Cat among the canaries

Oh the siutations one can find oneself in- perhaps never more surprisingly so than when it’s unintended.

Within hours of posting on the two ‘P’s I received another to-the point e-mail from ‘E.S.’ one of my more interesting and challenging correspondents (more on her later- she deserves her own post- at least).

‘Can I pass this on (she asked wickedly)?’

‘Of course. My blog is in a public space- the Internet.’

‘Consider yourself warned,’ her only rejoinder.

And that was about all the thought I gave to it. Unemployed though I may currently be- with all of the challenges of undergoing unemployment at 62- the days are never long enough. A good part of the next forty-eight hours was spent in a combination of brainstorming & process mapping for an acquaintance who had invited me to be a participant in her year-long discernment process.

During that time I also received another e-mail from Terry. ‘Is that it-your full take on patriarchy and prophetic lives?’

I hesitated before responding and took my blessed pup for a walk- the first one possible after the most recent snow storm as daschunds have notoriously short legs.


‘Actually, I’m toying with a rather interesting train of thought since my rather protracted practice period this morning,’ I eventually admitted. ‘Putting together notes for the second part of ‘Reading the lay of the land,’ I was struck by the uncanny parallels between the toxic patriarchy in too many quarters of the Church and alcoholism.’

Terry shot back right away- ‘What?’

‘I’m not saying the Church is an alcoholic,’ I was quick to assure him. ‘Rather that patriarchy as a behaviour- a 21st Century means of functioning, shows an amazing number of parallels to chronic alcoholic bahavior- and both are equally toxic.’

‘WOW a lot to think about there.’

‘Thinking is what I’m doing here too. And sitting with it, I’m clear that it would be both preposterous and pretentious for me to even think about looking at the clinical parallels. Its the behavioural parallels which interest me: their implications and repercussions... I’m actually thinking of teasing outa 12 step model as an interpretive medium for much of what’s going on in the Churches.’

‘Now THAT could be original.’

‘Early days yet teasing it out, but it’s beginning to strike me there could be some rather striking parallels between 21st Century patriarchal behaviour & attitudes, and alcoholism. No half measures in either situation. You give up serving drinks, cheating on the side and accepting all the ‘treats’ from your ‘customers;’ or you own the toxicity of your behaviour and seek the help to live beyond it.. You’re either in recovery, or you’re not... Continuing to function with the Swiss-cheese rationalizations of drinking, or claiming the blessing of healing and growing towards the wholeness God keeps calling us to... I mean, it should be clear to even a Martian by now, just what toxic a take on reality patriarchy is. Right?’

‘Brings to mind the situation with our former pastor and the help you gave me... Thinking about your last post, I wonder if his real problem might not have been mix-and-match... He’s a good man, and did nothing to deserve his breakdown or what’s followed in its wake, but at times he could be rather ... rigid- authoritative even, and then he’d wonder why people didn’t understand, didn’t get all worked up over his ideas- you could read it in his eyes, the hurt and frustration.’


Which brings me back to E.S. who called to ‘confess’ what she’d done with my earlier post- ‘passed it on to a relatively young, former colleague of mine- a Jesuit,’ she added with some glee.

‘He probably agrees with me already, ‘ I suggested.

‘That’s not it,’ she explained. ‘There’s this other faculty member –a lay Catholic, who’s really been riding my friends ass. Started with a couple of the sermons he preached in the collegial church at mass, which sent the mathmatics guy on a real witch hunt, had him hunting out the two small books and the articles my friend’s published... Last time I spoke with my Jebbie friend he told me they’d had a real session over some gay Catholic writer- probably a theologian... You may not be the right sort of Catholic (E.S. possibly remembering our much earlier exchange on the distinctions between Rome and Anglican Catholicity) but I sent him your post.

It was about then I shared with her my latest investigatory track. (Cue the cat among the canaries)

‘Oh my, oh my, oh my God!’ and it’s moment’s like this that ‘E.S.’s intellectual passion can most often bring to mind a late May evening, mellow with the promise of summer- the night sky blown wide with light and wonder- May 24th- fireworks for the Queen’s birthday and you’re but ten years old.


Of course ‘E.S.’ pressed for details- her ready appetite for a well though-out, reasoned model she can test- or demolish –in almost any field- is both remarkable and amusing at times.

