You might ask yourself, so why don't Michele and Anitra just get morbidly depressed thinking about these things all day?

Sometimes we do.

But contemplating death and suffering does not make us want to give up. It instead brings an ever-greater sense of the value of human life; a drive to ACT to reaffirm that value, to rise above the death and suffering. In effect, it renews our faith in a better reality when we find ourselves outraged by shameful things, shameful acts, shameful neglect.

In meditating on these Stations of the Cross, we came to believe that people of faith truly are the key to change - those who use empathy, remembrance, belief, and action to live out the Biblical mandates to welcome the wanderers and love others as we love ourselves.


The Cross

sentenced to death
     for lack of truth
all of us
     carry a cross.

when we all
     fall
why do so many shun
     the fallen?

we admire those who stand up for the truth
     only when it is OUR truth

what awards do we give
  when those we look down on
     act greater than we do?

a small kindness done
  outshines
     a great kindness undone.
we can help one person a little
  if we cannot
     save the world.

for there will be pain
and there will be death
but even the weakest can share warmth in the rain
and the grieving
can share comfort.

abandoned
despised
stripped of all dignity
we wait in mute suffering
for a better world;

curse God and die;

or ...

or ...

or ...


Return to Stations of the Cross: the Spiritual Geography of Homeless People in Seattle

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