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The Kingdom

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:31:18 GMT

Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the cross, he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had to come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work.

"The Kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing, who would ever have been spared?" (Martin Luther)

According to God's will, Christendom is a scattered people, scattered like seed "into all the kingdoms of the earth" (Deut.28:25). That is its curse and its promise.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer-

St. Francis of Assisi

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 20:56:21 GMT

Lord, make me a channel of Thy peace
that, where there is hatred, I may bring love;
that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness;
that, where there is discord, I may bring harmony;
that, where there is error, I may bring truth;
that, where there is doubt, I may bring faith;
that, where there is despair, I may bring hope;
that, where there are shadows, I may bring light;
that, where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted,
to understand than to be understood;
to love than to be loved;
for it is by forgetting self that one finds;
it is forgiving that one is forgiven;
it is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.

The children of Gaza...

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:51:09 GMT

Israeli war against Hamas scars Gaza's children

By KARIN LAUB, Associated Press Writer Karin Laub, Associated Press Writer 2 hrs 51 mins ago

JEBALIYA, Gaza Strip – Surrounded by mountains of rubble that were once their homes, two dozen children sat on a rainbow-colored blanket and drew with crayons.

They quickly filled the pages passed around by trauma counselors with pictures of Israeli tanks, dead bodies and Palestinians firing assault rifles — scenes they saw when Israel's war on Hamas came into their neighborhood.

"We felt we will die soon," 11-year-old Sharif Abed Rabbo told the group, describing his family's escape. "And I am sad I lost my house."

Psychologists say Israel's three-week offensive inflicted more severe trauma than previous conflicts in Gaza because civilians in the crowded sliver of territory had no safe place to run. A wartime study among hundreds of Gaza children showed a rise in nightmares, bedwetting and other signs of trauma, said psychologist Fadel Abu Hein.

Counselors and aid workers fear that Gaza's children, who make up 56 percent of the 1.4 million people here, will grow up hating Israel and become easier prey for extremists.

"We are losing the next generation," said John Ging, the top U.N. aid official in Gaza. As a buffer against militancy, U.N. schools are launching human rights classes for their 200,000 students this week.

Children and teens were particularly vulnerable in Israel's military offensive, launched Dec. 27 to try to halt eight years of Hamas rocket fire on towns in southern Israel. The rocket attacks have frightened children there and frequently sent them running for cover.

In Gaza, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights counted 280 children among 1,285 dead and said one in four of the more than 4,000 wounded was a minor.

Facing the Israeli invasion, Hamas gunmen often operated from densely populated Gaza neighborhoods, drawing massive Israeli fire that killed and wounded large numbers of civilians, along with fighters. Tens of thousands fled their homes, seeking shelter in U.N. schools.

Among the refugees was Ansam Rahel, 10, who fled shelling of her home in the town of Beit Lahiya and sought cover, along with her family, in the town's U.N. school. On Jan. 17, when an Israeli shell struck the shelter, Ansam was hit by shrapnel that sliced across the top of her head. A thick welt of stitches runs diagonally across her partially shaved scalp, and she covers it with a ski cap.

The little girl, who carries herself with quiet grace and sadness, is back home, but her life has changed. Her father is in Egypt, where her 5-year-old sister Dima is undergoing treatment for a serious war injury. Ansam said she takes painkillers and doesn't sleep well.

On Saturday, she briefly returned to her school to say goodbye to friends. She is not well enough to attend and was told by school officials she might be taken to France for further medical treatment. "I didn't let them cry or feel pity for me," she said of her classmates.

Abu Hein, a psychologist who runs a community health center in Gaza City, said his teams interviewed 950 families, among them 2,180 children, in U.N. shelters across Gaza during and after the war.

A majority of parents told the team their children had become more clingy, and about one-third said their children insisted on sleeping in the same room with them.

Since a cease-fire took hold a week ago, Abu Hein's center and other aid groups have sent teams to the most devastated areas, seeking out children for emergency counseling.

On Sunday, three of his counselors drove to the Abed Rabbo neighborhood of the town of Jebaliya, a few hundred yards from the Israeli border. The neighborhood came under heavy fire during Israel's ground offensive, which began Jan. 3. House after house in a radius of hundreds of yards were destroyed, with nothing left except mountains of rubble.

The counselors spread a large blanket on a small patch of grass, and children soon came running. About two dozen, from toddlers to young teens, sat in a circle and played games, raising their hands or clapping, to break the ice. A counselor then asked the older kids to tell what happened to them during the war.

Asra Aref, 8, said her father raised a white flag when soldiers came closer and spoke Hebrew to them. "The soldiers told him he has just five minutes to evacuate the house," she said.

Counselor Farraj al-Hau tried to assure the children, especially the boys, that it's OK to be scared, that he was also frightened during the war.

Then he asked the children to draw. The youngest ones just managed a few squiggles, but almost all the drawings of the older ones included tanks, helicopters or bodies sprawled on the ground. One boy drew a Palestinian gunman firing an assault rifle at a tank. In another picture, two blue dots meant to be land mines were planted under tanks.

At one point, 5-year-old Saja Abed Rabbo, in pigtails and pajamas, started crying. Counselor Mustafa Haj-Ahmed led her away and sat with her on a nearby chunk of cement, gently asking her what happened. She barely spoke.

