Trigger warning: sexual assault is mentioned

Dear Church,

After service today (April 3), I arrived home to a news reports of rape as a war crime in Ukraine. The horror of war is real and few escape being wounded or scarred in some way. For the civilians killed, the soldiers whose souls are compromised, for the children and those who witness, for the whole of humanity, I grieve.

And my heart goes to you and yours; to all my kin whose bodies have been abused, to all who have experienced sexual violence and lived to laugh and love and enjoy life, to all whose loved ones have had to fight their way back to joy, my heart goes out to you who read the news and shudder from knowing.

Rape has always been a weapon of war. Susan Brown Miller’s book, Against Our Will, speaks of this in plain language. Rape is a weapon of war, of colonization, of genocide, of endemic misogyny.

Years ago, I was working with a congregation to raise funds for women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo who needed medical care. Many of them had been forcibly impregnated during war. I was taken aback by stories about women who responded to horror and abuse with strength and grace in part because so many women had been attacked in similar ways. It was impossible to feel isolated or alone. There was strength in shared survival.  

To all my kin, you are not alone.

Others have been in the same place. 

Others will be where we have been.

When you need to wail out grief, we will hear you. When you need to hide, we will pretend we do not see you as we stay near, but not too near. When you are ready to move, we will move with you. And days to dance will come when it is time.

May the days of peace be near and may they last long.

–Rev. Mitra