Inclusiveness

I am bloody angry! I have just witnessed an ignorance that made me shake with rage. 3 prominant evangelical church leaders have just been meeting here at the ecumenical centre and as they were leaving i overheard (maybe i was meant to) their conversation - they were ranting about the evils of the muslim people and how 'we' should have nothing to do with their darkness! Is there any wonder this world is so fucked up? In the end I followed them out and said, "gentlemen, it's a good job god is more merciful than we are, is it not?"

there was no reply...

i wrote this 2 years ago....and i stand by every word

One Blessing.

Soul troubled, moved, angry, lamenting, loving, feeling, trying to reach out, touch, feel, soothe, caress the weary and broken...

Have just come back from the city that according to the Chief of Police has moved from a place of 'if' to 'when' for an amazingly provocative conference. Run by the 'Friends of Al Aqsa' a friend and I were treated to a wealth of historic, spiritual insight and vision for the future regarding 'The Impact of Zionism on Jewish, Christian and Muslim Relations'.

There is a real danger when one assumes one knows a fair bit about a certain subject - when one feels one understands the situation pretty well - when one thinks one has the i's dotted and the t's crossed. Hmm, I find it worrying when I hear people make such assumptions. Here's my point, I thought I was reasonably well read - now I know that I know very little. My friend and I hooked up with our buddy Garth Hewitt whilst there as I'm putting together a similar conference next year - 'Sons and Daughters of Abraham: Three Faiths - One Blessing?' Surely we have to be about building bridges rather than burning them?

I found it so moving to see Jews and Muslims embracing each other as brothers and sisters, longing for peace and the chance once again to live side by side and learn from one another. I cried as a Palestinian Muslim, through his tears, felt that after 40 years of struggle somehow his work had finally been vindicated after hearing from the lips of Jews that the land should be shared and that spiritual history had been tampered with. Evangelicals speak of the presence of the holy spirit descending when anointed people speak. I have sensed this from time to time, but never like this man - who just happened to be a Palestinian Muslim, and an ex-terrorist! How little we understand about the character of our Maker!

I'm bloody fed up with a boxed-in God, with a people who have their heads so far up their spiritual backsides they can't see the whisper of God's spirit moving beautifully through our terror torn communities. The irritation is refreshed to go clear the land for a new culture. Not one of Zionism, but one filled with the fragrance of Gethsemene and Calvary. As Douglas Coupland suggests in 'Girlfriend in a Coma', "If you are not spending every waking moment of your life radically rethinking the nature of the world - if you're not plotting every moment boiling the carcass of the old order - then you're wasting your day."

It's time we started sifting our souls of the muck and mire of our spiritual ego's and think very hard what it means to take up the basin and towel in today's world! As the wonderful Desmond Tutu says, "God says to you, I have a dream. Please help me realise it. It is a dream of a world whose ugliness and squalor and poverty, whose war and hostility, greed and harsh competitiveness, alienation and disharmony are changed into their glorious counterparts."

I remain thankful to my Muslim and Jewish family...We're one but we're not the same...we've got to carry each other, carry each other, carry each other....one.