“My humanity is caught up in yours. And if you are dehumanized, I am dehumanized.” — Desmond Tutu
Three years ago, everything changed for millions of Jewish people. On October 7, 2023, Hamas-led militants entered southern Israel and attacked kibbutzim, military posts, homes, and the Nova music festival. Around 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.1 Parents lost children, children lost parents, and young people who had been dancing all night suddenly had to run for their lives. Families waited for news, which sometimes came as the devastating confirmation that someone they loved had been killed or taken into Gaza.
For Jewish communities around the world, the attack reopened old wounds. Jewish history is marked by centuries of pogroms, expulsions, antisemitic violence, and the Holocaust. Israel has long stood as a promise that Jewish people would have a place where their safety did not depend on others. October 7 shattered that sense of security.
Today, we remember those who died. Their deaths need no explanation. Mourning should never have to be justified.
But three years have gone by, and what happened AFTER October 7 must also be acknowledged, as it changed the lives of thousands of Palestinians.
Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, forced most people from their homes, and destroyed houses, hospitals, schools, universities, and places of worship. It has also led to widespread hunger and hardship. In September 2025, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry said that Israeli authorities and security forces were committing genocide in Gaza. Amnesty International and B’Tselem2, an Israeli human rights group whose report is titled Our Genocide, reached the same conclusion.3
Israel disagrees with these findings and says it is fighting Hamas, which carried out the October 7 attacks and operates among civilians. No matter how the arguments over words continue, Palestinian families have faced almost unimaginable loss and destruction.
Their dead have names as well.
One of the hardest moral challenges we face is learning how to remember October 7 without letting it become a reason to justify what happened afterward.
Trauma is real. It changes both people and communities. It teaches us to always look out for danger, and when trauma is shared, its effects can last for generations. Jewish history shows why threats to Jewish safety are felt so deeply, even if outsiders do not always understand.
But trauma must not become a theology. Trauma shows us where we have been hurt and what we fear might happen again. It deserves honesty, kindness, and care. But trauma cannot tell us who someone else is, and suffering does not make everything we do afterward morally right.
It is striking that October 7 is also Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s birthday.
Tutu spent much of his life fighting apartheid, a system that decided whose lives mattered and whose did not. He had little patience for people who stayed neutral when there were big differences in power. In a 1986 speech, he said, “In a situation of injustice and oppression, there can be no neutrality.” He explained this with the image of an elephant standing on a mouse’s tail. Saying you are neutral in that situation does nothing to help the mouse.
Recognizing the humanity of both Israelis and Palestinians does not mean pretending their histories, power, or situations are the same. Compassion does not mean treating everything as equal. We can condemn the massacre and hostage-taking on October 7 without seeing the genocide of Palestinians as something that had to happen or is morally acceptable.
Tutu’s work in South Africa teaches us another lesson. Tutu understood that reconciliation could never begin by asking people to look away. “True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the hurt, the truth,” he taught. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission began there. Something happened. Someone did it. Someone suffered. The dead had names. Reconciliation, if it ever became possible, had to pass through truth first.4
Memory was important because truth was important. But memory also needed to help the living. Memory can protect human dignity by making sure the dead are not forgotten. It can warn future generations about what people can do to each other. It can keep names and stories alive that violence tried to erase.
But memory can also be used to justify more violence. Our own pain can make us ignore the pain of others. We might use our dead to justify causing more deaths. We can become so sure that we are the victims that we stop seeing the suffering we cause.
This is not just something Israelis or Palestinians do. Families do it. Congregations do it. Nations do it. Religious groups do it. People can build their whole identity around what has been done to them, until their pain becomes the way they see everyone else.
Jewish tradition has a belief strong enough to resist this narrowing. Genesis says that every person is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God.5 This idea is universal before it is about any one group. The person who scares me, the person whose politics I dislike, the person across a border, and the child born into a history I did not choose all have a dignity that does not depend on whether I recognize it.
