clinician. They just need someone to be a part of their team and their village. Someone to advocate on their behalf, to stay engaged and fully tuned to their stories. They need someone to listen.
Losing friends and family to gun violence in their communities and neighborhoods with regularity, facing an educational system that fails their academic needs daily, unstable housing, frequently moving from city to city due to gentrification and the cost of rent, being pulled into the war of the streets, feeling the pressure to be the providers for their families by making money whatever way they can. Losing the interest and ability to play the sport that once brought them so much happiness because the street war has consumed their lives. How can this happen in the most powerful and wealthy country in the world? How do these majority Black and brown children of God, get locked away, sometimes for years, and put into a system that continually besieges their freedom when American chattel slavery ended over 150 years ago? I do not know the answer to this enigma or even pretend to know the answers, but I do suspect it is because they are oblivious to the world. They are not seen, they are stuck in a cycle of oppression and the folks who have the power to change this narrative have taken the same stance that I did last October, and decided that they would not tune in. They do not want to see them.
Meg shared a powerful NY times article with me titled “ I’m One of the Last Doctors in This Hospital in Gaza. I’m Begging the World for Help,” which captured the daily entries of a pediatrician, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, working at one of the last standing hospitals in Gaza. To read the horrific details of what the people, the humans, the children of God in Gaza are suffering through every day is almost unbearable. Dr. Safiya ends his entry with a statement that could very well also come out of the mouths of one of my patients or the families of my patients at the JJC today:
“We feel as if the rest of the world is wrapped up in a different world than the one we are in. We are suffering and paying the price of the genocide that is happening to our people here in the northern Gaza Strip.”
As we prepare to take the crosses down from our garden on December 31, 2024, I think about K’hmari and the many other victims of violence in our city. I also think about Dr. Safiya, currently surrounded by a figurative “garden of crosses” in Gaza that continues to grow every day. What does “Free Palestine” really mean? Well for me, today, it means to tune in. To listen to the stories of those living through this nightmare. To let it penetrate my heart and my spirit. To pray that it moves me to action. To pray for an end of all wars, both local and abroad. To ask God to help me to “show up” and use me in whatever way He sees fit.
Meg: Why am I interested in this genocide? (I no longer call it “conflict”)
My own personal story is that I became more interested and involved in this crisis when my own family started to have conflicted views: we have a Jewish daughter-in-law and a Palestinian daughter-in-law. Each has shared their stories, fears and educated us and continue to educate us.
I have joined several groups to continue my education. I was particularly inspired by Black Faith Leaders who recently visited Palestine and shared their outrage at the apartheid they saw. Ta Nahesi-Coates the well known author and professor at Howard has also shared his concerns with his new book, The Message, after visiting Palestine in May of 2023. Perhaps we can read this as a church community and offer discussion afterwards with local activists from the Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities.
How do I help? We will follow up with handouts you can take today, and in the bulletin and flock notes.
Learn more: you should know that we are the only Catholic Church to be listed in the Apartheid Free Communities thanks to Fr. Aidan
Act: join one or more of the groups listed
Pray: the prayer of peace on the handout
We leave you with these words, written by United Methodist Bishop Woodie White. May we carry these words with us into this afternoon and days ahead.
“And now,
May the Lord torment you.
May the Lord keep before you the faces of the hungry, the lonely, the rejected and the despised.
May the Lord afflict you with pain for the hurt, the wounded, the oppressed, the abused, the victims of violence.
May God grace you with agony, a burning thirst for justice and righteousness.
May the Lord give you courage and strength and compassion to make ours a better world, to make your community a better community, to make your church a better church.
And may you do your best to make it so, and after you have done your best, may the Lord grant you peace.”
Amen.