‘Early days yet,’ I reminded her- twice.

‘Well you’ve got to promise me, whatever you do with this, I’ve got to be the first one to see it.’

A promise I fully intend to keep, I’m no fool.

....

Religion has always suffered from the tendency to become an end in itself, to seclude the holy, to become parochial, self-indulgent, self-seeking; as if the task were not to ennoble human nature but to enhance the power and beauty of its institutions or enlarge the body of doctrine.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Nothing worth doing in completed in our lifetime, therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we much be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are savced by love.

Reinhold Niebuhr

It is by immersing ourselves in the complex realities of planetary and human conditions that we begin to understand the true nature of incarnational and redemptive faith. The God of the Bible desires the active living of divine purpose over merely celebrating the idea of correct belief in the One True God.

Bill Phipps

What Jesus preached was ‘the kingdom’; what he got was the church!

Don Cupitt

There is so much evidence today to support ‘the kingdom of God’ emphasis in the teaching of Jesus that it is difficult to understand let alone justify the exclusions, divisions, and differences that accompanied the growth of the church. Today, with the church in decline and mired in outdated beliefs and practices, it would seem that we need to learn how to think the kingdom way of thinking, and to live the kingdom way of living. Every attempt to do so is an indication that the kingdom way is not a reduced view of faith but a fulfillment of the dream of Jesus for life in the kingdom now.

Anne Squire

‘Disheartening’ the word which comes to mind a little too readily this morning - and let me be clear, I’m talking about the latest antics of the ‘official organs’ of our Anglican reality.

Through the good offices of Mark Harris, I’ve been made aware of, and been struggling with the paternalistic condescension of Canon Alyson Barnett-Cowan's latest. Canon Barnett-Cowan is Director of Unity Faith and Order- a title, which itself should indicate just what deep trouble the Communion is in at present.

No, I’m not going to comment on respond on Canon Barnett-Cowan’s latest , better and more erudite minds than mine having been calling it out for what it is.

Thankfully, Canon Susan Russel once again brought us healthy alternatives to the likes of Canon Barnett-Cowan’s take on Anglican reality: a document which I would suggest should be an essential element in any Anglican sanity survival kit in these disheartening times.

And then, thankfully, there’s blessed Tobias Haller’s succinct take on what I just recently referred to as ‘this latest bit of dangerous Anglican foolishness from the Anglican patriarchy.

‘Let me put it simply: We can’t even agree on what the Covenant means; so why should we imagine the Covenant will help us come to agreement on anything else?’

Anyone else notice a pattern developing here- once again- still, it is the voices of inclusion- many of them members of our incredible LGBT tribe of faith- who are the only ones witnessing and responding to the Church the Holy Spirit keeps calling us to be- the other side of patriarchy.

Fortunately, the above quote about ‘dangerous Anglican foolishness’ was not the only conversation I’ve had in the last 24 hours. Yesterday also brought an extended telephone conversation with V.S., another alienated Anglican who I am working with to build an exploratory/transformative model for her department.

‘When are they going to realize canon law, and all their patriarchal pronouncements are not articles of faith’ V.S. asked with real frustration and some pain in response to Canon Barnett-Cowan’s latest. ‘Do they have even the slightest idea of the great violence they are inflicting on the Body of Christ in the name of the patriarchal status-quo as they continue to make our dear Church more and more irrelevant to an ever-increasing number of people?’

Waking very early this morning, to the news of the passing of a cherished brother’s father-in-law, I’ve sat with all of the above in the hopeful rawness the ‘official Church’ so often leaves us in these days. Thankfully there was also the Daily Office with its blessed, deep resonances:

John 4:23; as uncomfortable as I am personally with the implied duality of ‘true worshipers’- us/ them; there is clarion-clear reminder of what the true business of the body of Christ is about- ‘spirit and truth’.

My heart soared gratefully with the reminder of the great psalm 100 as to how the Church we are called to be, is to behave:

Enter his gates with thanksgiving;
go into his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and call upon his Name.

For the Lord is good;
his mercy is everlasting;
and his faithfulness endures from age to age.

Yes, there’s also a rather apt description of the’ latest dangerous Anglican foolishness’ in Psalm 102

For my days drift away like smoke, *
and my bones are hot as burning coals.

change the pronoun, and it too readily brings to mind the whiff of Canon Barnett-Cowan’s latest comes to mind.

