Those movies where you see a prisoner walk out the gate and look around and see no one to greet them are sometimes true. Stories are even told of full-timers being deposited at the front gate of the prison and being given directions to walk to the nearest train station, as no transport is provided.
A Lament drawn out of, and through the hijacking of Psalm 22:14-16 by The Ven. Dr C. Lucy Morris in response to Domestic and Family Violence
I have received and planted two trees: one has been planted in the garden at St Anne’s, Highfields, and one in the clergy house garden at Highfields. My plan is to treat them like Pokémon and “collect them all!”
However, that’s not really the intent. To use a local example, Highfields an area of high growth, and that means trees coming down for development at rate that seems unsustainable and damaging to our local wildlife, particularly koalas and native birds.
So, this motion calls us to be givers as well as receivers. In supporting this motion, we hope that all parishes, schools and agencies will find ways that we can use our collective strength to make a real difference towards conservation, re-foresting and re-wilding.
“We are witnessing a disturbing attempt to scapegoat, stigmatise and socially exclude young people through negative reporting. This messaging in the media is damaging. It does not reflect the truth of young people in our society and in many cases seems to deliberately present a false message not supported by the data. This is particularly the case regarding youth offending.”
Paul talks about the body of Christ as a communion of different gifts. But it is also a communion of differing politics, strong options and perceptions for things about which people care deeply, and diverse cultural backgrounds and assumptions about race, sexualities and genders, about faiths and nationalities. Rabbi Johathan Sacks reminds us God has gifted us with the dignity of difference.
Despite the popular naming of the conflict as incredibly complex, Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh explains the model is simply settler colonialism, the same motivation and mechanisms experienced by the Indigenous people of Australia.
“Christians are nothing if not a narrative people. We engage with story each and every time we meet for worship and whenever we go to Scripture. The story becomes the bedrock for healing and ‘setting relationships right’. Story moves the people from individual experiences to shared experiences; from individual guilt to shared guilt; from individual responsibility to shared responsibility. This movement empowers those storytellers to move from hurt to solutions. Out of the shared story and the shared embrace of the issues emerges shared commitment to new ways of being. Forgiveness emerges. Restoration emerges.”
“How have we come to this: as Christians whose faith commits us to be active peacemakers in Jesus’ way? How has it come to pass if I talk about peace from the pulpit, I may be subjected to abuse, hatred and threats of violence? We are faithfully required to share peace from the position of powerlessness, humility and vulnerability and instead, we comprehensively fail, embedded as we are in a church flourishing among the established powers and principalities of the ruler of the world .”
Our culture and indeed our church so often misguidedly believe that love can still be present where one group or individual dominates another. The church has not only been silent, but in some of its teachings has actively supported structures of dominance and control.
“While working in the Holy Land, I distinctly remember reading a six-word sentence written by a historian. The words are these: There are no exits from history. I believe these words are pertinent to us here in Australia, where our history is haunted by the historical killings carried out against its Indigenous people. A history of which so many Australians are ignorant, or we continue to avert our gaze from its reality.”
