December 8

In the city where I live, there is a harm reduction group called “Church of the Safe Injection.” Every Thursday afternoon they distribute Narcan, fentanyl testing strips and other harm reduction supplies to people who use drugs and those in community with them. Recently, an individual man started to show up, harassing the group and making violent threats. Because people who use drugs are already criminalized, reaching out to police is not an option for this group. Instead, they reached out to neighbors and community members to accompany them at distribution, asking them to be ready to de-escalate and keep the man from harassing the group. The man’s anger and hatred seem to be particularly aimed at unhoused people along with people who use drugs, who he views as disposable.  The enslaving paradigms of our society and culture have taught him the misconception that these communities are taking something from him, and from this place of scarcity, he lashes out.

But Church of the Safe Injection persists in this mutual aid work, preparing a way for mercy and care, which is the way of God, and fighting for the survival of people in our community. I am so grateful for their care, presence and witness, for their proclaiming in the wilderness.  Through their work, and the work of so many organizations like them, I believe “all flesh will see salvation.” And as addiction lives in our cells and the perception of people as less than human lives in our neuropathways, I yearn with Advent hope for that salvation to be a collective embodied reality soon.

Prayer

This Advent, Arriving God,
turn our hearts toward
the voices in the wilderness –
the ones preparing the way for justice and mercy,
even as we seek to transform
the voices in the wilderness –
the ones entangled in the ways of fear and scarcity.
Until all flesh knows salvation, we pray. Amen.

Freedom Song

Music: “All We Want” by Richard Bruxvoort-Colligan
Offered by: Richard Bruxvoort-Colligan