But then, most thankfully this-

‘The cross --the knowledge of good and evil is of us. Not of God’

penned by margaret this morning- (margaret of the lower case ‘m’) who couldn’t be a more cherished and beloved a sister if she were flesh and blood. ‘The cross --the knowledge of good and evil is of us. Not of God-’ makes one really think; but that’s our Margaret- one of the most awesome priests I know of.

And Psalm 102 notwithstanding, I’m wrapping myself in the proven promise of Psalm 100 this morning: ‘For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his faithfulness endures from age to age.’ It bears repeating, and it’s what makes being Anglican bearable this right now.

Extraordinary-Times Two!

Who would have thought- twice in one day- two very public admissions that mistakes- costly mistakes have been made!

First, of course. I’m referring to President Barak Obama’s prophetic admission in his address to the American people that the war in Iraq had been a mistake. God bless and protect that man please! As the American war machine gradually withdraws from its occupation of Iraq thousands upon thousands of American soldiers, mercenaries will be coming home to the morass of bankruptcies and dispossession the Republicans and their arch war criminals Bush and Chaney have left the nation in. If we think the Teabaggers are frightening, it’s really only going to get scary when unemployed/underemployed troops, many of them suffering from PTSD find themselves living with the daily realities of American excesses.
God forgive them, some of the returning soldiers may actually call for another war to deliver them from the realities many if not most of us have been struggling with in what the media is now calling the ‘Great Recession,’ though as I know only too well personally, there’s nothing great about any of the mess the f-fing Republican left the American people.

Seriously, I daily beg God’s protection and strength for President Obama; has the world ever seen a more ungrateful, self-obsessed bunch of spoiled brats than the Republicans and their ilk.

Iraq a mistake- the admission wonder number one.

The second one even more startling- the public admission by former president Fidel Castro that the arrest and persecution of Cuban gays during his administration was wrong, and he took personal responsibility for this!

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/08/31/Castro_Takes_Blame_for_Gay_Persecution/

Of course, he’s only taking responsibility for the legal repression during the first years of his regime as some Log Cabin Queens might only too readily point out, but the man’s got to start somewhere.


The friend who sent me the link to the Castro story, like myself, describes himself as an alienated Anglican and he shares much of my love, passion and respect for the prophetic, transformational possibilities in the Anglican principle of the three legged stool. As we’ve agreed more times than I can remember- often with some frustration or regret- the Anglican model really does have limitless potential for healing & transforming this world- for bringing about the healing, justice and restored humanity implicit in the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But the link in his e-mail was also prefaced by a question: 'Does our Anglican Communion need the example of Fidel Castro, for it to get its shit together and start repenting?'

For their participation in countless generation of misogyny; the objectification, exploitation and abuse of our sisters- never more so than within its own walls.

For their complicity and cowardice in institutionalized, collective and personal anti-Semitism.

For their complicity, profiting and cowardice in the objectification, exploitation, suffering and the essential denial of the humanity people of colour- whether through the obscenities of slavery, colonialization, the Jim Crow laws, or a list of affronts to God and God’s creation too long for this space.

For their on-going objectification, vilification and their participation in the violence, discrimination, murder and objectification of my LGBT brothers and sisters- within and outside the Church.

In certain quarters- often with the best of intentions, I hear individuals within the leadership of our Church – many of who I respect and love personally- wrestling with the future of the Church- calling for a ‘servant Church’ model. Well amateur that I may be, I’m going further. In the name of the Love beyond our wildest imagining- that same Love which created us, Which incarnated and personally suffered the ignorance, hypocrisy, the pettiness and greed, the violence and injustice human beings only too often show themselves to be capable of- the Love which sustains us and continually offers us- individually and collectively- another chance; that same Love which overcame death on the cross and which unfailingly extends Her call to us to live ‘Life more abundantly'; in the name of that same Love, I’m calling for a repentant Church- a Church which not only owns it’s complicit past but which having de-constructed and learned the lessons of its past allows itself to be led by the Holy Spirit into being transformed into the Church God has called us to be since the creation of the world.

