A blessing

A Franciscan Christmas Blessing for Justice and Peace

May God bless you with discomfort... at easy answers, hard hearts, half-truths ,and superficial relationships.

May God bless you so that you may live from deep within your heart where God’s Spirit dwells.

May God bless you with anger... at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people.

May God bless you so that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God bless you with tears... to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war.

May God bless you so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, in your neighborhood, so that you will courageously try what you don't think you can do, but, in Jesus Christ you'll have all the strength necessary.

May God bless you to fearlessly speak out about injustice, unjust laws, corrupt politicians, unjust and cruel treatment of prisoners, and senseless wars, genocides, starvations, and poverty that is so pervasive.

May God bless you that you remember we are all called to continue God’s redemptive work of love and healing in God’s place, in and through God’s name, in God’s Spirit, continually creating and breathing new life and grace into everything and everyone we touch.

Source: "Troubadour: A Missionary Magazine," published by the Franciscan Missionary Society, Liverpool, UK: Spring 2005.

Becoming a monster

Showing a few people the Banksy art on the West Bank wall provoked a few comments... one of them, the strange irony that people who were once isolated and walled in (Warsaw Ghetto etc) were now walling others in...

I tracked this comment down somewhere...

"One year ago on 9 July 2004, at the request of the United Nations, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an Advisory Opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s construction of a wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Court made clear that the construction of the Wall and the settlements were illegal. The Advisory Opinion of the Court represents the most authoritative statement to date of the content and applicability of international law concerning Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. On July 10, 2005, the Israeli cabinet approved the construction of the Wall in Jerusalem and vowed the completion of the Wall by September 2005."

It reminds me of the despairing U2 line from Peace on Earth - "And you become a monster so the monster will not break you."

Crossing the lines

I'm working up for Sunday and looking at Peter's crossing the lines in Acts 9-11...

In particular the brief mention of him staying with Simon the Tanner and the colossal change that comes through the incident with Cornelius.

It has got me thinking about the borders we construct - for all borders are human constructs and while they might serve for a time, we generally end up serving them and sometimes dying for them!

Here's a quote I found:

Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera

And here is some art from an interesting person/s who has some done some quite wonderfully subversive, border-crossing streetart... more on Banksy can be found at http://www.banksy.co.uk/

The art on the West Bank wall is rather powerful!

Preparing for Sunday

I'm back after a week off in Golden Bay... more on that soon...
The text for Sunday is Acts 9:32-43, the healing of Aeneas and the raising of Tabitha. Here's a quote that has got me warmed up...

“Every community, every family, every congregation exists within certain settled, fixed arrangements of power and weakness, life and death. People are told that there is a divinely established chain of being, a fixed order in which we are to find our place and stay there. Tabitha is to stay home and let the men devise an affordable welfare system. Peter is to stay with his fishing nets and leave theology to the scholars, and Aeneas should obey doctor’s orders and stay in bed. But the Word comes to these people in the presence of those who, like Peter, come out among them and stand beside them. These miraculous events are subversive of the present order, for they announce a new age, an age where reality is not based upon rigid logic or cause-effect circumstances but upon God’s promise. Each miraculous intrusion is a sign that “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you” (Luke 11:20). Every time a couple of little stories like these are faithfully told by the church, the social system of paralysis and death is rendered null and void. The church comes out and speaks the evangelical and prophetic “Rise!” and nothing is ever quite the same.”
William H. Willimon in Acts Interpretation Bible Commentary 1988 p85-6