Stations of the Cross 2016

Chaplains on the Harbor

Stations of the Cross is a Christian practice that reflects on the last moments of Jesus’s life. For centuries, this devotion has been used to meditate on fourteen images that depict Jesus’s suffering and death. Chaplains on the Harbor (Grays Harbor County, WA)—a group that organizes for dignity and survival among Jesus’ people: the jobless, the homeless, the incarcerated, the addicted—adapted this ritual as a way to tell the stories of suffering in their community through Jesus’s story.

Stations of the Cross from Grays Harbor County: 2016

Chaplains on the Harbor

Chaplains on the Harbor (Grays Harbor County, WA) organizes for dignity and survival among Jesus’ people—the jobless, homeless, incarcerated, and addicted. On Maundy Thursday, 2016, they held a service featuring a re-telling of the Stations of the Cross through the lens of the poor today. The artwork, created by local youth, powerfully reflects their shared experiences and collective struggle.

Stations of the Cross: Aberdeen Reality Tour in Grays Harbor County, WA

Chaplains on the Harbor

On Maundy Thursday 2019, Chaplains on the Harbor hosted their first-ever Holy Week pilgrimage. They celebrated baptisms and confirmations at their church in Westport, with organizer Aaron Scott preaching and The Rt. Rev. Greg Rickel, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia, presiding. The Rev. Sarah Monroe baptized Levi Hunt (from the Harbor Roots Farm team) and confirmed Barbara Russell and Pam Beck (leaders at the Westport community center). Immediately following the service, they caravanned to Aberdeen for a Stations of the Cross Reality Tour. Joined by their bishop, clergy from around the diocese, and people living on the streets, they traced the last steps of Jesus while telling the untold stories of those experiencing poverty and homelessness in Grays Harbor County. The pilgrimage concluded with a street memorial for their beloved dead, lost to poverty and violence from 2016–2018. These are the Stations of the Cross in Grays Harbor County, WA, 2019.

The Stations of the Cross: Crucifixion and COVID-19

Kairos Center for Relgions, Rights, and Social Justice

This virtual Stations of the Cross, created by the Kairos Center in 2020, invites deep reflection on Jesus as a poor person leading poor people, guided by God’s love in the face of empire’s many manifestations today—poverty and inequality, systemic racism, militarism, environmental devastation, and an imperial religion that upholds a false moral narrative serving the few at the expense of all. During Holy Week, we bear witness to Jesus’ suffering amid a global pandemic, COVID-19. Plagues like these are not new in the biblical account of empire, and once again, in moments of crisis and power consolidation, it is the most vulnerable who bear the heaviest burden.