Holy Saturday. Today is a special day for Palestinian Christians. They gather in the Old City of Jerusalem at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Jesus is dead. Endured betrayal, assault, and torture. They come with unlit candles, vigiling for the dead. The priest goes into the tomb, at the center of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Palestinian Christianity is the continuation of Christianity as an indigenous wisdom tradition of that place. The observance of this holy day of waiting skipped by most of the church that is empire-aligned around the world. Many rush to get to an easy Easter, uncomfortable with waiting, refusing the sit with the complexity of the story and the revolutionary ethics it generates and attention it demands. But Palestinian Christians insist that the resurrection isn’t guaranteed. So they wait, having suffered together with their God, both in Gaza and throughout the West Bank, ’48 and Jerusalem. They yearn and gather. This prayer is a prayer of waiting with them. For me, and for Lyndsey Medford, who’s words I weave with together to write the following prayer, Holy Saturday is the holiday to recognize trauma—a time to witness what happens to life after something so unimaginable it breaks your universe. Hear our prayer now.

Oh Love that remains with us when all hope is gone, when we fall through the cracks and get stuck there, reliving or fleeing that same event over and over again. Suspended.

Thank you for being with us as we make something of the space after death and without life. Please do not leave us even as others betray those of us who live with trauma, we who tread regularly in that space, living—but also not living—after death. We hold those in Gaza, Jerusalem, and around the world, including many of us on this call, who live in the confusion of a body whose reality has been ruptured, in the revolt of a mind that cannot narrate what’s happened.

We thank you, Love, and we thank each of you here as we heal this trauma by being witnessed, by you, by others, and by being witnesses to the trauma that is happening now. Even though trauma fractures our memories, distorts time, deceives our bodies; we witness. We do not turn away. We do not have to discern all the facts or even make sense of the story. There is, in the end, no sense to be made. A witness just has to travel alongside, into the confusion and horror, and choose to stay. Love strengthen us as we choose to travel alongside, into the confusion and horror, and choose to stay. Be with us, we who refuse to rush to triumphant conclusions, or shortcut to solutions…holding the broken pieces.

Thank you for witnessing us as we witness others. Thank you for loving us in the Saturday space of loss, exactly in our fractured selves, without a happy ending, or any ending at all. Thank you love, for not trying to fix us or rewrite our stories. Bring your fire. Amen.

As the priest comes out of the tomb and the crowd is still gathered and mourning, they see he has fire in his palms. With the candle he lights the candles of those next to him and they pass the light on…rings of small lights begin to encircle the tomb and move in rippling waves of light outwards, into the alleyways and streets and crevices of the Old City, then it goes throughout Jerusalem in all directions. There are even those on horseback ready to carry it further. From Jerusalem to the ends of the earth this little light spreads. This Holy Fire of witness, of passion, of attention. May this prayer travel with your flame today. May this fire that travels throughout the earth cause a ceasefire.