From the greatest to the least of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain. They heal the wound of my people lightly saying, “Shalom, shalom!” when there is no Shalom. Were they ashamed of their abomination? Are you kidding? Of course they weren’t ashamed. They didn’t even know how to blush!
-Jeremiah 6:13-15
A week after the Ash Wednesday Massacre, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, everyone who can see through the lies and abomination are saying, “They heal the wound of our people lightly, saying ‘Our thoughts and prayers are with you, now is not the time for politics.’ Shame on those in power! They can keep their thoughts and prayers! What we need is action. We, your children, are soaked in the blood of our friends and you don’t even know how to blush!”
We should never be fooled when those in power say, “Shalom, shalom. Everything will be fine.” And they will only know shame as we expose the truth. In the case of the shameful gun murders of school children in the Land of the Free, the truth is that, since we decided corporations have the same rights as individuals and there’s no limit on how much money corporations can spend to buy off our lawmakers, the National Rifle Association owns us. And as much as the NRA, in faux righteousness, wants us to believe it’s about 2nd Amendment rights, we know it’s all about the accumulation of wealth and with it the accumulation of the power to do whatever they damn well please. We should be standing with our children shouting, “Shame!” We need to go with them to the halls of power. We need to make public who is taking money from the gun lobby and how much. We need to sit-in there by the millions and refuse to leave until they agree to ban assault weapons.
The truth about the violence we do to humanity and the sacred Earth through greenhouse emissions is part of the same inconvenient truth. In Jeremiah’s Hebrew lexicon, Shalom is no shallow sentiment of Peace. It is the world of God’s dreams, one of well-being for all creatures, redistribution of economic wealth and shared political power. Another prophet, Micah, calls it “Every family sitting under their own vine and fig tree with nothing to terrify them.” (Micah 4:4)
Shalom is a state of just prosperity shared by all creatures and ecosystems. It requires regime change. Since we decided corporations have the same rights as individuals and there’s no limit on how much money corporations can spend to buy off our lawmakers, the fossil fuel industries and their shareholders own us. They have achieved an obscene accumulation of wealth exhausting the fossil gifts of the planet and a disparity of wealth never before witnessed on this planet. In their faux righteousness, they want us to believe it’s about jobs for all.
We know it’s about fracking with God’s gift of soil, sea and sky and those who depend on them. It’s about the privilege of power to emit as much greenhouse gas as they damn well please while shouting, “Shalom, shalom” in the marketplace, “The stock market is soaring, prosperity will trickle down to all!” The inconvenient truth is it’s really about 1.5 degrees C. temperature rise and the blood of all earth’s children on their hands.
Those most affected by climate catastrophe are those who have least to do with creating it. We should be standing with those and with our children whose future depends on stopping the insanity, shouting “Shame!” We need to go with them to the halls of power. We need to make public who is taking money from Exxon, Tesoro and the Koch Brothers and how much. We need to sit-in there by the millions and refuse to leave until they pass legislation that puts a price on greenhouse emissions to hold our largest polluters accountable for the greenhouse gas emissions they produce.
This is exactly what we have been trying to legislate at the Oregon State Capitol in Salem, Oregon. Last Monday, February 12, a group of us from McMinnville were part of the largest climate advocacy event in the history of our State. 500-600 of us gathered at the Capitol to rally our strength and talk with our Senators and Representatives, encouraging them to pass the Clean Energy Jobs Bill, a cap and investment strategy for meeting our emission goals and investing in a just and clean energy future.
Recent Comments