Just lengthen the chain

Here Is Where We Meet, John Berger,

The mother says, “Let a few things be repaired. A few is a lot. One thing repaired changes a thousand others.” The son replies, “So?” And out flows a maternal speech:

"The dog down there is on too short a chain. Change it, lengthen it. Then he’ll be able to reach the shade, and he’ll lie down and he’ll stop barking. And the silence will remind the mother she wanted a canary in a cage in the kitchen. And when the canary sings, she’ll do more ironing. And the father’s shoulders in a freshly ironed shirt will ache less when he goes to work. And so when he comes home he’ll sometimes joke, like he used to, with his teenage daughter. And the daughter will change her mind and decide, just this once, to bring her love home one evening. And on another evening, the father will propose to the young man that they go fishing together… Who in the wide world knows? Just lengthen the chain."

In this season of peace, may you lengthen a dog’s chain. And then see what happens.

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First love

If you come in touch with that first love you will discover not only that you are loved unconditionally, but that the One who loves you unconditionally loves all of humanity unconditionally, with that same all-embracing love. And the fact that God loves you so intimately and personally does not mean that God loves anyone else less or differently. Uniquely, yes. But whether they are Nicaraguans or Russians, people from Afghanistan or Iran or South Africa, they all belong to the house of God.

And therefore, when you enter into intimate communion with the God of the first love, you will find yourself in intimate communion with all the people of God, because the heart of God is the heart that embraces the whole of humanity. That's why intimacy with God always means solidarity with the people of God. To put it more precisely: God pitched a tent among us and took on our flesh so that there is no human flesh that has not been accepted by God.

Source: The Road to Peace, Henri J. M. Nouwen

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Leaving our guns at the door

Longing for this today:

When we are free from the need to judge or condemn, we can become safe places for people to meet in vulnerability and take down the walls that separate them. Being deeply rooted in the love of God, we cannot help but invite people to love one another. When people realise that we have no hidden agendas or unspoken intentions, that we are not trying to gain any profit for ourselves, and that our only desire is for peace and reconciliation, they may find the inner freedom and courage to leave their guns at the door and enter into conversation with their enemies.

Many times this happens even without our planning. Our ministry of reconciliation most often takes place when we ourselves are least aware of it. Our simple, nonjudgmental presence does it.

Henri Nouwen

Tragedy in Afganistan

Four aid workers were killed today in an ambush in Afghanistan, they were IRC staff members, 2 were Canadians.

Please pray for peace and for their families, and the foundations they serve.

International Rescue Committee Releases Names of Victims of Ambush in Afghanistan

Peace for all

Woe to us indeed if we forget the homeless ones who have no vote, no power, nobody to lobby for them, and who might as well have no faces even, the way we try to avoid the troubling sight of them in the streets of the cities where they roam like stray cats. And as we listen each night to the news of what happened in our lives that day, woe to us if we forget our own homelessness.

To be homeless the way people like you and me are apt to be homeless is to have homes all over the place but not to be really at home in any of them. To be really at home is to be really at peace, and our lives are so intricately interwoven that there can be no real peace for any of us until there is peace for all of us.

Source: Frederick Buechner - The Longing for Home

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Blessed are the peacemakers

"To be at peace is to overcome the world"

My friend RWK rises wise this morning:

Blesses are the peacemakers

New Old Believers

It’s better if one doesn’t try to un-story any person who has suffered, for soul is the preeminent storyteller of all that has occurred. To silence a person’s most poignant stories is to silence the soul. Better to make safe time and place for such healing-speaking.

Please take the time to read this important essay by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, especially after this sad, sad day in American politics.

The Babushka Brigade: What old believers say about torture of human beings

Let everything in you that can sing, be sung; everything that can dance, be danced; everything that can heal, be healed; everything that can love, be loved in return.

Are you a new, old believer?

Enable Peace

Thank you Tony!

16 stories, 16 days

International Rescue Committee (IRC) is featuring 16 women's stories for the next 16 days - a photo and a story each day to your inbox from women living through war.

PORTRAITS OF POWER:
PHOTOS OF WOMEN OF WAR

The IRC is in conflict zones around the world, helping many thousands of women and girls every day. We know they have much to say and we know how easily their voices are lost, so we're working with writer, photographer and long-time women's advocate Ann Jones to give them an opportunity to speak, loudly and clearly.

With digital cameras, women who have survived conflict, displacement, discrimination, sexual and domestic violence vividly document their own lives. Through these personal photographs, stirring portraits are revealed and women come together to tell stories of strength, reclaim their rights and make their voices heard.

Be a part of this powerful exchange, which begins tomorrow, November 25th, to kick off "16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence." Over the course of the 16 Days, you'll be inspired by the many extraordinary changes these brave women make with the bold clicks of their cameras.

Just sign up for our 16 Days e-mail list, and on each of those days you'll get a special
e-mail with one woman's photo, an amazing story and a chance to add your own voice. Afterward, you'll get occasional updates from Ann and the IRC about the latest stories, IRC programs empowering women, and the many ways YOU can help.

Carried away

An Innate Violence

There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence ... [and that is] activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence.

To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence.

The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.


Thomas Merton