It has been a long time since I have posted something here but I still remember how to get my fingers to put letters on a screen. Gayle and I are away in Galicia – Celtic lands in the north west of Spain with a coastline that is stunning and could be found in one of the Celtic lands of the UK.
Away from the heat of Oliva (at least there is some sea air there) or the altitude and heat of Madrid, and for now away from the wild fires of Spain and France. And away to reflect, seek to align for whatever is coming up, to read (I am just finishing ‘Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible, and the Genocide in Gaza’ – I will at some point come back to this book).
(Wild fires in Spain – we are top left currently… got to get to the East Coast above Alicante. It can be done but which route?)
The news… the world…
We often comment that there are a billion (or more) worlds. The old request that we walk in someone else’s shoes and then we can talk with them. Or in the words of the 13th Century Sufi mystic and poet
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.
There are rights and wrongs, but Rumi is calling us to move beyond the egocentric position that fuels scapegoating, and calling for us to ‘meet’ at that place of listening.
I usually dip into a couple of news-sites each day but if I think by doing so I have caught up on the news I would be very much mistaken. The ‘news’ as Malcolm Muggeridge said is ‘not the news but an extraction of the news’. The news in Gaza is different to the news about Gaza… and the absence of the any news concerning Gaza on the majority of the front pages of news-sites is something different again. Today the wild fires in Spain and France dominate the sites I read. Important and interesting for me; we have to consider what route we take to get home. Inconvenient, an adventure, maybe will add a few hours to our journey; but today we eat, we sleep, we keep dry and… Gaza means nothing. The person I see outside the supermarket with his (true or otherwise – probably true) sign that he would like help to feed his family of four and would I consider buying some eggs or pasta for him. I have not walked in his shoes. His world is not mine.
Those fleeing the wild fires, losing everything – another world. Those who ignore the science because it has economic ramifications – another world.
Where is God in the (literal or otherwise) rubble of the multiple worlds we live in? Where is the devil (however understood) in those multiple worlds? Where am I complicit in those worlds? All three questions are relevant.
‘What about this person?’ – said Peter to Jesus after the three-fold questioning dialogue. Paraphrasing Jesus, he said ‘nothing to do with you’.
What am I / Gayle to do in this next phase? OOOOFFFF – that is a question.
Whatever it is it needs to contribute to the future and to help one of the billions of worlds out there to move to a better place – even if it is the smallest of those billions of worlds. ‘You did it to me; you visited me… you gave a cup of cold water in my name…’
Interlude – all the pressures of (privileged) life suddenly breaks in:
I am sitting here and notice the front right tyre of our van is not looking good. I look again 10 minutes later – no we have a puncture! And we are on soft camping ground so no way can we put a jack under the van… and the tyre is sinking and deflating into the mud. And then the rain – did I say RAIN? So disastrous – just don’t use that description to the billions today living on or below the poverty line (and when I used the word ‘disastrous’ did I mention we ate a roast chicken last night? And a definite irrelevant aside – we can cook a whole chicken on a few coconut husk charcoals on the COBB – if I were an agent the number of people who come over to say – what is that? – to whom I could sell one would make me wonderfully well off in pocket).
(End of interlude – written after the ‘disastrous’ above event.)
A Jesus lens on the one big world we all live within… now this site is ‘Perspectives’ and there certainly is a ‘field’ beyond my perspectives but…
There are some big issues that are being highlighted:
- Feminism – simply the push for women and men to stand together on the same level field. (I put at the top of this post that in spite of not writing for some time that I still know how to put my fingers to the keyboard. Back in the day anyone using a keyboard was female serving the demands of those who were male (typists / secretaries); along comes technology and suddenly the fingers are male; cook in the kitchen; but Michelin stars on offer and the gender changes… the deciding factors – visibility and money. This was central to our push over 4 months in Sicily.
- And currently there is such a push to keep patriarchy and misogyny alive. Test the armed forces for their level of testosterone? Really? Those are the attempts at a falling Imperial (Western) system to stay alive.
- War. Some time back Gayle had (another) dream where she dialogued with a world leader. This great peacemaker(!!!) said that there would only be one more war that he had to initiate and then peace would come. Gayle said to him (yes, as per normal a ‘him’) if you go to war it will only lead to another one. The dream… and the reality is the one more has led to another one already and neither are over.
- Palestinians – offered on the altar as the atonement for the anti-Semitism of the West. (Gayle had a dream some years back of the Palestinian situation (prior to Gaza) and a response to it… eventually it led to the possibility of a new economic system. Sadly in the dream those wedded to Zionism could not go there.) Anti-Zionism is NOT anti-Semitic.
- There are many ‘isms’ that are being challenged. Scripture does not primarily address the oppressed to take over and sort out the oppressors, but it does address the oppressors. Maybe I am one of those… even if not, I am one of the privileged so Scripture does address me, and it comes with a metanoia (think again) command / invitation.
