epiphany

i can't help but be sad and overwhelmed in the first few days of this new year. at lunch today we sat around the table sharing news we had all learned over the last week or so of being apart. most of the news was sad news. stories of separations and divorce, of drugs and violence and death. i came home and read accounts of the violence in gaza and was brought deeper into this sadness.

and today is the day that we celebrate the 3 kings bringing baby jesus gifts. at church this morning our deacon shared stories of this celebration in puerto rico where he's from - such anticipation of this day, when poor families like his feasted and became like children in the face of a beautiful story of a baby born in a stable. if the birth of jesus illuminates anything for me it is that we are called to be peacemakers. children are often peacemakers, refusing to let where someone is from or how much money they make or what language they speak affect how they are treated.

i found this article about christmas time and peace below that moved me. enjoy...

*****

Holly Harman Fackler: Thinking about peace during this busy holiday season

By HOLLY HARMAN FACKLER • News Journal • December 28, 2008

The final week of the year is a ponderous one for me. The renewed hope and anticipation brought by Christmas spills right over into a fitful glance back at the year almost over and an optimistic setting of intentions for the year about to start.
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While marking time Thursday, I pulled Maya Angelou's "Celebrations" from my shelf and found a poem that fit the season.

From "Amazing Peace," written for the lighting of the National Christmas Tree on Dec. 1, 2005, I read: "Hope is born again in the faces of children./ It rides on the shoulders of our aged as they walk into their sunsets./ Hope spreads around the earth, brightening all things,/ Even hate, which crouches breeding in dark corridors.

"In our joy, we think we hear a whisper ..."

That whisper, Angelou reveals a few lines later, is the word "peace." It starts out soft but builds until it overcomes the sounds of war.

Angelou wants to -- wants those of every religious leaning to -- keep the peace of Christmas around "So we may learn by your shimmering light/ How to look beyond complexion and see community." From this common ground of Christmas, setting aside hate, "we can create a language/ To translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other."

Angelou's sentiments made me think again of southern Ohio's Peggy Gish, one of the "aged" who is carrying peace on her shoulders to the ordinary people of Iraq as part of Christian Peacemaker Teams International. During a May phone interview, I asked her -- as a grandmother who walks unarmed with "enemies" in a land of war, spreading hope, lighting up dark corridors -- what ordinary Americans could do on behalf of peace.

She had these ideas:

# Teach the kids: Integrate peacemaking with children's learning and activities.

# Reach out: Use interactions in organizations and meetings to model peacemaking skills.

# Learn more: Supplement reports by mainstream media with information from other media around the world for a clearer picture of what is going on.

# Speak out: Once you have clarity, tell what you know. "Write letters to the editor. That's democracy in action."

# Make friends: Take part or initiate efforts to bring people of different backgrounds together to develop friendships and diffuse prejudices.

# Reduce your oil dependence: "It (peace, social justice and natural resource use) all goes together. We want to try to live it out as much as we can."

# Find other people: Peacemaking is hard work and needs the support of a loving community around it. Hook up with local peace groups or with groups and resources sponsored by the historic peace churches (Mennonites, Society of Friends/Quakers, Church of the Brethren).

(see more on peggy and art)

Like Angelou, like Gish, like a colleague who told me that we're going to have to learn to be neighbors to make it through "this thing" -- I'm hoping that we'll all "make our way to higher ground" -- together.

On Wednesday, I put the check into the mailbox that would allow a son to spend his next semester studying abroad. Yesterday, I said goodbye, again, to another son and my daughter-in-law, who return Monday to the West Coast, where they follow their own path to peace and understanding. My youngest is still deciding where next year will find her, but it will be away.

On Friday, we gathered at last around the table for "my" Christmas dinner.

It didn't matter that it wasn't Christmas Day or that it was the third of four or fourth of five Christmas dinners my kids would have in the space of a few days. It didn't matter that the menus were roughly the same, or that one dish or another weren't quite up to a standard set in an earlier year, or that the tree had significantly fewer gifts under it.

What mattered was that we were -- however briefly -- safe and together to support each other's journeys in material ways and as cheerleaders.

I like the trappings of Christmas, the adornments of life. I like the extras. But when things go lean and spare, it's easier to see the bones that hold it all together. The bones must get their due now. When they do, they'll rise again.

god have mercy

some news headlines for the last few days....

