And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
"In the middle of trials and conflicts, it's difficult to call out to God, and it takes a lot of effort to cling to God's Word. At those times, we cannot perceive Christ. We do not see him. Our hearts don't feel his presence and his help during the attack. However, in the middle of [this], the Holy Spirit in our hearts begins to call out, "Abba! Father!" And his cry is much stronger and drowns out the powerful and horrible shouts of the law, sin, death, and the devil. It penetrates through the clouds and heaven and reaches up to the ears of God." Luther on Galatians 4:6
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Monday, February 11, 2013
Haunted by what I've seen at the hardware store
I've made two trips to the hardware store in the past week and had to stand waiting to get a key made. At the "sporting goods" counter first time, 4-5 men buying guns. Second time (Friday), 8-10 men buying guns, notably handguns. I asked the guy making my key, "Is a season opening?" He said, "It's Obama's gun law." That's gotten me very worried.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Two Christmas ideas
I've had two brainstorms this Christmas season.
First, the world needs a musical staging of "Miracle of 34th Street." It's a great story with a winsome, sceptical kid, department store wars, and Santa. We need about nine good songs, etc. I've given the assignment to a talented friend, but mounting production of a musical takes money. it could be the next big holiday theater production for families everywhere.
My second idea has to do with the cookie exchanges I hear so much about at Christmas time. I don't bake, but I know a handful of people who are corralled into baking 10 dozen cookies so they can bring them to a party and swap them out with other women who also bake. I've never been invited to one of these, and I hope I never will be. But I do like cookies, especially Christmas cookies.
My idea is this: all the same women could make all the same cookies, then sell the cookies (at least some of them) to people like me and give the money to a nice charity. People who like to bake cookies could be supporting a worthy cause, and people like me could enjoy eating lots of cookies knowing that it's for the common good.
Like these ideas? I've got a million of 'em.
-- --
Monday, December 17, 2012
A Messy Christmas
A nice post from "Rich and Charlie" called, "A Messy Christmas."
"If and when things don’t go as you hope and plan this Christmas, remember that Christmas is not about things going perfectly or even tolerably. It’s about God becoming one of us to bring us back to Him."
Rich and Charlie Resources is at this link.
-- --
See Ann's other blog: www.voicesforpeace.blogspot.com
Sunday, December 2, 2012
World AIDS Day
World AIDS Day was yesterday, but I still want to share this from the World Association for Christian Communication
WACC challenges members and partners for World AIDS Day 2012
On World AIDS Day, 1 December 2012, the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) calls on its partners and networks to integrate interfaith approaches in interventions to reduce stigma and discrimination against people living with and affected by HIV and AIDS.
“Getting to zero: Zero new HIV infections. Zero discrimination. Zero AIDS related deaths” is the theme until 2015. Anti-stigma interventions in communities where different faith traditions live side by side will increase their impact if they adopt approaches that recognize differences and leverage the strengths of an inclusive interfaith strategy.
WACC’s project partners provide many positive examples of interfaith cooperation in action. The Ecumenical Commission for Human Development (ECHD) in Pakistan brought together Christians and Muslims in Lahore in a collaborative anti-stigma initiative. It facilitated interfaith dialogue and convened an interfaith summit for youth and religious leaders.
Highlighting the importance of the interfaith approach, ECHD’s director Mr James Rehmat noted that, “Churches, mosques, temples and others work together, they can disseminate information about HIV to the broadest possible cross-section of the population, thus reducing the risk of leaving out isolated groups and eliminate inconsistency between the religions in the messages that are communicated.”
A second project underway in Lahore, Pakistan, organised by the AIDS Awareness Society is working with Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Sikh religious leaders to reduce gaps in knowledge about HIV-related stigma and discrimination. The project is expected to reach almost 50,000 people living in the communities which these leaders serve.
In Ethiopia’s Fantalee district, the Rift Valley Initiative for Rural Advancement (RIRA) worked with Christian, Muslim and the influential Gada traditional leaders to increase understanding of stigma and discrimination in pastoralist communities. RIRA’s executive director Mr. Abdi Ahmed commented, “The Religious leaders are highly visible and have a strong impact on their respective constituents. They have helped to overcome the negative views about HIV and AIDS held by pastoralist men and herders in particular and society at large. Change is visible in their public conversation about HIV and AIDS.”
