How do we make sense of all this?
Of the devout Jews who made space for us, enabled us to take our place in prayer at the Western Wall, to lament with them the loss of the Temple and their exclusion from a holy place, while the Israeli government builds another wall, cutting a city in two, excluding others, a concrete embodiment of that for which we ask forgiveness daily in the Coventry Litany of Reconciliation...
"The hatred that divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class".
The complexities are such that to say anything at all seems foolhardy.
God knows, the last thing this situation needs is anything that might fuel the flames.
But the wall is there, and its impact is non-negotiable.
I'll never be able to pray the Litany as an abstract again. This is what harsh reality looks like, even more striking than the ruins of medieval St Michael's, which we have assimilated, somehow, and made more bearable because the next stage of the journey of reconciliation is also visibly present.
But that's a long long way away from Bethlehem on a January evening. .
Even the beauty of the sunset cannot soften it.
I have so much to learn.
I long to understand the complex web of pain and grief and history that brought us here.
I feel small and helpless.
Father forgive
Of the devout Jews who made space for us, enabled us to take our place in prayer at the Western Wall, to lament with them the loss of the Temple and their exclusion from a holy place, while the Israeli government builds another wall, cutting a city in two, excluding others, a concrete embodiment of that for which we ask forgiveness daily in the Coventry Litany of Reconciliation...
"The hatred that divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class".
The complexities are such that to say anything at all seems foolhardy.
God knows, the last thing this situation needs is anything that might fuel the flames.
But the wall is there, and its impact is non-negotiable.
I'll never be able to pray the Litany as an abstract again. This is what harsh reality looks like, even more striking than the ruins of medieval St Michael's, which we have assimilated, somehow, and made more bearable because the next stage of the journey of reconciliation is also visibly present. But that's a long long way away from Bethlehem on a January evening. .
Even the beauty of the sunset cannot soften it.
I have so much to learn.
I long to understand the complex web of pain and grief and history that brought us here.
I feel small and helpless.
Father forgive
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