A Loss for Words: When Bread becomes a Weapon

I confess that for a press conference I find myself at a loss for words. So let me begin by reading something from my journal entry at the beginning of this fast…

“my friend Hassan, 84,
remembers in his family’s forced walk, the Nakba,
and works without rest
decades relentless
in the name of free
Palestine, now
drops his hands to his side.
all but spent, at wit’s end
and the body’s powerless seem,
he begins, nothing left
to lose,
a fast.
at least he can refuse to eat. for and with the people.
when tongues grow thick and dry, limbs thin
as they starve.
nothing for him but liquids and the heart’s pain.
the medicos watch
his weight, clock his vitals.
a personal counting and a call,
love become pure grief.

me? a doc charts my own ailments and
warns, parses, permits.
so. I am along for the collective rolling fast.
a day at a time and limit certain.
something foregone as intercession,
the solidarity of spirit.
tuesdays for the heart’s rhythm
ache upon ache upon ache.

always before, time to break, to take that first
bite, simple and sweet with gratitude
the mouth wells and waters ready, but now
I can barely swallow, thinking
of children’s faces, the huge
beaten and empty pots
held out. toward me. where I am in this world”

I read this partly because this morning I’m at a loss for words.
In a month when we remember the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
what do say when Gaza looks so much like a Hiroshima rubblescape.
Maybe nothing more than recognizing that the US and Israel have dropped
the equivalent of six Hiroshimas on Gaza.

What do you say when “food aid stations” are designed as razor wire corridors of death,
lined with American mercenaries firing automatic weapons.

In my own Christian tradition, bread is a sacrament of community and the very presence of God.
In Judaism it is a sign of liberation, of walking free.
In Islamic tradition it is the emblem of hospitality, of love, justice and extended table.

So what do you say when bread is used as a weapon, an instrument of genocide?
At least you say it is not only a violation of international law, a crime against humanity,
not only an assault on the most basic of human moral witness,
you say it is a blasphemy against God
leaving us all but speechless.

Bill Wylie-Kellermann is non-violent community activist, teacher, writer, sometimes poet, and Methodist pastor retired from St Peter’s Episcopal Church. A native and vocational Detroiter, he is now also based at Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center in Stroudsburg, PA. The author of seven books beginning with one on “liturgical direct action,” his most recent is Celebrant’s Flame: Daniel Berrigan in Memory and Reflection (Cascade 2021). A graduate of Union Theological Seminary NYC, Wylie-Kellermann has been engaged in resistance and direct action for justice and peace now 5 decades, beginning with anti-war and anti-nuclear actions, but also increasingly urban, for example with the Detroit water struggle and Michigan Poor Peoples Campaign. His teaching, writing, and action are generally framed by a theology of the “principalities and powers.” He bets his life on gospel non-violence, good news to the poor, Word made flesh, and freedom from the power of death.