In Lagos, Nigeria, a multi-year project implemented with Hope for HIV/AIDS International (HFA) with funding from UKaid’s Department for International Development is reaching out to Christian, Muslim and traditional leaders to help overcome HIV-related stigma and discrimination. Currently in its second year of implementation, the project is providing invaluable lessons on the willingness of leaders from different faith traditions to engage positively with each other.
Mrs. Lolade Abioye, HFA project administrator, observes the lesson that, “Irrespective of religious leaning, both Christian and Muslim faith leaders recognize the oneness of God, and they also acknowledge the leaders of both faiths. In the training workshops, the imams and pastors voice respect for the beliefs of each other’s faith traditions.”
Today there is considerable evidence from around the world that communication and interfaith dialogue change attitudes when it comes to tackling stigma and discrimination. Genuine and inclusive communication can create greater understanding and relieve tension in contrast with actions that tend to isolate vulnerable groups or, indeed, to incite violence against them.
On World AIDS Day, WACC encourages its members, partners and networks to explore and seize opportunities to create spaces for interfaith collaboration with the aim of reducing stigma and discrimination against people living with and affected by HIV and AIDS.
The WACC project partners mentioned above were supported with funding from Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst (EED), Germany, and Stichting Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
-- --
Friday, November 30, 2012
Worldly Holiness
Andrew Larsen publishes a beautiful calendar featuring his own amazing photographs. Check it out: http://andrewlarsenphotography.com/
Read more about Andy's work here.
Andy writes, "I wanted to share a little more with my readers this week an explanation to a short reference I made last week about "visual peacemaking." Its no mystery to most that I love photography. It's even become a "spiritual discipline" for me. What's that all about you say? I've had the wonderful opportunity to begin to talk with groups about photography as a spiritual discipline, but in two different, though related ways. Photography has become both an inward, as well as an outward spiritual activity. Call it part of my growing expression of a spiritual discipline that has become like two sides to the same coin.
"The inward may be obvious. Photography helps refresh me in my journey. Doing work with my camera, sizing up a landscape, noticing nuances of light, pattern and color help ground me in God's amazing and faithful presence in my life. The grace of this activity shows up in renewed hope and perspective, in good times and bad, irrespective of my success or failure. In fact it helps pull me out of my self absorption and consider God's sufficiency, for all the pieces of my life. The Psalms, especially verses like psalm 19:1-2 often swirl around in my heart when taking pictures.
"The second movement,
outward, is also a spiritual discipline. I think that if this
second movement is missed, the former movement inward for me is empty, if not
incomplete. The greater purpose for living God's way in this world is missed. I
become spiritually fat and happy, if that, in my own self contentment. This is
where my photography is slowly maturing into an outward expression of this
spiritual discipline, corresponding to the inward movement as well. And this is
where I believe visual peacemaking is emerging as a manifestation of this second
movement for me.
"I've found photography as an
incredible tool in building bridges between cultures and people, helping me tell
stories back and forth across a divide that normally is posted with a huge "NO
TRESPASSING" sign. In a world where divisions seem to be growing and prejudices
hardening, I'm finding this work of visual peacemaking critical. One example is
this picture below from Hebron, where I served for 3 months last year. Tour
groups that visit the Holy Land are often told not to go to Hebron. Its
dangerous. The people are to be feared. Its a shame because the truth is so far
from this caricature. My time in this Palestinian, and Muslim majority context,
was rich with friendships, conversations, great food and many positive
experiences. By the way, this year's calendar, Wordly Holiness, features
some of these people that I met. But since I know most folks like beautiful
landscapes, the majority of the larger featured photos each month are of my
award winning landscapes. But the people also show up in little thumbnails
throughout the pages."
[Read more here]--
See Ann's other blog - A Texas Lutheran's Voice for Peace: http://www.voicesforpeace.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Transformation and Transcendence: The Power of Female Friendship
Read Emily Rapp's amazing essay, Transformation and Transcendence: The Power of Female Friendship. I was working at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in Chicago when Emily went to work in Geneva. I didn't know her - she was young - but I knew her mom, and I think I wrote to Jeanne congratulating her on her daughter's early success. I hope I wrote that letter; I meant to. The world has turned around many times since I was 45 and envying the opportunity afforded a 22-year-old.
