what if

What if there was a movement,
in every town and city,
(some successful and some not)
a movement whose founder aimed
for the destruction of empire
whose chapters struggled
(some successfully and some not)
for radical justice-loving,
and love-justice radicalism?

What if this movement has hovered
around the periphery of Western culture
for a thousand years, or two,
and its greatest successes
were usually kept silent?

What if it was made up ordinary souls
with penchants for sin or poetry or manual labor,
who bring themselves to the struggle,
or drift along obliviously
(sometimes successfully and sometimes not)?

What if there was a movement,
of myth and macaroni, of bread and jokes and power?
And what if they were recruiting?

[insert your church name here,
and photocopy or scrawl on torn-up advertisements.]

we who love the fallen: a good friday call to worship

We who love the fallen
who desperately cling to those unjustly killed.

We who have walked with them,
we who slept and fought with them,
we who played and ate with them.

We gather on this day,
when they tried to kill Jesus-
and when they succeeded.

This moment is inscribed on our hearts-
just like the death of far too many others:
King and Romero, our family members,
our friends, our lovers.

We wish they weren't dead. We hate
their absence. We will seek justice
for those who killed them,
and for those who allowed them to die.

Though the ones who killed them
would like us to forget-
we will never forget.
We will always remember.

We who love the fallen.