"Let Justice flow!" The Scream of the Divine / A.J. Hendry
“Let Justice flow…”
I left a child sleeping in his car on Friday night. Homeless since he was 15 years old, left to fend for himself by a society that could care less.
I left a young girl to be sexually exploited by men too blind to see her worth, she’d asked for a home, I had none to give, so she did what she had to do to keep a roof over her head.
I left a young mother sleeping in her car. The motel our Government gave her a greater risk to her babies than the four wheeled fridge she chose to make her home.
I left a child behind bars, punished for steeling bread, tortured by a system of systematic injustice, for merely trying to survive.
Every day, I leave them, return to my home, to my comfortable bed, leave them to suffer, and suffer they do. Poisoning themselves to forget, the pain, the grief, the trauma, death, they find ways to survive, slipping a pill, snorting a line, sculling a bottle, anything to get by.
And we judge them for it, naming them drunks, crack heads, bludgers, criminals, and their crime?
They are homeless, dying, freezing, starving, crying, abandoned, rejected, disowned by the state, neglected because no one ticked the right box, forgotten because they fail to meet the criteria by which we are required to care.
These children, rejected by our communities, too broken, too hardened, too much “of a pain fuelled nuisance” to manage, they remain.
Homeless. Abandoned. Left to die.
And they do die. One taken by the crippling weight within their mind, driven to jump, to drug, to lunge in front of, death, is hard won. Others are taken by the ones who came before, the ones who were children once, who grew to become the manifestation of our society’s worst fears. Still others die sick, their bodies failing them, punishing them, for the life these young ones are forced to endure.
Here they are, these children, ignored by the church. Their suffering no more than a moment of self-reflection, a moment to be thankful, thankful that we are not like them, thankful, that we have more, that we have homes, and beds, and food, and money, and church, oh how we’re thankful for church. The moment passes, we turn to what matters, saving souls. We offer our songs, preach our sermons, take up our offerings, and return to our lives, oh how special we are.
And yet the Divine screams. Her wail breaks open the land, in it can be heard the cry of the poor, of the children, of the dying, of the dead. Her grief is that of the forgotten, her suffering is the pain of the ignored.
“Let Justice flow…”
She does not ask for Her children’s Liberation. She screams, she wails, she speaks…
“Let Justice flow…”
The Divine Mother, screams.
And the Divine Scream is heard, is felt, in the heart of all who will listen, in all who will respond. Those who see the child and act, who see the hungry and feed them, who see the homeless and take them under their roof, the hurting, and embrace them without fear.
These are her disciples.
“Let Justice flow…”
“Let Justice flow…”
“Let Justice flow…”
The Divine Mother speaks, Her cry echoes through the whenua.
Those who hear, who respond, who follow, they are Hers.
Without Justice, there is no peace.
A.J. Hendry is a Youth Development Worker and housing advocate, working in the Youth Housing and Homelessness space. He leads a service supporting rangatahi experiencing homelessness and is also a steering group member of Manaaki Rangatahi, a collective working to end youth homelessness in Aotearoa. He is also the curator and creator of When Lambs Are Silent.