On Tuesday night, members and friends of the Kirkridge residential community held a vigil for a ceasefire in Israel/Palestine in downtown Stroudsburg, PA. We will vigil every Tuesday night at 4:30pm, and all who long for a ceasefire are welcome to join us. It is good to be together in this time.

Our hearts are breaking for the grieving families, the people who are injured and dying, the hostages and their families, the refugees, and the people who cannot flee. We long for an end to the spiral of violence. The only way to achieve that objective and begin to move toward peace and safety for everyone is an immediate ceasefire. We call on Congress to pass the Ceasefire resolution and end US support for the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Many of us claim the name of Jesus, and as Christians, we recognize and lament how Christian supremacy has fueled the antisemitism and Islamophobia that has landed us all in this place. We recognize that Christian leaders have made life unsafe for Jews in many places for centuries upon centuries, and that this oppression created the conditions for occupation of Palestine by a state calling itself Israel. We further recognize that as US citizens, we help to fund the occupation and the current violence.

We pledge ourselves to ending the settler colonialism, white supremacy, imperialism, and global capitalism that uses our Jewish beloveds in Israel and also, in different ways, here, as buffers and scapegoats.

That means, among other things, looking at our own relationship to native land here on Turtle Island and to the people indigenous to this place. We pray that you hold us accountable to this pledge.