The Beatitudes

Part 9 of 10: The Persecuted

Inna lillahi la-sa`bina alfa hijabin min nurin wa zulmati
God has seventy thousand veils of light and darkness.

The Holy Qur’an

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In one of her letters from Westerbork—a German concentration camp—Etty Hillesum wrote, “Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.” When she wrote this, I don’t know if she foresaw she’d soon be one of the many to die in Auschwitz. I’ve only been able to read parts of Etty Hillesum: An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork, taking in her words with timid, bereaved bites. But from those few excerpts, I would guess that being surrounded by mounds and mounds of death, she could fully see the road that lay ahead of her—thus she wrote down everything. 

Please understand, it’s not that I find Hillesum’s words too sad to bear, so much as I find my own courage wanting. I want to believe that I, too, would be able to succinctly examine life  despite the crummy view of an unthinkable, systematic expulsion of human dignity. I’d like to think that if I’d been given a front row seat to such horribleness, my writing would be as bewilderingly whole and frustratingly “both/and”as hers. I mean, dare I say her work is the epitome of forgiveness? Acceptance? Both seem too outlandish. But I struggle with her words, unsure of how to name them: 

Living and dying, sorrow and joy, the blisters on my feet and the jasmine behind the house, 

the persecution, the unspeakable horrors: it is all as one in me, and I accept it all as one mighty whole and begin to grasp it better if only for myself, without being able to explain to anyone else how it all hangs together. 

I wish I could live for a long time so that one day I may know how to explain it, and if I am not granted that wish, well, then somebody else will perhaps do it, carry on from where my life has been cut short. 

And that is why I must try to live a good and faithful life to my last breath: so that those who come after me do not have to start all over again, need not face the same difficulties. Isn't that doing something for future generations? 

Yesterday, when I saw the planes in Kabul lift with bodies hanging on for dear life, I thought most of us here in the United States, especially if we’re citizens, will never know what it truly is to be persecuted. We think we know. We think it’s the black and white definition of injustice in regards to our legal rights: the right to vote, the right to life, the right to mask or not mask, the right to carry a gun, the right to an education, or the right to live and let live. Basically, we think persecution is anything that gets in the way of our right to the pursuit of liberty and happiness. Though it would be terribly uncomfortable and inconvenient, the barring of any of those rights isn’t persecution. To be persecuted isn’t the loss of human rights, it’s the loss of human dignity. It’s the veil of darkness, void of light. It’s the command of “let there be light,” followed not by light but more darkness. 

And so, when Jesus sits on a hillside and speaks to the descendants of Abraham, Hagar,  Moses, Joseph, Tamar, Esther, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and David, he’s speaking to a people who have known persecution. The hillside is sloped right there beneath the haze of Roman rule. They knew slaughters and battles as well as they knew milk and honey. And they sang all about it in pilgrim songs called the Psalms of Ascent: 

PSALM 124
If it had not been YHWH who was on our side—let Israel now say: 
“If it had not been YHWH who was on our side, 
when enemies attacked us, they’d have swallowed us alive!
When their anger burned against us, 
the flood would have swept us away,
the water would have drowned us,
the raging torrent would have engulfed us!”
Blessed be YHWH, who has not let us fall prey to their teeth!
We are free like a bird from the trap! 
The snare has been broken and we are free!
Our help is in the Name of YHWH,
who made heaven and earth.

PSALM 126
When YHWH brought us captives back to Zion, 
we thought we were dreaming!
Our mouths were filled with laughter then,
Our tongues with songs of joy.
And from the nations we heard,
“Their God has done great things for them.”
Yes—YHWH has done great things for us,
and now we are filled with joy.
Now set our captive hearts free, YHWH!
Make them like streams in the driest desert!
Then those who now sow in tears 
will reap with shouts of joy;
those who go out weeping
as they carry their seed for sowing will come back
with shouts of joy as they carry their harvest home.  

PSALM 129
They have oppressed me continually ever since I was a child—let Israel now say: 
“They’ve oppressed me continually ever since I was a child,
but they have never been victorious over me!
My back looks like a plowed field—
the furrows are long and deep.
But the God of Justice has severed the cords of the tyrant!” 
Let all who hate Zion be put to shame, be turned away.
Let them be like the grass on our flat clay housetops—
it withers in the heat before you can pluck it, so sparse
that there is not a handful for the reaper,
nothing for the gatherer to carry away.
Let no one who walks past them ever say,
“The blessing of God be upon you! We bless you in the Name of YHWH!”

While we wince and complain over the little hangnails that barely split the skin of our Westernized privileged fingers, people run on tarmacs to cling to planes bound toward freedom. We are a country who blesses those who hate peace. We bless the oppressors and curse the oppressed. We tell the afflicted to rise and take up their mat, but without bestowing a miracle upon them so that they can do so. 

When it comes to cries of persecution, the American church is the child who cried wolf and barked at shadows. In Aramaic, the word “persecuted” is detrdep, and comes with a variety of meanings: driven, dominated, dislocated, disunited, moved by scandal, shame. The American in me wants to reside on the word “shame”, but really, the blessing is in what Jesus says about the persecuted receiving a “kingdom”, which bears none of the trappings of power, monarchy, or majority rule. 

The Aramaic translation of “kingdom” is so much riper and fuller: malkutha dashmaya. It invokes the whole universe or, as translator Neil Douglass Klotz puts it, “the shem or light is in evidence everywhere—don’t be afraid to look beyond the boundaries of what you call ‘home.’”To me, it’s the transcending thoughts that Hillesum shared with us: despite the concentration camps and all the terrors and the horrors, despite the dark shackles and chains of slavery and genocide, there is still light!

Tubwayhun layleyn detrdep metol khenuta dilhon(hie) malkutha dashmaya. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven: 

Blessings to those who are dislocated for the cause of justice;
their new home is the province of the universe. 

Health to those who are dominated and driven apart because they long for a firm foundation; 
their domain is created by the Word above, the earth beneath. 

Aligned with the One are those who draw shame for their pursuit of natural stability; 
theirs is the ruling principle of the cosmos. 

Healing to those who have been shattered within from within seeking perfect rest; 
holding them to life is heaven’s “I can!” 

Tuned to the Source are those persecuted for trying to right society’s balance; 
to them belongs the coming king-and-queendom. 

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Prayer: 

May there be peace in Afghanistan. 
God has seventy thousand veils of light and darkness.
May there be peace as in heaven here on earth.
The night will shine like the day and the darkness as the light.
May there be peace and rest here in all lands. 

Amen. 

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Ways You Can Help Those In Afghanistan (and Haiti):

Holy Troublemakers shared these organizations on Instagram at @holytroublebook if you’d like to donate funds to help Afghanistan refugees reach safety:
No One Left Behind
International Refugee Assistance Project

You can also sign a Change petition to recognize Afghan and Iraqi translators. 

Also, I do not and cannot forget about Haiti. Together Rising is raising emergency funds for surgeries for critically-injured patients in Les Cayes which was heavily hit by the recent earthquakes. 

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