The violence we give will always come home to us.
A bomb dropped in Cambodia will explode in a classroom in Colorado.
The bodies of Guatemalan mental patients, mangled by the experiments of American researchers, will be cremated in the fires of Ferguson, Missouri.
The strange fruit of the Jim Crow South will poison the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
We will inherit these American sins and we will pay.
We will pay for the cowardice, for the myopic avarice, and more than anything we will pay for the indifference.
Our thoughts and prayers come too late.
How can we be surprised to find murder in a nation devoted to war?
How long can we burn the homes of our neighbors without hearing the cries of their children?
How can a nation built by slaves expect to be free?
It’s all a sick joke that we’ve pretended not to understand and now we’re the punchline.
By Joshua James, Friend of Quaker House
Published in our Spring 2019 newsletter, News from the HomeFront.
Do you have a short piece, poem, or artwork that relates to the Quaker House mission of advocating peace and healing the wounds of war that you would like to share? Send it to us, and perhaps we will be able to include it in a newsletter or on our web site!