I’ve been walking through the valley of the shadow of death, but I have not been alone. This postcard project is the fruit of many months of contemplation and deep conversation across great distances, apart but connected in our friendships forged in frayed but steadfast love. This project bears witness to the abstract numbers of genocide and desperate attempts to grow hearts big enough to carry the grief of living in a world that created this, through both commission and omission, through institutions and individuals. It is carrying the cross with the particular piercing sorrow of the individual families with names and rubbled addresses, sharing until it hurts so that our beloved friends can buy $200 bags of flour infested with vermin and glass. It is joining heart to neighbor’s heart, refusing the dehumanized “truth” of indifference, comfort, and collateral damage.
Back side of the postcard. The design is digital artwork of traditional tatreez (Palestinian embroidery) motifs, found in the public domain and borrowed lovingly for this project. The QR code links to Christians for a Free Palestine.
This project emerged from a question: what is this thing called “freedom” that the Empire’s leaders claim to champion with their violence?
How can such a regimen of child sacrifice abroad and kidnapping at home, forever wars and permanent surveillance, Alex Karp and Project 2025, claim to be motivated by the same ideal that inspired the Haitian Revolution and every other movement to get out from under the boot of domination? Is there an objective freedom or is it just another elastic word, a symbol soldiering on the frontlines of narrative warfare?
Nina Simone gave us a clue when she told an interviewer in 1968 that for her, freedom means no fear. Her words reminded me of what I first heard from the priest who directed me through RCIA: the opposite of love is not hate, but fear. I eventually understood that this priest wasn’t just saying words that randomly popped into his mind, but paraphrasing a letter from the Apostle John to a congregation of early Christians, nearly 100 years after the execution of Jesus and 200 years before the Catholic Church fused with the dying Roman Empire. As members of a persecuted religious minority group within the Empire, their persecution was not just a complex, their fear grounded in material reality:
There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. The one who fears has not been perfected in love. – 1 John 4:18
No Fear
Back in April of this year I wrote some reflections on fear and how it magnifies our feeling of risk, not the actual risk itself. But what about the risk of punishment? Are you afraid of punishment? All punishment? Some punishment? Does a reduction in comfort feel like punishment? Is your goal mere survival? How? For how long? At whose expense? We must not forget that we were never meant to “survive” this life. These meat suits have expiration dates. It was always going to be temporary.
Better to spend this life perfecting your love than worshipping at the altar of fear.
This project was a joint effort between myself and my friend Andrew. Andrew and I met at a Sunday Mass in South Philadelphia ten years ago. I’ve moved cities several times since then, but we’ve gotten closer over time despite the distance thanks to snail mail and anti-genocide fellowship.
After leaving grad school in spring 2025, I fell into a pit of despair and isolation. My heart survived thanks to my cats and the persistence of long-distance friends, but weeks would go by without an irl interaction with someone who knew me. I found refuge and contemplation in designing, carving, and printing this postcard.
I told Andrew about it and the idea to create something bigger from it, something like a lamentation and prayer sprouting from the decay of our genocide-scarred hearts. We worked on it over the summer, exchanging ideas and inspiration in artwork and daily readings from the missal. Our cats provided supervision and moral support to reach our marathon goal of sending out 300 sets of postcards/prayer cards to church leaders in each of our cities and beyond.
By the end of September 2025, we hit our goal. We hope this project inspires reflection and courage that leads to transformation. May we all become the kind of people capable of truly loving our neighbors.
There are a few sets left. Email heatherPEB[at]proton.me.
