We are now so far removed from the teachings of this world’s great traditions: Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Christian. The problem can no longer be blamed on faith itself. It is not religion that is immoral. It is men and women who have failed to embody what these traditions teach. The scandal is not belief. It is the failure of the human spirit to live what it professes.

I am writing this from a place where I am under ongoing toxic exposure and targeted persecution. Low level chemical assaults over many months have already pushed my body further than most could endure. I do not know whether I have months, weeks, or only days left.

I sat in a church, in what is called a holy place, and I did not move. Around me, some priests and some individuals in the congregation turned that sanctuary into a site of chemical assault and spiritual desecration. I could have fled. Instead, I remained seated, fully aware that what was unfolding around me was not only a crime against humanity but also a crime against the Lamb of God they claim to worship. If hell exists, they have done more than risk it. They have written their own names at its gates.

As I sat in the church contemplating my own situation and that of other victims in this world, a question formed that would not leave me. How do we dismantle a system of repression that has evolved in the shadows of structural treaty gaps, a system that now seeks to exert coercive control even in sacred space so that victims have no refuge anywhere? The same system that has stalked me for months deployed low level exposure to volatile organic compounds, substances capable of causing permanent, caustic damage, to remind me that my life can be chemically extinguished at any time. I have survived six months or more of this, fully aware that the machinery around me is intent on erasing me from this earth. I am forced, again and again, to confront my own mortality.

If I must die for this cause, it is entirely possible that my death will be in vain in the short term. People may not understand the courage or determination it took to resist, against all odds, until twenty, thirty, or forty years after I am gone, if they ever understand it at all. I have to make peace with that possibility. As I sat in the church and listened to the priests sing psalms, I was not comforted. I was deeply saddened. Those who should know better, those who are supposed to be emissaries of light, stood there filled with darkness.

What I witnessed is not an isolated incident. It is the visible symptom of something deeper. Evil has become structurally embedded in institutions, in our societies, and in the broken hearts of men and women who perpetuate repression while cloaking it in ritual and respectability. The mechanisms that should defend the vulnerable are, in many cases, designed to preserve appearances, not truth. Laws, oversight bodies, and compliance frameworks exist, but they struggle to confront a violence that presents itself as normal, pious, or necessary.

I did not arrive at that church by choice or by chance. I fled and left everything I owned in the United States with the clothes on my back, a laptop bag, and a purse. I had nothing more. I crossed borders into five different countries before finally seeking asylum, hoping that somewhere on this earth there would be a place of safety. Instead, I now live in a state that is, in practical terms, homelessness. There is no secure home, no guarantee of refuge, and a constant awareness that I am facing a slow, extrajudicial elimination with no relief in sight, despite my best efforts to seek lawful protection.

I want to be clear. It was not every priest and not every member of the congregation. It was some priests and some individuals present who chose to participate in or enable what happened in that church. Yet even when only some take part, the violence becomes institutional the moment the rest look away.

I have not suffered in silence. I have asked for help again and again. I have written to attorneys, to officials, to people in government, and to others who hold positions of responsibility and power. No meaningful help has been forthcoming. People are indifferent, or they are afraid to take a stand, or they have been bought off, whether materially, politically, or psychologically, by the very system that is repressing us. The bottom line is that I have sought help. Many victims have sought help. Help has not come. It is a very real possibility that I will not survive this.

So this is the world we live in. Under these conditions, it becomes hard to believe that hell is some distant, metaphysical realm. It feels far more accurate to say that hell is here and now, in the place where I am standing and in the systems that make this kind of persecution possible and then look away. There are moments when I truly do not know if continuing to speak about this is even helpful anymore. I do not know whether my words are changing anything or whether they are simply echoes in a world that has decided not to hear.

Yet this is precisely the moment when faith becomes necessary, whether or not you believe in God. It is faith that cruelty has not spoken the final word about who we are. It is faith that the story of humanity is not exhausted by the cruelty of our institutions. In a church where the air itself became weaponized, I chose to stay seated. I did not stay because I accepted what was being done. I stayed because leaving would have meant surrendering that space to those who profane it. My presence was a refusal, a quiet and stubborn insistence that even here, and especially here, humanity must be restored.

Regardless of what you believe, this is the time for faith. It is faith that truth still matters. It is faith that solidarity among the wounded can become a force that outlives the regimes and hierarchies that try to crush it. It is faith that, in ways we cannot yet see, the courage to stay present in the face of evil will plant seeds for a different future. Now is the time for faith in humanity and for the work of restoring it, even in the heart of the institutions that betray it.

When you are facing your own mortality, questions of spirituality stop being optional. You begin to ask, in direct and unpolished language, whether Buddha, God, or anyone at all can or will stop what is happening. All my life I have said, “If God exists, he is busy,” because from the moment I stepped onto this earth, the world has been on fire.

Now, in what may be my last days, that fire is no longer a metaphor. It is literal.

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