Gaza Death Toll Tops 375

The death toll in Gaza has reached at least 375 as Israel’s attack on Gaza has entered its fourth day. More than 1,600 Palestinians have been wounded and hospitals are running out of medicines and other products needed to treat them.
Israel Vows to Wage “War to the Bitter End”

On Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Israel is in a “war to the bitter end against Hamas and its kind.” Israel has rejected calls for a ceasefire, and Israeli troops and tanks continue to mass on the border of Gaza preparing for a possible ground invasion. Israel has declared the area around the Gaza border a closed military zone, ordering out journalists.
UN: 64 Palestinian Civilians Killed

Earlier today, Israeli warplanes dropped at least sixteen bombs on five government buildings in Gaza, destroying them and starting several fires. An Israeli air strike in northern Gaza killed two Palestinian sisters, aged four and eleven. The girls were killed when they left their house to dump the family’s garbage. On Monday, an Israeli air strike destroyed a home in the Jabalya refugee camp, killing five sisters. The five girls were between four and seventeen years old. In another incident, eight Palestinian students, ages eighteen to twenty, were killed while waiting for a UN bus to take them home. The United Nations said at least sixty-four Palestinian civilians have died since Saturday.
Four Israelis Killed in Palestinian Rocket Attacks

The Israeli attacks have not prevented Palestinian militants from firing rockets into southern Israel. On Monday, Palestinians fired at least seventy rockets, killing two Israeli civilians and a soldier. The dead included an Israeli woman in the town of Ashdod who was killed from shrapnel wounds while taking cover from incoming rockets at a bus stop. The Israeli death toll since Saturday now stands at four.

joyeux noel

merry, merry christmas! i hope everyone had a restful and mindful celebration! chris and i are with both sides of our family in denver and enjoying them (the new baby!) and the beautiful weather.

i wanted to share with you a wonderful movie that we watched on christmas day together. it depicts the truces of christmas eve on the fronts lines of WWI in 1914. it is beautifully done and so inspiring. it gives me a small bit of hope for peace, if not in the world, than in the possibility of it in some of us. watch the trailer here. and then go rent it.

oh and here is a less than recent picture of our nephew! he's so much bigger now!

brother mickey o'neill mcgrath

i wanted to share the art of a very talented person i heard speak last night! i've been buying his christmas cards for a few years now and having a print of his hanging in my house.

the holy family

mary visiting elizabeth (perfect for advent!)

i love his work and hearing him speak and seeing more of his paintings was wonderful. if you like iconic art and have a good sense of humor you may like him. visit him here.

Boston College

well, friends. here we are in boston, ma visiting the esteemed jesuit university, boston college.



i don't know if all my many, many readers (ha!) know that chris is considering getting his PHD and that the place we're most seriously considering is boston college. there are so many factors contributing to the decision to come to boston it's overwhelming. we love most parts of our life in camden and if we leave there's a good possibility we'll never find the wonderful things we have there anywhere else, ever again. but this would be the time for chris to get his doctorate if he wants to teach and this is one of the best programs out there, having most of the things chris would want in his study.

anyway, so far the campus is beautiful and the weather is cold. we will explore this area today and tomorrow our wonderful friends will be meeting us in the city and we'll explore boston - and figure out if we can even afford to live here.

any boston "musts"? places we have to go, food we have to eat?

51 gone

on the sunday before the beginning of advent season we remember those who have been murdered in camden city and camden county since the last november. last year there were 46 (if i remember correctly) people murdered. this year there have been 51 men, women and children murdered in camden city and 7 murdered in the county. this is the highest number in the last several years. at this point, camden is back at the top having been named the #2 most dangerous city in the nation.

we pray for those who have died, for those who have been left behind and for our city, that we would stop this madness.


yesterday, the first sunday of advent, our church celebrated and blessed the pregnant women among us. i love that this celebration follows the remembrance of those murdered. i think it's hopeful and beautiful. unfortunately, i've been sick but i heard the mother's were lovely... one, more notably so, cheryl - our community-mate! we're very excited!

a post to update you.

i'm having a hard time updating this thing recently. i blame it on the cooler weather, the overcast and rainy days, the need to curl up on my couch with my pooch. but i am back, for now, although still on the couch, under a blanket with victor.

speaking of victor, he's trouble. we love him but recently we discovered he has a side that we previously had not encountered. this week, on a nice fall afternoon outing, he killed an innocent squirrel. oh, it was the whole nine yards. blood. more blood than i care to rehash. yes, there are many a squirrel in my neighborhood and yes, they reek havoc so i am not sad to see one go but victor just seems to be different now.....


(his face has been blurred for his protection)













(chris had a great time on photo shop working on this photo of our newly hardened criminal but i'm a little creeped out by it.)


in other news, we had our dear friends darin, meeghan, guinn, and justice (our god son) visiting this last week. it was wonderful and crazy having a hyper 3 year old and a senile 87 year old here making us laugh and keeping us busy. i'll say it again, i wish i could have everyone i care about in the same place. why are we all so far away from each other?

i leave you with some pictures of the adorable justice. he is a handful but i just love how loving he is. he loves to share with you and take care of you. he's so good to "ninny" (guinn).

(by the way, i love picnik.com for photo editing - i really like the 1960's photo wash)