Three years after October 7, reconciliation still feels very far away. We should not pretend otherwise. There is too much grief, too much destruction, too much anger, and too much that has not yet been faced honestly.
Maybe the spiritual task for this anniversary is smaller and more difficult. We remember the Israelis killed on October 7 with care and attention to who they were. We remember the Palestinians killed in Gaza with the same determination not to let them become just numbers. We tell the truth about what happened and what came after. We resist the urge to ignore another person just because seeing them makes our story more complicated.
Grief deserves to be present among us. But grief cannot be allowed to decide who is still seen as human.
Maybe that is the question this anniversary leaves us with: Can we hold on to what has broken our hearts without letting it make us hard?
As we consider this, know that I hold all of you who are hurting on this day in deep loving care.
We are in this together,
Cameron
Reflection Questions
Has there been a grief or trauma in your own life that changed the way you saw other people? What did it help you see, and what might it have made harder to see?
Where have you encountered memory being used to preserve dignity and truth, and where have you seen remembered suffering used to justify new harm?
What would it mean to honor your own grief fully while refusing to let it determine the boundaries of your compassion?
A Prayer for the Day
A Prayer To Keep Us Human in Our Grief
Holy One of Love, Receive the dead whose names are still spoken through tears. Hold those whose lives were shattered on October 7, and those whose lives have been shattered in all the days since. Give us courage to remember without turning memory into a weapon. Let grief deepen our humanity rather than narrow it. When pain makes another person disappear, restore them to our sight. Teach us to honor the dead without creating more graves. And when peace feels impossibly far away, keep alive within us the stubborn recognition that no human being is outside the circle of dignity. Amen.
Spiritual Practice: Hold Two Names
Today, find the name and story of one person killed on October 7, 2023. Learn something about who they were beyond the circumstances of their death. Perhaps what music they loved, what work they did, who loved them, or what future they imagined.
Then find the name and story of one Palestinian civilian killed in Gaza during the war that followed.
Do not compare them. Do not decide whose suffering is greater. Do not use one life to explain or justify the death of the other. Simply allow two human beings to occupy your attention.
If you pray, speak both names in prayer. If prayer is not your practice, sit quietly with their stories for a few minutes. Notice whether something in you resists holding them together. Become curious about that resistance without shaming yourself for it.
The practice is not moral equivalence. It is moral attention.
War reduces human beings to categories because categories are easier to hate, defend, sacrifice and forget. Names make that harder.
Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…
My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.
NEW!!!!!! October 13, 2026 - 11-12:30pm ET - FREE ONLINE EVENT - The Art of Creating Community - We talk a great deal about the need for community these days. We are living through an epidemic of loneliness, deepening polarization, declining trust in institutions, and a growing sense that many of the places that once brought us together no longer do. But gathering people is not the same thing as creating community. Join me for a conversation with community strategist Laura Zug about the art and practice of forming communities that people genuinely want to be part of.
October 13, 2026 - 12:30 - 1:30pm ET - FREE ONLINE BOOK CLUB - For the next 5 weeks, I am hosting a book club where we will read Fr. Gregory Boyle’s “Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times.” Father Gregory Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, has spent decades building community among people whom society has often discarded. In Cherished Belonging, he draws on those relationships and stories to explore what might happen if we stopped sorting people into categories of worthy and unworthy, us and them. Don’t worry if you don’t have time to read the book. We always have incredibly rich conversations. All are welcome. RSVP Here.
October 15, 2026, 7-8:45pm ET - I will be joining Jackie Sussman for an online session on practicing eidetics as part of our “Reclaiming the Power of Imagination” monthly series. Eidetic Imagery is a powerful tool for pastors, denominational leaders, coaches, and spiritual directors working with others, and for individuals seeking deeper integration and healing in their own lives. Jackie is a psychotherapist, author, and leading expert in Eidetic Image Psychology, and has spent over forty years helping leaders and individuals unlock creativity, uncover hidden strengths, and move through limiting patterns. During this session, she will lead a live Eidetic process shaped by mythic imagery, offering a direct experience of the work. REGISTER HERE.
