Today, deep in Advent, I read the devastating news from Aleppo, a continuous tragedy that has haunted me day and night for months. I wake up with it, in my mind’s eye, and watch and listen throughout the day, so far away, and so unable to do anything to help. Here’s the link to the New York Times article about what happened today: Aleppo

I have no words for the sorrow of this, and for the horror of this violence. I’m not even sure why I’m writing about it now, other than to add my voice to the lamentations of others, to the terrible grief and frustration of watching tyrants and violence prevail. What is happening to us? To our humanity?  What will the survivors do, the civilians, the children do? What will God do? What will the world do?

These last weeks since the election in the US, and the endless stream of terrible news from Syria and other places, I’ve been turning to theologians and spiritual leaders who have lived through such times, and such violence, martyrs and sages, many from biblical scriptures, prophets and mystics, trying to find a path through, as a pastor, and more important, simply as a Christian in the United States. I’ve read Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thich Nhat Hanh, Elie Wiesel, Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Dalai Lama, Dorothy Day, Luther, Daniel Berrigan, and Mother Theresa, and a host of columns by my contemporaries,  brothers and sisters who are themselves, seeking faithful ways through. But we’re alive to think about it, and preach about it, and our neighbors in Syria are dead and dying. Where I go in these moments of wordless grief and sorrow, over and over again, is to Mary, not in an Advent pregnancy,  but standing at the foot of the cross, to the Stabat Mater, watching her son die, helpless to stop it. Or to the Pieta, Mary holding death in her lap.

This Advent is a Lent of the death of hope and freedom in many and various ways. Today, Day 17 of Advent, feels the way mid-afternoon on Good Friday does, a giving up of the spirit. We failed to save them, in Aleppo. And my heart is pierced with that. Maybe the only prayer today is from the Lord’s Prayer: “save them, deliver them, from evil.”