Tomorrow at Tiffin Middle School we will explore how words can be used as bullets. This will be the 5th. nonviolence skill the students will try to make as practical as possible in their day to day life. Generally the kids agree that “stupid” “ugly” and “worthless” are the three most ugly words that someone can call them.
Wish us well.
sr. Paulette
| I WALK FOR PEACE and HUMAN DIGNITY
Dec. 10 is Human Rights Day; so Tiffin will be celebrating and advocating for everyone’s human dignity by taking a walk around town both as a FAITH WALK to honor the Prince of Peace and as a way to join together during this holy season to acknowledge the Truth that each of us has human dignity. Jesus said this beautifully in becoming ONE OF US. Sunday, Dec. 10, 3:30 Tiffin courthouse. I hope to see you. See: http://www.projectpeacetiffin.com
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SOA Watch, PO Box 43523, Washington, DC 20010.
Amazing news! This week US congresswoman Betty McCollum introduced a bill to end Israeli detention of Palestinian children! It is historic legislation and we need you to help get as many members of congress to sign onto it as possible.
This week I wrote for the Forward about my experience being arrested with Palestinian children. It was the most heartbreaking experience I have ever had:
They were clearly terrified; many of them were crying. Under Israeli law, once at the police station or army base, arrestees are supposed to have their handcuffs and blindfolds removed. This law was disregarded. That the children, who had not been part of the demonstration, remained blindfolded and handcuffed, showed not just a blatant and willful violation of the law, but real cruelty on the part of the Israeli forces.
Read the full article here. Then tell your Member of Congress to add their name to this historic legislation.
Each year, between 500-700 Palestinian children are arrested and detained in Israeli military court. 75% of them are physically assaulted and 90% of them are denied the right to have a parent or attorney present during interrogation. Not only is Israel the only country in the world that subjects children to a military court system, but only Palestinian, and not Israeli, children are arrested and prosecuted by the military. It is segregated and unequal!
Representative McCollum introduced the bill with nine cosponsors: Reps. Blumenauer (D-OR), Carson (D-IN), Conyers (D-MI), Davis (D-IL), DeFazio (D-OR), Grijalva (D-AZ), Gutiérrez (D-IL), Pingree (D-ME), Pocan (D-WI). Tell your Member of Congress to join these brave leaders by adding their names now!
The legislation is endorsed by American Friends Service Committee, Center for Constitutional Rights, Churches for Middle East Peace, CODEPINK, Defense of Children International, Jewish Voice for Peace, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Global Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and United Church of Christ, Mennonite Central Committee, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Methodist General Board of Church and Society, United Methodists for Kairos Response (UMKR) and US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.
This is a historic moment for the US and a source of hope for all of us on the ground living under occupation. It gives me strength as I continue my military court trial.
Towards the protection of Palestinian children and the end of Israeli apartheid.
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CAC’s core faculty member, Cynthia Bourgeault, shares insights from other mystics—current and past—to reveal mercy at the heart of the universe. She shares the theological implications of quantum physics from contemporary Episcopal preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor:
Where is God in this picture? God is all over the place. God is up there, down here, inside my skin and out. God is the web, the energy, the space, the light—not captured in them, as if any of those concepts were more real than what unites them—but revealed in that singular, vast net of relationship that animates everything that is. . . . At this point in my thinking, it is not enough for me to proclaim that God is responsible for all this unity. Instead, I want to proclaim that God is the unity—the very energy, the very intelligence, the very elegance and passion that make it all go. [1]
Cynthia reflects:
Barbara’s point may seem like a nuance, but it is a crucially important one. Our visible, created universe is not simply an object created by a wholly other God in order to manifest God’s love, but the created universe is that love itself—the very heart of God, fully expressive in the dimension of time and form.
When we speak in these terms, of course, we begin to use the classic language of the mystics, the language of visionary utterance. For Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) the name in German for mercy was Barmherzigkeit—“warmheartedness.” Boehme saw mercy as “the holy element”: the root energy out of which all else in the visible universe is made. The Mercy is “holy substantiality”—the innermost essence of being itself. It is that “river of God,” running like the sap through the tree of life. [2]
Lest we be inclined to discount this insight as merely the rambling of a God-intoxicated mystic, it is astonishing to discover virtually an identical insight revealed by the eminently sane psychotherapist Gerald May (1940-2005). May affirms that from a clinical standpoint, once the various differentiations and feeling-tones have been stripped away from our subjective emotional life, what remains is a raw, root energy that is, finally, none other than divine love. “It is as if agape [divine love] were the base metal, irreducible and unadulterated,” he writes. “The universe runs on an energy that is, at its core, unconditionally loving.” [3]
May’s vision of agape—divine love—is very close to Boehme’s (and my own) notion of the Mercy. Far from pity or condescension, it is the very heartbeat of God resonant in creation; the warmth that pulses through all things as the divine Mystery flows out into created form.
Www.projectpeacetiffin.com
Issa Amro
Project Peace 