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| "No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes - forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection), but still unique.
Without individuals we see only numbers: a thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, "casualties may rise to a million." With individual stories, the statistics become people - but even that is a lie, for the people continue to suffer in numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless. Look, see the child's swollen, swollen belly , and the flies that crawl at the corners of his eyes, his skeletal limbs: will it make it easier for you to know his name, his age, his dreams, his fears? To see him from the inside? And if it does, are we not doing a disservice to his sister, who lies in the searing dust beside him, a distorted, distended caricature of a human child? And there, if we feel for them, are they now more important to us than a thousand other children touched by the same famine, a thousand other young lives who will soon be food for the flies' own myriad squirming children?
We draw our lines around these moment of pain, and remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. They are covered with a smooth, safe, nacreous layer to let them slip, pearllike, from our souls without real pain.
Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out though other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives.
A life that is, like any other, unlike any other."
American Gods, Neil Gaiman
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| Thoughts of the moment: - Books are meant to be shared.
Sometimes it is almost distracting to me while reading a good book, as all i can think about is how many people I will need to lend the book to when I am done. Perhaps the act of reading the book is not actually what is meaningful to me and instead it is the act of sharing the experience of reading the book with others.
- If you haven't read the Alchemist yet, please do so.
- The sun has emerged (finally!) and i find myself looking forward to summer. Oh to be warm again!
- If I won a £6million lottery the first thing i would not buy would be a ferrari. I mean come on.
- I love travelling, but don't really like travel planning all that much. Think this has previously been mentioned.
- I love skype, especially with webcam. Fantastico!
- Community living is fascinating, but can there truly be intentional lived community coexisting with a functioning business? Do these serve cross-purposes? Will the business generally be supported more, due to the very nature of business? And what exactly is the purpose of intentional lived community?
- Started reading past blogs last night looking for topics for future reflection times (community worship). Was sucked in to 2am reading past blogs. I kind of miss the days when there was regular blogging by all of the gang and we all commented and tangented from each others discussions. Those were the days.
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| Today is the 60th anniversary of Ghandi's assassination. At this morning's worship/reflections we focused on a writing of his called 'the seven blunders of the world'. Its an interesting list to consider...
From Wikipedia:
The Seven Blunders of the World is a list that Mahatma Gandhi gave to his grandson Arun Gandhi, written on a piece of paper, on their final day together, not too long before his assassination.[1] The seven blunders are:
- Wealth without work
- Pleasure without conscience
- Knowledge without character
- Commerce without morality
- Science without humanity
- Worship without sacrifice
- Politics without principle
This list grew from Gandhi's search for the roots of violence. He
called these acts of passive violence. Preventing these is the best way
to prevent oneself or one's society from reaching a point of violence. What do you think?
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| There are some who would say that the troubled times in northern ireland are over. Peace has broken out and why look back at a messy past full of sectarianism, hatred, and prejudice. And sometimes I almost want to believe it. Move on! (one of the tag lines of my life). We even had a group here this past weekend (being trained in how to teach students to be good citizens) who were critical of their sessions because they 'made them uncomfortable' and seemed to spend too much time addressing the past. But if you move on without confronting the hatred and the fear and the prejudice you are certainly doomed to repeat what has gone on before. And clearly these issues are not dead in northern ireland. This article published today in the Belfast Telegraph ("Paisley Not Welcome at La Mon Commemoration") certainly highlighted this for me, as it was about an upcoming commemoration for one of the worst terrorist attacks in Northern Ireland. The organizers are strongly asserting that Ian Paisley is not welcome to attend. Any why is this? Because he is making good with the "other side". Paisley, a former fan of sectarianism (who once protested the centre I work at because we dared to facilitate Protestants and Catholics working together), has in the last year or so had a large political shift in which he is now working rather closely with the other side. This, I am sure, is not for any pure motives of his own - what in politics could be pure? - but it is at least allowing people to see that the two sides may eventually be able to come together. After reading this article I have to wonder - is there really any way forward? | | |
| What constitutes training in peace and reconciliation? As I currently work at a peace and reconciliation center this question has begun to nag at me more and more each day that I'm here. I was surprised when I worked hands-on with my first group how much of the work was basic team-building. The group was from an interface area of Belfast (a place where a lot of strife would historically and still might occur) and the work with them was mostly strengthening them as a team to enable them to could go back and work on the front lines, as it were. The specific program included mostly team-building games, a personality test, and much reflection. A lot of our work is with young people. Much of the time this is with young people from two or three different groups, a mix of boys and girls, catholics and protestants. The time with them is spent in much the same way, team-building and some sessions which tackle head-on some of the prejudices and mis-conceptions that still populate this area. And in my research (albeit not in-depth research) of peace and reconciliation work in general, this is what it looks like. Either like what we do here or more front-line type of work out in trouble areas. It's all about getting the conflicting sides together to gain greater understanding and to help them move towards change. It is very interesting work, especially from the perspective of someone not from northern ireland. But it has struck me how similar this work is to the church work I was doing back in california. Some of the games are identical. Team-building, challenge, and getting-to-know-you games just like the ones done in american youth groups everywhere. And after the games both groups then sit down for a 'talk'. And depending on your church tradition the talk may be almost identical. Love your neighbor, embrace differences, challenge pre-conceptions. Are churches doing peace and reconciliation work? Are we doing church work? Is it merely an overlap in purposes, toward a brighter future where people love each other more gracefully? | | |
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