It has been a hard week for all of us, seeing what is happening in the Middle East and worrying about what else will follow. Placing the role of the governments to the side for a moment, let us focus on the civilians and those deployed. From shopkeepers to students and to the families of those in the military, we wish for a hastened calm and peace.

For more than a year, the current policies of our nation have kept us in a never-ending flux and increasing emotional and physical violence. While it is hard to face these realities each day, let us know that we face them together and we have one another to lean on for support, kindness, care, and sanity. Support for one another is a light that this community does not take for granted. 
The theme for March is “Paying Attention”. It is a revolutionary act to pay attention when events in the world are painful and stark. While it is important to take breaks from the relentless news cycle, we can still respond by keeping vigil for those most impacted by our government’s decisions and those in the Middle East.  

This Friday or Saturday night, before the changing of the clocks, I ask that we all pause to light a candle. Let us keep in our thoughts the injured who have been wounded emotionally and physically in the protests and attacks. Also, the rescuers, the first responders, and emergency workers are often the first at the scene. Let us send our care to all living in fear and uncertainty and in the path of harm’s way. 

From Rosemary Wahtola Trommer “After”On this day after my country bombed a girls’ school across the world, part of me does not want to meet the day. But just after dawn, I wake to the relentless honking, honking of geese returning from far away to make a home again in our yard.  
I want to rewrite yesterday so every girl who went to school also came home to her family, so every mother and father woke this morning knowing their child was safe in their bed.
I am so filled with horror – I don’t know how to rise. But the great noise of the geese returning pulls me into the world to meet whatever the day brings. A goose, with her long black throat, proof that life goes on. Even when we can’t imagine how. Even then.