October 18-21, 2026 - PREACH! 2026 Conference- I’ll be co-hosting PREACH in Minneapolis with Church Anew, a new gathering for preachers, storytellers, worship leaders, and spiritual communicators navigating what it means to speak with clarity, compassion, and courage in a changing world. If you’ve sensed that the preaching moment has changed and are longing for thoughtful community and renewed imagination for this work, I hope you’ll join us.
November 10, 7-8:30pm ET - I’ll be joined by theologian, writer, and professor Dr. Debra Rienstra for a special ONLINE conversation on Refugia Faith. In ecology, refugia are small places where life survives amid disruption, pockets of resilience from which life can eventually regenerate and spread. Debra invites us to consider what this might mean spiritually in an age of climate instability, political turmoil, institutional decline, and profound uncertainty. What if our congregations, communities, relationships, and even our own lives could become refugia, places where courage, compassion, beauty, wisdom, and possibility are protected and cultivated for whatever comes next? I hope you’ll join us for this timely and deeply hopeful conversation. REGISTER HERE!
November 4, 2026 - 7-8:30pm ET, ONLINE EVENT - Theologian Matthew Fox and I are teaming up again in a series called Journeying with the Mystics. The mystics have always emerged in times of uncertainty. They appear when old certainties are crumbling, when institutions no longer provide easy answers, and when people find themselves longing for a deeper experience of the Sacred. Join us for a 24-session exploration of the teachings of St. John of the Cross, Thomas Merton, Hildegard of Bingen, Kabir and Rumi, Meister Eckhart and more. This is more than a lecture series. It is an invitation into a living spiritual journey. Learn more and REGISTER HERE!
December 15, 7-8:30pm ET - FREE WEBINAR - I will be joined by Dr. Charissa Mikoski, Assistant Professor of Research and Hartford Institute for Religion Research for a presentation on “The State of American Congregations: What the Latest Data Tell Us.” This webinar explores findings from the 2025 Faith Communities Today survey, including changes in worship attendance, congregational vitality, finances, volunteering, programming, and leadership. It will also examine what more than 24,000 individual attenders tell us about participation and their experiences of congregational life. Together, these findings offer a picture that is neither simply one of decline nor one of revival, but of significant change and uneven recovery. REGISTER HERE.
Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…
I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.
My dear friend Brian McLaren has a new novel coming in November, and I’m excited about this one. The Great Rift is the second book in his Last Voyage trilogy, imagining ten pioneers leaving a dying Earth for a fragile human settlement on Mars. The story weaves together ecological imagination, spirituality, art, survival, and the possibility of creating a genuinely different future. Brian is one of the most thoughtful and imaginative writers I know, and I love seeing him use fiction to explore questions he has spent a lifetime asking. The Great Rift comes out November 3 and is available for preorder now.
My friends at Church Anew have been building a terrific library of resources for congregations and church leaders navigating ministry in these strange and demanding times. You’ll find thoughtful worship and preaching resources, practical tools, and material designed to help communities engage the questions actually shaping our lives right now. I deeply appreciate the imagination and theological depth Church Anew brings to its work, so if you’re a pastor or congregational leader looking for fresh resources, spend a little time exploring what they’re creating.
Every Monday, 12pm ET - ONLINE WRITING GROUP - My dear friend, Meryl Marshall-Daniels, is leading a writing group open to all. This is a simple and spacious writing circle for people who want time to listen inwardly and put words on the page without overthinking, performing, or polishing. Meryl offers a prompt designed to invite reflection, imagination, and attunement to what is already alive within you. The practice honors writing as a way of listening, of letting images, memories, questions, and insights surface in their own time. Learn more here.
If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.
https://apnews.com/article/20950e811130e9a1ee4056f207150f55
https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/8744/2024/en/
https://tutu.org.za/news/global-leadership-we-need-skillful-dexterous-humble-leaders-to-create-a-world-order-with-sustainable-solutions
Genesis 1:26–27