Something Holy Is Happening

Mornings start with PK deciding it is time for me to rise — she begins to cry, then walks over me until I surrender. Even though it was bitterly cold last night, snow still on the ground, I keep the bedroom curtains open so I can see the stars at night and the sunrise in the morning. This is what I woke to: a sun pillar. Ice crystals aligning with the rising sun — or, in a spiritual context, a touch point of the Holy. In Jewish, Christian, Indigenous, Muslim, and Hindu faiths, it is a sacred sign.

Something Holy is Happening.

It is Palm Sunday. Hosanna — from the Hebrew Hoshia-na, meaning literally: Save us, we pray. Save us now. Hosanna in the Highest has become almost a song of celebration, its meaning misconstrued over centuries. But today, the word lands exactly as it was meant. Please. Help us. Now.

How timely that on Palm Sunday — the day after people all over the country rose up to march against NO KINGS — we find ourselves crying out that ancient plea.

This is a week of transition. TSA workers not being paid. A war that is not called what it is. Gas prices rising. Trump putting his name on everything he can get away with, tearing apart the East Wing of our White House and funding a gilded ballroom with our tax dollars. Now a call for troops on the ground.

Our former allies, who have stood on the side of reason, do not come to our aid — because we are the ones who have supported Benjamin Netanyahu’s deranged revenge for the death of his brother Yoni in Operation Entebbe. The war crimes in Gaza and Palestine are hypocritical and evil. This is not Jewish versus Muslim. This is Benny carrying his deep wound and killing, cloaked under the banner of a nation attacked — as though grief justifies genocide.

We are transitioning, as former allies have noted suspicious movement in financial markets twenty minutes before Trump announces another plan. We are transitioning, as a president obsessed with his legacy is clearly losing his mind. He called the Strait of Hormuz the Strait of Tru… — then caught himself and joked that the media would make it a talking point. That he called it the Strait of Trump. Or that his memory is fading. He knew. We knew.

And then this morning: Israeli police prevented the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa — the head of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land — along with the Custos of the Holy Land, Fr. Francesco Ielpo, the official Guardian of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, from entering the church to celebrate Palm Sunday Mass. The joint statement from the Latin Patriarchate called it “a manifestly unreasonable and grossly disproportionate measure” — “a hasty and fundamentally flawed decision, tainted by improper considerations” and “an extreme departure from basic principles of reasonableness, freedom of worship, and respect for the Status Quo.” (Vatican News)

For the first time in centuries, the heads of the Church were prevented from celebrating Palm Sunday Mass at the holiest site in Christianity.

Perhaps the Christian Nationalists who support Trump will finally see it — reflected in a locked door on Palm Sunday morning: what is being done in the name of power is unholy. It is tainted with greed. And the ancient cry still stands.

Hoshia-na. Save us. Now.