Today we mourn: An Easter Lament / A.J. Hendry

Today is not a day for celebration.

Today we mourn.

Our Hope is dead.

Murdered, brutally.

Our dream of a new tomorrow, shattered into a million pieces, revealing the nightmare that lies beneath.

The Kingdom is a lie.

There is no such thing as equality, there is only greed, only competition, only the game we must play. The powerful overcome the small, the strong beat down the weak. It is the way it is, the way it always has been, the way it must be.

You eat, or you’re eaten. You consume, or are yourself consumed.

The economy must not falter, whatever the cost, the price must be paid.

And yes, we dreamed of a world where children did not die of hunger, where whanau did not need to suffer and struggle to survive, but we see now how foolish we were. Our dream was a fairy tale, too impractical to be called “reality”. There is only the way it is.

And our dream? It is no more than impractical nonsense, a pie in the sky imagining, too high to attain, too flimsy to grasp a hold of.

No, there is only this nightmare we have created.

This world where greed is our greatest value, where competition is our most prized pursuit, where to win is the highest honour.

There is comfort in the horror we know. Some must suffer, some must die, some must struggle, so others can thrive.

Let the children starve

let the earth decay

let the weak stay sick

til they’re in their grave

for no matter what

the people say

there is only corporate greed

only financial gain

only eternal struggle

no other way.

So today we mourn.

For this is no day for celebration

We mourn Hope, for we believed foolishly that thing could be different, we lost ourselves in a lie, yet the world did, what the world does.

Our Hope is dead, our Dreams of a new tomorrow brutally murdered, exposed as folly for all to see.

Today is not a day for celebration.

For God is dead. All Hope is gone.

So today we mourn.

For those who believed healing was possible, only to have the ones they loved die.

For those foolish enough to fight injustice, only to see their dreams of freedom shattered.

For those who held on to Hope, believing their relationships would be reconciled, only to taste again and again, the bitterness of rejection.

We mourn for those who suffer now, those trapped in cycles of addiction and violence, who have been rejected and caste aside, for those who are shamed and judged by a society that does not care enough to save them.

We mourn for the inhumanity of poverty, the inhumanity of leaving rangatahi to live on the street, leaving children to live in cold and damp houses, leaving whanau only enough to survive, so they must beg, borrow and steal, just to get by.

We mourn for those who are rich, for those who are comfortable, for those who benefit from the suffering of the vulnerable, for they do not see how twisted the image inside them has become.

We mourn for the earth, for how we have defiled her, for how we have polluted her rivers, and poisoned her streams, for how we have destroyed what is sacred, taking more than we need, and never giving back.

We mourn what we have become.

We mourn what we could have been.

We mourn.

For the Kingdom is a lie.

For God is Dead.

That we Killed God.

A.J. Hendry