None of that ‘easy’ Book of Common Prayer acts of repentance, whose well crafted beauty works the tongue like the finest of wines; I’m suggesting the Church- OUR Church, might be long overdue for the type of transformative repentance which owns the particulars of its past, learns from them and outgrows them by leaving itself open to be re-made, transformed- transfigured. I’m suggesting that God’s Creation has been suffering and longing, bleeding, starving and dying; waiting for the ‘official Church ‘ to get over itself and get on with God’s business of healing the world.

Comment from another alienated Anglican- ‘as long as the Church continues to behave the way it does, it deserves to be deserted, denied and broken open.’ At the time she was actually referring to Rowan’s willingness to sacrifice our Episcopal brothers and sisters for the self-righteous, frightened rage & hate of the Anglican Taliban.

But the earlier question still stands: Does our Anglican Communion need the example of Fidel Castro for it to get its own shit together and start repenting?

Prophetic Voices

Still early here, when I write this, but already the day has been nailed down in a larger awareness of our sacred vocation by three living prophets speaking truth to... our wounded, larger world.

First Mark+ Harris, a priest who- from all that I know of the dear man- is a living blessing of impecable integrity, prophetic courage and a wondrous gift to our Church. Mark is writing of 'Mission' specifically, but it sounded to me as one of the clearest expressions of our vocation to meet the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of our daily lives to live and labour- to dance towards becoming the healing, transformative- prophetic Church we are called to be. Mark writes:

Mission is on some important level a natural outgrowth of the Incarnation. If God is present in the world in Jesus, in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and if Jesus was just as we are (yet without sin) then in some way, even in the sin and various small deaths in our lives we ought to be able to find God present, Jesus present, in all we meet. Finding God in new places and living with Jesus Christ present in the stranger is mission... being sent out to see where God is now.

Once we have seen Jesus, God present with us, we are doomed to going out and seeing the face of Jesus in those we meet and come to know. And, in that context - the context of knowing and meeting and caring - the Good News is realized. The Good News is that God has already been there and love those people, and therefore we too can go there and love them, and somehow in the mutuality of that encounter, God's saving Grace is realized.

And while we're still within the sacred process of the Church God is calling us all to be, I'd draw your attention to another post by blessed Elizabeth+ Kaeton at http://telling-secrets.blogspot.com/2010/08/telling-secrets-about-church.html. The challenging days Elizabeth and her spouse, the blessed Ms. Conroy are living through together has large, prophetic resonances for the vocation and future of our Church. Elizabeth is yet another living blessing and radiant gift to our Church and a deeply cherished friend. I'd not only refer you to this morning's post http://telling-secrets.blogspot.com/2010/08/telling-secrets-about-church.html but would suggest you keep in touch with Elizabeth's blog in the weeks ahead.

The third prophetic voice is equally powerful and challenging. It's Chris Hedges- a man with whom I may often disagree over his read on details or degree, but whose intelligence, spiritual huger and humanity I greatly respect. I refer you to Chris' latest post 'The Tears of Gaza'

The Tears of Gaza Must Be Our Tears
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_tears_of_gaza_must_be_our_tears_20100809/
Posted on Aug 9, 2010
By Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges made these remarks Thursday night in New York City at a fundraiser for sponsoring a U.S. boat to break the blockade of Gaza. More information can be found at www.ustogaza.org.


When I lived in Jerusalem I had a friend who confided in me that as a college student in the United States she attended events like these, wrote up reports and submitted them to the Israel consulate for money. It would be naive to assume this Israeli practice has ended. So, I want first tonight to address that person, or those persons, who may have come to this event for the purpose of reporting on it to the Israeli government.

I would like to remind them that it is they who hide in darkness. It is we who stand in the light. It is they who deceive. It is we who openly proclaim our compassion and demand justice for those who suffer in Gaza. We are not afraid to name our names. We are not afraid to name our beliefs. And we know something you perhaps sense with a kind of dread. As Martin Luther King said, the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice, and that arc is descending with a righteous fury that is thundering down upon the Israeli government.

