There are some things in life that are worse than death

photos: 2025 July, Sacred Run from Mt. Graham to Oak Flat -- Young Apache girls/women who are facing the trauma of the violence against and the looming murder of Oak Flat where they are spiritually rooted to their Mother. The young woman in the middle had her Sunrise Ceremony at Oak Flat last Fall 2024 pictured here as the painted lady.

“The merciless and ruthless attack on the ground of community in the life of the American Indian is completely amoral: To uproot them from territory that gave them a rare sense of belonging, in which they could actualize their potential within a frame of reference that was totally confirming, and at the same time to keep them in full or relative view of their devastated and desecrated extension of self that the land signified is a unique form of torture, a long, slow, anguished dying. The original insider is forced to become an outsider in their own territory. There are some things in life that are worse than death — surely this must be judged as such.” — Howard Thurman (Christian Mystic)

Howard Thurman (1899-1981) was a Christian minister and mystic that shaped not only the witness of Martin Luther King, Jr. but many movements for social justice. A dear friend and Christian pastor who has stood with the Apache Stronghold for over 30 years, Rev. John Mendez, spoke to me of Howard Thurman's influence in part to help him see the struggle of the black community in the U.S. in an older and broader context of colonialism and empire building to displace and destroy indigenous communities and the earth, to dominate land and oppress peoples to extract the earth's resources killing those who stood in their way and exploiting the labor of her people. This is the capitalist world we live in that continues to make things in life worse than death for the poor and marginalized of the earth.

“I had to find my way to the place where I could stand side by side with a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Moslem, (*an Apache) and know that the authenticity of their experience was identical with the essence and authenticity of my own. . . . On any road, around any turning, a person may come upon the burning bush and hear a voice say, 'Take off your shoes because the place where you are now standing is a holy place, even though you did not know it before.' I think that is the heartbeat of religious authority.” — Howard Thurman