Muslim “terrorist” asks for hugs

What would it mean for people to trust each other?

A strong statement on the streets.

Modern day version of The Prodigal Son

It’s not too late!

Leaving the city

AFTER a messy divorce, a friend suffered through what she described as “a toxic dance of anger and deceit’’ and imagined she was trapped in a walled city.

One night, she had a dream in which she finally let go of the walled city and wandered in a desert. There she found a huge tent city with people dancing.

“It was a metaphor, ‘’ she said. “The world of forgiveness and understanding was outside the closed world in which I was living.

The unseen grace-filled world was where I found beauty, purpose, freedom, and faith.’’

She came to the conclusion that happiness has much to do with who we really are, with our capacity to be at peace with ourselves and others, and to feel some deeper connection to the transcendent

A prayer for all of us

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

[Reinhold Niebuhr]

Careful who you serve

PHILOSOPHER Russell Hittinger remarking on the cult of the individual in the US said: “We now live in a nation populated by 260 million supreme beings.’’

Former Australian PM Gough Whitlam said: “The punters know that the horse named Morality rarely gets past the post, whereas the nag named Self-interest always runs a good race’’.

Friedrich Nietzsche said: “You have your way, I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way and the only way, it doesnt exist.’’

But Bob Dylan said although we were all created as individuals we “all gotta serve somebody’’. “It might be the devil, or it might be the Lord but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.’’

Dylan’s right because there is no neutral territory when it comes to acknowledging God. You either do or you don’t. And if you don’t, you’re serving someone else.

And here’s a good version of that song.

Young, gifted…and dying

EVER think your life is chaos? Consider what faced Krista Wickerham, diagnosed with aggressive cancer at the age of 23.
Krista cried briefly in the doctor’s office after the diagnosis. Then she told her parents: “God’s in charge, whatever happens.’’

She spent the two years she had left sharing her faith and deep-seated belief that she was heaven bound.
She came to learn that love is always creative, and fear is always destructive. So she decided not to be afraid.

Albert Camus, facing his own mortality, said: “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was within me an invincible summer.’’
Krista knew that. She realised that some people walk around as the living dead; others are the most alive when dying.
Her suffering became a baptism to a new life.
Krista planned every detail of her recent memorial service and the pizza and beer party that followed, signaling to family and friends that her brief life was to be celebrated, not mourned.

Krista had said she didn’t want any sadness or anyone dressed in black. She wanted a celebration at her entrance into heaven.
“She faced the whole thing with such faith. It was a great new adventure to her and she looked forward to going to heaven,’’ her mother Jeannie said.

“Her faith was so positive. She bypassed anger.’’

Initially, Krista tried to conquer her cancer. When it got the best of her, she made sure she faced the rest of her life with a positive spirit.

More than 200 people, grateful for knowing her, attended her memorial service.
They recalled how Krista decided to cram as much into her remaining months as possible. That included a 10-day trip to Hawaii with friends where Krista swam with the dolphins.

She always wanted to be a teacher, but illness stopped her completing her degree course.
Two months before her death, her lecturers and friends gathered to present her with an honorary degree.
Krista, in her wheelchair with the oxygen, wept as speaker after speaker spoke of her courage and determination.

Krista had one more gift to give her parents after her death. After the service, her friends gave them a red leather journal that Krista kept for them. She filled it with pictures and words of love for the parents who adopted her in Korea when she was six months old.

For the rest of us, she left her belief, tested by fire, that God, not chaos, rules the universe. And that flowers can grow out of dark moments.
Writer Somerset Ward said suffering was surely good or bad only according to the results it produced.
“Had it been a bad thing in itself, the Son of God would not have taken it for his chosen instrument for the cure of the world,’’ he said.
“I do not mean by this that we should lessen our attempts to alleviate pain and remove the causes of distress, for such is the simple duty of charity; I only mean that what we cannot remove is not wasted.’’

We don’t have to be crazed by confusion, or disturbed by disorder. In fact, we can make something radically good about the chaos that surrounds us.
God seems to work best when we feel the most helpless. When life is worst, God is best.

Corrie Ten Bloom survived the Nazi death camps. She observed later: “When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.’’
Our work on Planet Earth is not really complete until we have found some meaning in our inevitable suffering. Our emotions need healing, but so does our belief system or theology.

Poor old John Lennon, who feared death, once said: “We experience moments absolutely free from worry. These brief respites are called panic.’’
He didn’t know what Krista knew. That if you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you’ll never enjoy the sunshine.

The words I would say

These lyrics were written after the songwriter received a call to tell him his grandfather was dying. He wrote the words in the form of a letter…and was able to read them to his grandad before he passed away.

Just because…..

I believe in the sun
even when it isn’t shining.
I believe in love
even when I am alone.
I believe in God
even when he is silent.

These words were found scrawled on a cellar wall where
Jews had hidden in World War II in Cologne, Germany.

Love amid cyber chaos

We wake to news on radio, read the newspapers and fire up our computers at work and home. The waves of information wash over us.
We live in a world devoid of quiet, where every surface shouts and every silence is filled. You can get lost in the digital cosmos.
We feel a void when a power strike deprives us of information. The world closes in; it becomes dark and oppressive.
I wouldn’t wish to demonise the technology but technological progess has its price.
Perhaps information technology is creating a new division between the haves and the have-nots. After all, only 34 percent of the world’s population use the internet and only six per cent in the least developed nations.
And are those of us fortunate enough to use a PC or tablet sometimes losing sight of reality? E-mail and twitter makes distant friends seem closer, but the communication is disembodied. It is easy to feel connected to people around the globe via the Internet, while neglecting neighbours.
By removing the “real life” element from spiritual experiences, we may be losing something that is vital to mysticism.
The assault of self-promotional verbiage, porno, gossip and untruths drift untethered through cyberspace. It is a jumbled culture.
People learn best in supportive communities, not sitting alone before a computer screen.
Surely it is possible to be touched by God in cyberspace. But if we lose our touch with others, what is the point?