You may have the bulldozers, planes and helicopters that smash houses to rubble, the commandos who descend from ropes on ships and kill unarmed civilians on the high seas as well as in Gaza, the vast power of the state behind you. We have only our hands and our hearts and our voices. But note this. Note this well. It is you who are afraid of us. We are not afraid of you. We will keep working and praying, keep protesting and denouncing, keep pushing up against your navy and your army, with nothing but our bodies, until we prove that the force of morality and justice is greater than hate and violence. And then, when there is freedom in Gaza, we will forgive ... you. We will ask you to break bread with us. We will bless your children even if you did not find it in your heart to bless the children of those you occupied. And maybe it is this forgiveness, maybe it is the final, insurmountable power of love, which unsettles you the most.

And so tonight, a night when some seek to name names and others seek to hide names, let me do some naming. Let me call things by their proper names. Let me cut through the jargon, the euphemisms we use to mask human suffering and war crimes. “Closures” mean heavily armed soldiers who ring Palestinian ghettos, deny those trapped inside food or basic amenities—including toys, razors, chocolate, fishing rods and musical instruments—and carry out a brutal policy of collective punishment, which is a crime under international law. “Disputed land” means land stolen from the Palestinians. “Clashes” mean, almost always, the killing or wounding of unarmed Palestinians, including children. “Jewish neighborhoods in the West Bank” mean fortress-like compounds that serve as military outposts in the campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. “Targeted assassinations” mean extrajudicial murder. “Air strikes on militant bomb-making posts” mean the dropping of huge iron fragmentation bombs from fighter jets on densely crowded neighborhoods that always leaves scores of dead and wounded, whose only contact with a bomb was the one manufactured in the United States and given to the Israeli Air Force as part of our complicity in the occupation. “The peace process” means the cynical, one-way route to the crushing of the Palestinians as a people.

These are some names. There are others. Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish in the late afternoon of Jan. 16, 2009, had a pair of Israeli tank shells rip through a bedroom in his Gaza apartment, killing three of his daughters—Bessan, Mayar and Aya—along with a niece, Noor.

“I have the right to feel angry,” says Abuelaish. “But I ask, ‘Is this the right way?’ So many people were expecting me to hate. My answer to them is I shall not hate.”

“Whom to hate?” asks the 55-year-old gynecologist, who was born a Palestinian refugee and raised in poverty. “My Israeli friends? My Israeli colleagues? The Israeli babies I have delivered?”

The Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali wrote this in his poem “Revenge”:

At times ... I wish

I could meet in a duel

the man who killed my father

and razed our home,

expelling me

into

a narrow country.

And if he killed me,

I’d rest at last,

and if I were ready—

I would take my revenge!

*

But if it came to light,

when my rival appeared,

that he had a mother

waiting for him,

or a father who’d put

his right hand over

the heart’s place in his chest

whenever his son was late

even by just a quarter-hour

for a meeting they’d set—

then I would not kill him,

even if I could.

*

Likewise ... I

would not murder him

if it were soon made clear

that he had a brother or sisters

who loved him and constantly longed to see him.

Or if he had a wife to greet him

and children who

couldn’t bear his absence

and whom his gifts would thrill.

Or if he had

friends or companions,

neighbors he knew

or allies from prison

or a hospital room,

or classmates from his school …

asking about him

and sending him regards.

*

But if he turned

out to be on his own—

cut off like a branch from a tree—

without a mother or father,

with neither a brother nor sister,

wifeless, without a child,

and without kin or neighbors or friends,

colleagues or companions,

then I’d add not a thing to his pain

within that aloneness—

not the torment of death,

and not the sorrow of passing away.

Instead I’d be content

to ignore him when I passed him by

on the street—as I

convinced myself

that paying him no attention

in itself was a kind of revenge.

And if these words are what it means to be a Muslim, and I believe it does, name me too a Muslim, a follower of the prophet, peace be upon him.

The boat to Gaza will be named “The Audacity of Hope.” But these are not Barack Obama’s words. These are the words of my friend the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. They are borrowed words. And Jerry Wright is not afraid to speak the truth, not afraid to tell us to stop confusing God with America. “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands [killed] in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye,” Rev. Wright said. “We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

Or the words of Edward Said:

Nothing in my view is more reprehensible than those habits of mind in the intellectual that induce avoidance, that characteristic turning away from a difficult and principled position which you know to be the right one, but which you decide not to take. You do not want to appear too political; you are afraid of seeming controversial; you want to keep a reputation for being balanced, objective, moderate; your hope is to be asked back, to consult, to be on a board or prestigious committee, and so to remain within the responsible mainstream; someday you hope to get an honorary degree, a big prize, perhaps even an ambassadorship.

