Friday Care Package
The Politics of Care at the Foot of the Cross
Dear Substack Community: We’ve arrived at another Friday; this time, it is Good Friday, the day Christians remember the state-sponsored execution of a Jewish Rabbi, named Jesus. I’m writing about care today in light of the cross. May you find meaning in the following post, and may you find your way into the path of forever becoming!
I’ll be back on Saturday for my Saturday Substack, which should be interesting considering 4/20 is my 10 year anniversary of completing my PhD. There’s lots bubbling up for me, and I look forward to sharing it all with you! I have always built in public for better or worse! Here’s to another fold of my becoming.
Paz, —RCE+
I invite you to breathe before you continue reading! Let us nurture presence as we begin to think about care and the politics of care.
🖤 Friday Care Package:
The Politics of Care at the Foot of the Cross
Good Friday | In the Shadow of Empire
Today we remember the day Jesus was executed.
Let’s not romanticize it.
This was a state-sanctioned murder.
A crucifixion engineered by the collusion of religious fear and imperial power.
Jesus was not sacrificed by God—
he was lynched by empire.
And still—beneath the terror of that day—
care survived.
As Jesus hung on the cross, his body broken by the machinery of domination,
he looked down and saw his mother.
And he looked at the disciple he loved and said:
“Woman, behold your son… Behold your mother.”
(John 19:26–27)
Even in agony, Jesus created kinship.
He re-wrote family from bloodline to belovedness.
He ensured someone would hold her grief.
He made care the last act of his life.
This is not sentimentality.
It is resistance.
The politics of care begin here.
At the place of state violence.
At the place where power said, “You do not matter.”
And love said, “You still do.”
In a culture built on disposability,
Jesus offered dignity.
In a system addicted to extraction,
he practiced redistribution.
In a time where fear governed bodies,
he trusted love to govern community.
This is the wisdom economy
at its most costly—
and its most beautiful.
So what does care look like
when the empire still crucifies?
It looks like:
Showing up with casseroles and bail money.
Building clinics and crafting liturgies.
Tending to trans youth and incarcerated elders.
Listening to trauma without demanding performance.
Holding hands at hospice beds and protest lines alike.
Naming our dead, and then refusing to let their stories end there.
Today, we live into the care Jesus practiced—
not abstract, but embodied.
Not a feeling, but a framework.
Care as solidarity.
Care as repair.
Care as refusal to abandon one another.
This is Good Friday—not because the suffering was good,
but because love refused to let death define the story.
May you find care today—
not as comfort alone, but as commitment.
May you extend care—
not only to those easy to love,
but to those empire has marked as expendable.
And may you remember:
Even in the shadow of the cross,
we are still re-membering the Body of Christ.
One act of care at a time.
Amen.