Fast & vigil in North Carolina

Friend and former Mainer Ken Jones is fasting and vigiling for two weeks in Asheville, North Carolina to protest US complicity in the war in Yemen.  I asked him to share some reflections.  Here is the first installment:

I'm getting ready to head out to my corner now. Here's a quick first take, three short paragraphs. I can stew more if you like...

Standing on a corner of a tourist town during the holidays with a sign that says “No War in Yemen,” I sometimes feel like a Grinch. People are running around with friends and families trying to have a little fun and then there’s this guy shining a light on organized murder in some far away country.

I am fasting as I do this two-week vigil, so I am more in touch with my perceptions and feelings than usual. I see lots of well-dressed white people, briskly walking to the next place, posing for pictures, looking at phones for directions, laughing, and bantering. It all seems like fun, but I can also feel an emptiness. And I think about the starving, sick children in Yemen, and the hell they and their parents are living through.

I think of my vigil as a spiritual practice. I am a medium, bringing one reality to another. I am a witness, a call to conscience, a question mark. I don’t worry about the effects of my being here. I’m just standing for peace, hoping to bring some light into the darkness. Trying not to be a Grinch.

- Ken Jones