For an intellectual these habits of mind are corrupting par excellence. If anything can denature, neutralize, and finally kill a passionate intellectual life it is the internalization of such habits. Personally I have encountered them in one of the toughest of all contemporary issues, Palestine, where fear of speaking out about one of the greatest injustices in modern history has hobbled, blinkered, muzzled many who know the truth and are in a position to serve it. For despite the abuse and vilification that any outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights and self-determination earns for him or herself, the truth deserves to be spoken, represented by an unafraid and compassionate intellectual.

And some of the last words of Rachel Corrie to her parents:

I’m witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I’m really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature. This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don’t think it’s an extremist thing to do anymore. I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my coworkers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel. Disappointment. I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world. This is not at all what the people here asked for when they came into this world. This is not the world you and Dad wanted me to come into when you decided to have me. This is not what I meant when I looked at Capital Lake and said: “This is the wide world and I’m coming to it.” I did not mean that I was coming into a world where I could live a comfortable life and possibly, with no effort at all, exist in complete unawareness of my participation in genocide. More big explosions somewhere in the distance outside. When I come back from Palestine, I probably will have nightmares and constantly feel guilty for not being here, but I can channel that into more work. Coming here is one of the better things I’ve ever done. So when I sound crazy, or if the Israeli military should break with their racist tendency not to injure white people, please pin the reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst of a genocide which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is largely responsible.


And if this is what it means to be a Christian, and I believe it does, to speak in the voice of Jeremiah Wright, Edward Said or Rachel Corrie, to remember and take upon us the pain and injustice of others, then name me a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ.

And what of the long line of Jewish prophets that run from Jeremiah, Isaiah and Amos to Hannah Arendt, who reminded the world when the state of Israel was founded that the injustice meted out to the Jews could not be rectified by an injustice meted out to the Palestinians, what of our own prophets, Noam Chomsky or Norman Finkelstein, outcasts like all prophets, what of Uri Avnery or the Israeli poet Aharon Shabtai, who writes in his poem “Rypin,” the Polish town his father escaped from during the Holocaust, these words:

These creatures in helmets and khakis,

I say to myself, aren’t Jews,

In the truest sense of the word. A Jew

Doesn’t dress himself up with weapons like jewelry,

Doesn’t believe in the barrel of a gun aimed at a target,

But in the thumb of the child who was shot at—

In the house through which he comes and goes,

Not in the charge that blows it apart.

The coarse soul and iron first

He scorns by nature.

He lifts his eyes not to the officer, or the soldier

With his finger on the trigger—but to justice,

And he cries out for compassion.

Therefore, he won’t steal land from its people

And will not starve them in camps.

The voice calling for expulsion

Is heard from the hoarse throat of the oppressor—

A sure sign that the Jew has entered a foreign country

And, like Umberto Saba, gone into hiding within his own city.

Because of voices like these, father

At age sixteen, with your family, you fled Rypin;

Now here Rypin is your son.

And if to be Jew means this, and I believe it does, name me a Jew. Name us all Muslims and Christians and Jews. Name us as human beings who believe that when one of us suffers all of us suffer, that we never have to ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for us all, that the tears of the mother in Gaza are our tears, that the wails of the bloodied children in Al Shifa Hospital are the wails of our own children.

Let me close tonight with one last name. Let me name those who send these tanks and fighter jets to bomb the concrete hovels in Gaza with families crouching, helpless, inside, let me name those who deny children the right to a childhood and the sick a right to care, those who torture, those who carry out assassinations in hotel rooms in Dubai and on the streets of Gaza City, those who deny the hungry food, the oppressed justice and foul the truth with official propaganda and state lies. Let me call them, not by their honorific titles and positions of power, but by the name they have earned for themselves by draining the blood of the innocent into the sands of Gaza. Let me name them for who they are: terrorists

.

Difficult and challenging times though they be, there has never been any possible doubt of the acting, caring, transformative presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst, and of Her unfaltering invitation to us- heart and arms open wide- for us to join Her in the sacred dance of healing this world- and this morning I give heartfelt thanks for each of these three voices and their prophetic courage.