Haj-Ahmed walked with her and a relative to her wrecked home. Her grandfather, Mohammed, explained that the family, Saja among them, came under heavy fire in the house for three days before fleeing. He said Saja saw the bodies of two cousins, ages 13 and 14, who were killed in the fighting.

The counselors said they'd return to the neighborhood for more intensive counseling.

Gaza's 221 U.N. schools are also trying to help the children cope. On Saturday, the first day of school, teachers asked students to share their stories.

The weekly human rights classes will include lessons about nonviolent ways of solving conflicts. Ging said the new program had been planned for awhile, but now has greater urgency.

"We have to stand with the mothers and fathers who want their children to grow up to be doctors, lawyers and civilized in their behavior and their thinking," Ging said. "But for sure, the circumstances here, day by day, are working against all of us who have that agenda."

For 14-year-old Zakariya Baroud, the trauma is still too real. He lost three classmates in an Israeli mortar attack that killed 42 people, most of them civilians, near a U.N. school in the Jebaliya refugee camp. Israel said at the time that troops were firing at a Palestinian rocket squad in the area.

Zakariya said he saw bodies strewn across the main road, including that of his best friend, Bashar Deeb, with a deep gash in his throat.

His father, Baker, spent eight years in Israeli prisons for activities in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a violent group. He said he'd like Zakariya to attend university, but wouldn't talk him out of taking up arms.

"He is seeing suffering right now," he said of his son. "For 22 days, we were not able to sleep. He has witnessed the events by himself, so he, by himself, hates Israel."

Solitude

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 07:57:16 GMT

Tonight I had an epiphany of sorts in regard to solitude. Seeing as how I am of the "God created us for community" mindset, this was a biggie for me. I don't have the time or the energy to go in depth tonight, though, so I ask all my friends here on Xanga to please nudge me or poke in the days to come...that is, if I don't write about it soon enough on my own.

PEACE.

Celebration!!

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 10:24:59 GMT

Since I am a sleep deprived mama right now, I don't have the time to make a coherent post that celebrates MLK day in the way my heart desires. So instead, I will share some quick, heartfelt thoughts with you instead.

I am challenged daily to dream bigger, think more deeply, and live more purposefully by this blog:

http://blog.iamnotashamed.net/2009/01/19/remember-and-be-inspired-by-more-than-the-dream/

So on this day, I celebrate the life, the love, and the impact of Martin Luther King. Jr, by encouraging you all to visit and subscribe to this site. Not only does this guy update more consistently than I ;) but I am certain you will be inspired by what you see there. His thoughts, his lifestyle, his family, and ultimately, his heart, are genuine and true, selfless and faithful, an encouragement and inspiration to me every single day. A taste of the fruit grown from the seeds of love and faith planted long ago by our beloved MLK... Growing strongly and packed full of hope!!

Thanks, Ariah. :)

This quote struck a chord in my heart today...

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:10:08 GMT

"A mother can read all the child-rearing books and can subscribe to any theory of parenting, but what gets passed along to her children is something far more intimate and mysterious than anything contained therein. What gets passed along is her character, and it enters into her kids as surely and as inexorably as water flows from a fuller vessel into a less-full one."

Laurence Shames

Greater love...

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:22:23 GMT

"War is deviltry. It calls for sacrifices indeed, but not at the altar of love. 'Greater love hath no man than this.' A great blasphemy this is, to use Christ’s words in connection with men going to war. They go because they are drafted, because they are afraid of what their neighbors will say, because the pay is good, because the benefits accruing afterward (the G.I. Bill of Rights) are great. And they are told by the press and the pulpit that they are going because they love their fellows, and they are filled with a warm glow of self-love. And then they are given their intensive training in how to escape death, how to kill. Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his brothers, and the Russians are our brothers, the Negro is our brother, the Japanese are our brothers, the Germans, the Mexicans, the Filipinos, the Jews, the Arabs.
. . .
So let’s not have any more talk about God and country. The battle is for this world, for the possessions of this world."

Dorothy Day, “Letter to the Editor,” Commonweal, May 21, 1948

Peace

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 08:39:09 GMT

When Mother Teresa received her nobel peace prize, she was asked, "What can we do to promote world peace?" She replied, "Go home and love your family."

Martin Luther King Jr. - December 24, 1967

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 05:29:08 GMT

This Christmas season finds us a rather bewildered human race. We have neither peace within nor peace without. Everywhere paralyzing fears harrow people by day and haunt them by night. Our world is sick with war; everywhere we turn we see its ominous possibilities. And yet, my friends, the Christmas hope for peace and good will toward all men can no longer be dismissed as a kind of pious dream of some Utopian. If we don't have good will toward men in this world, we will destroy ourselves by the misuse of our own instruments and our own power. Wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete....

...if we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical, rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective. No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone, and as long as we try, the more we are going to have war in this world. Now the judgment of God is upon us, and we must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools....

...It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality....

...we will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can't reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree....

I've seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and I've seen hate on the faces of too many sheriffs, too many white citizens' councilors, and too many Klansmen of the South to want to hate, myself; and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up before our most bitter opponents and say: "We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws and abide by the unjust system, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good, and so throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half-dead as you beat us, and we will still love you. Send your propaganda agents around the country, and make it appear that we are not fit, culturally and otherwise, for integration, and we'll still love you. But be assured that we'll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.

A little wisdom from Tolstoy...

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:23:36 GMT

"I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back." -Leo Tolstoy