Station 8
Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem
We protest the removal of information about slavery, the disapora and genocide of indigenous peoples, LGBTQ+ history, and climate change from federal parks.
There followed after Jesus a great multitude of the people, and among them were women who bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning to them said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.”
Photo credit: Peter Tobia
And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children’s children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds.
– Chief Seattle Oration, 1854
Let us pray
God is our strength and our protection, we will not fear. Even if the earth is shaken and the mountains plunge into the seas, even if the waters roar and foam, and the mountains shake and fall, the God of gods is with us. We will not fear. Amen.