We Have Eyes, We Have Mouths

Dear broken-hearted ones, what horrors this new year has held for us, even in its first month. (A word of transparency: this is a raw one.) Armed, masked, angry and violent men in the streets of our cities. Agents of our own government, sent to terrorize, to tackle, to beat, to kick, to pepper spray, and, if they feel so inclined, to kill.

I have spent these January days as I imagine you have: weeping, grieving, raging.

One of the many arguments against the death penalty is that a government has no right to kill its citizens because it lacks the moral authority, marred as it is by its own flaws and often crimes. I have thought about that argument as I have watched agents of this government commit murder after murder in Minneapolis, to say nothing of those murdered in detention centers.

I have thought back to Cain and Abel, have thought about how fundamentally wrong it is to take a life, how craven it is to take a life and forever traumatize everyone else who witnesses it.

I have watched the videos, and I have thought, “There is no possible way the administration is going to be able to spin this.”

No possible way to spin the dragging of children from schools, the use of a five-year-old in a Pokémon hat as bait, ripping him away from his family, the detention of a family at a hospital, seeking emergency care for their child, before they even made it through the parking lot. No possible way to spin the brutal beatings captured on video every day. No possible way to spin shooting a woman in the head multiple times in broad daylight. No possible way to spin the point-blank execution of a man lying on the ground, a man who was holding up only a phone camera and and his arm, to stop the beating of a woman by these agents of the government.

And then I have watched them spin it. Every. Time.

I think that, deep down, we all know this is wrong. On a level beyond legal argument, and perhaps even beyond religious argument. I see people who support these atrocities holding their breath and squirming until the government’s spin is released. And then they wield that spin like a sword, because it keeps them from having to admit to themselves that there is no justifying any of this.

People are being hunted down like animals, people are being shot in the streets. By their own government. God knows what horrors go on behind closed doors—where there are no checks on cruelty, no checks on power—but surely they are worse.

In every moment I am asking myself what on earth we can do, under the thumb of this violent terrorism by our own government. It’s more of a scream or a sob than a question, to be honest, and if I did not have children to raise and deadlines to hit, I would be curled up on the floor, weeping, all day, every day.

But as I’ve tried to find a way through these days, seeing worse and more horrific things every time I pick up my phone, a small answer has come to me.

What is it that they cannot take from us? What is it that they cannot paper over with thin and slippery-slick lies?

Our humanity. Our care for one another.

How do we resist a government for whom gaslighting is the highest calling of communication, a government for whom DARVO is the only tactic in the playbook, a government that snarls and sneers and angrily insists that we did not see what we very much saw?

My face in hands, I heard an answer, a quiet response to this horrific madness that runs rampant in our country:

We have eyes. We have mouths.

We are not the first people to be lied to by their government. Not the first people to be terrorized by their government. Not the first people to be crushed under the heavy boot of violent authoritarianism.

We have much to learn from history, and I cannot stop thinking about El Salvador, about Nicaragua, about the Soviet Union, about all of the ordinary and extraordinary heroes who refused to cede to abusive governments what they knew was their own:

Their eyes. Their mouths.

They knew what they saw. And they were brave enough to use their mouths to speak up and speak out, to breathe words of truth into a noxious cloud of lies.

My broken-hearted ones, we must do the same.

I have not been on Substack this month, but I have been on Instagram, posting prayers and keeping in touch with friends in Minneapolis who are organizing aid, who are praying and marching and protesting. I have followed the news of violence and the news of resistance.

And I have been heartened by every instance of a person insisting that their eyes and their mouth belong to them, and them alone.

Bless every marcher, every protester, every clergy member arrested at the airport, kneeling and singing hymns.

Bless every theologian who points out the endless corruption of empire, bless every brave soul who stands and records for us, at their own personal peril, the truth.

Bless every person who puts their body between their fellow human beings and danger. Bless every person who calls a lie a lie.

Bless every person who holds claim to their own eyes. Bless every person who lays claim to their own mouth.

As St. Óscar Romero said, when armed men pointed their guns at his community’s Eucharistic procession: “¡Adelante!”

Forward, my loves. Forward.

With open eyes, with a mouth committed to the truth,
Cameron

PS: In spite of everything, time marches on, and Lent is upon us. I have been working hard on some things for us, things that I hope will soothe our weary hearts, and I’ll let you know when they are ready. Until then, please know that you are not alone.