The Spirit Hovers in the Dark

By, Conor Foley

Can Palestinians expect anything but terror from the night sky? We’ve seen the crucifying horrors rained down on our siblings under the enveloping, starless darkness.

In all its numinous, celestial beauty, the sky should be a source of wonder, a living metaphor for possibility and the infinite creativity and love of God — not a theatre of violence. But can Palestinians look into the gloomy heavens and expect anything good from God?

The angel of God arrives in the night sky, hovering over the shepherds in the darkness, like the Spirit hovered over the waters of a chaotic netherworld, in some time before time. In both cases, God in the darkness broods over the welter and waste, like a mother over her afflicted children, and we wonder what she will do next. The answer: a new world.

The shepherds are afraid because liberation is a terrifying prospect. The night sky, alight with the glory of God, means death too. But not for them. It means the end of the world they know. It means the arrival of something new, even new creation. It means the liberation of the captive, the setting of the prisoner free, the rich brought low, and the poor lifted up. It means apocalypse.

Perhaps God is in this darkness too, poised to destroy what crucifies her children, ready to create the thing we have so longed for: this new world where Palestine is free.

So God, we pray, 
asking that you would arrive into this dark night, 
in all the terror you portend,
to destroy the old things,
the patterns of this world that steal, kill, and destroy.

We pray that you would appear to our Palestinian siblings as a comfort,
and to their genociders as a terror, even as you offer them salvation too.

We pray that sun, moon, and stars would fall from the sky,
as heaven moves down to earth,
as boundaries dissolve into commonness,
as creation sheds the shackles of human power,
and embraces the weakness of a child-God.

Come quickly, Lord God.
Save us. Amen.

Conor Foley (they/them) is the Outreach Minister at the First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn. Through their solidarity projects with the poor and policed, they’re thinking about a practical apocalyptic mysticism, toward a Christian insurrection against capitalism, imperialism, antiblackness, and all forms of antichrist violence.