There is more than enough pain. Emily points to one of the ways through: women's friendships. I pray that we all might have such friends. Thanks to Emily for exquisitely writing something I've always wanted to say.
--
Transformation and Transcendence: The Power of Female Friendship, by Emily Rapp
[Read the entire essay at the link above]
In 1997 I arrived in Geneva to work for a year at the headquarters of a relief organization. Feeling overwhelmed by my job and lonely in a city of overworked expats passing through for two to three year stints at the United Nations or other organizations with the rather nebulous goal of “changing the world,” I made friends with a group of women. I was 22, and all three women — one American, one German, and one Argentinian – were 30 years older than I and had worked for the same organization in various administrative capacities for the length of time I’d been alive. After one lengthy, boozy dinner of fondue and buckets of white wine, they quickly took me into their friendship fold and jokingly referred to themselves as “the Wrinklies.” We met once a week for dinner, and saw one another every day at the espresso machine in the hallway, in the fabulously lush cantina, on the expertly-tended grounds of our superluxe office building outside the city limits. We had inside jokes and secret looks. We gave each other little gifts: a cookie, a note, a bar of chocolate, a little token of affection spotted at a shop and slipped underneath an office door.
All three women (and myself as well) were unmarried, living alone, and working to assist people in real need in countries around the world. Despite the fact that I immediately felt accepted, supported, challenged and nurtured by each of them, when I first joined their weekly dinner group, I felt sorry for them. They weren’t married, they weren’t mothers – and at this time, and up until very recently, I clung to the belief that this constituted some failure on their part. They found me equally mystifying. Was I really worried about the size of my ass or trying to finagle a recent date with a man they thought (from my description) was boring and slightly odious? (He was.) Was it a good use of my time, they wondered, to hang out in bars getting smashed and looking to score and by doing this (they were rightfully doubtful) find “the love of my life” when I said I wanted to be a writer? Sure, sure, I said, but I dismissed their concerns, and mourned what I interpreted as their missed opportunities to have a real life, which I assumed would only start for me when I was married and a mother. I loved them, but in my mind I was remembering that old phrase I’d heard for most of my life, in hushed and shameful tones: old maid. I was also keen to make my life look “normal” and “acceptable” in some way because I have a disability; if I didn’t get the body part right, I reasoned (irrationally, although it seemed quite rational at the time), I could get the “what your life looks like” part right. While I was obsessing about how I looked and who would love me, these women were helping to save the world – not in a way that would win them accolades, certainly – but the work they were doing was important and life-giving. And there I sat, foolishly pitying them.
One afternoon at work while I was chain-smoking through my open window into a cloudy sky, there was a flurry of activity in the hallway. A few harried shouts. Running feet. The quick shuffling of paper. Someone working in one of the countries was attempting to obtain medicine for a child who was sick with what appeared to be a form of strep (I’ve forgotten in which country or if it was indeed strep). The child’s mother, calling to ask for help from what was apparently a decrepit payphone, was trying to get the antibiotic medication from a corrupt doctor who demanded a bribe, an insane amount of money that this woman would never make or likely ever see in her lifetime. My three friends were literally running up and down the hallway, in and out of their offices on my floor, faxing and calling, shouting into the phone, trying to find another person to shout with more authority into the phone to try and help this desperate mother, this helpless child. The medicine was right there. For hours they labored, trying to find a way to make it right in a place where mail was sent in bags labeled only with numbers, and where children died frequently from diarrhea and the flu and the various effects of hideous wars and wrenching poverty. I think we’re going to get it, I think it’s going to be okay, one of my friends said through my open doorway as she sprinted off to the fax machine. But it was not okay. It was too late, perhaps it was always too late. The baby died.
A year ago, when my then nine-month-old son Ronan was diagnosed with Tay-Sachs disease, an always-fatal illness that would land him in a vegetative state before his likely death before the age of three, the first person I called was a friend (my mom).
[Read the entire esssay at this link.]
--- --- ---
Read my other blog - A Texas
Lutheran's Voice for Peace: http://www.voicesforpeace.blogspot.com/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)