Inshallah...

Tonight at our "Three Cups of Tea" class, we ate Afghani food (and drank a little Armenian wine because it was the closest brew I could find) and talked about where the Spirit might be calling us next in our pursuit of peace. Clearly we want to raise money for Greg Mortenson and his effort to bring schools to Afghani children - particularly girls - and we are likely to jump on this first. There were creative and wise ideas about how to make this happen so that we accomplish something meaningful in the short term.

But there are two other emerging ideas - still to be shaped and formed - that have to do with focusing upon the healing of women in particular in Afghanistan and reclaiming the "just peace" theology that the United Church of Christ began to articulate during the Cold War.

+ The group, Women for Women International, makes a strong case for those of us in the west who want to advance the cause of healing and hope to cast our lot with their work. Like the passionate insights that Nicholas Kristoff of the NY Times has shared in One Half the Sky, this group helps us translate the desires of our hearts into deeds.

(Check them out at: www.womenforwomen.org/global-initiatives-helping-women/help-women-afghanistan.php

+ An article by Susan Thistlethwaite, former president of the Chicago Theological Seminary, notes that when Obama spoke at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, he was not only grounded in the irony and Christian realism of Reinhold Niebuhr, but also his mother church's theology of a just peace - a phrase used carefully and intentionally. (check this out: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/susan_brooks_thistlethwaite/2009/12k.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/susan_brooks_thistlethwaite/2009/12
So now we take a little time to see what the Spirit stirs up within and among us. We'll meet after worship on Sunday to see what rumblings might be taking root, make some decisions to get a fund-raiser for "Stones into Schools" happening and then agree to gather again in early Lent to begin laying the groundwork for a more sustained just peace commitment.

Since September 11th, 2001, I have had a growing sense that part of whatever ministry I might share during my remaining years MUST be about atonement - owning and atoning for the sins of my nation that I have participated in overtly or tacitly - not out of fear but compassion. I am clear that as we go deeper into this work a measure of healing will take place in God's time (inshallah.)