Annunciation

2011-12-15T19:18:00Z

It's a week from Christmas: today's reading of the Annunciation stops me in my tracks. The images on offer by Google are typically anachronistic, with Mary disturbed at her desk while reading a book, or unrealistic in their portray of some well-to-do chatelaine, draped in her blue robes, welcoming her wingéd visitor. My mind, in search of an image, goes to Faidah. Faidah has just given birth. She is 15 years old, about Mary’s age. There are plenty of mangers about but the baby has, according to local custom, been placed on a grass mat on the floor, not held or suckled, but placed on the floor. Her first baby died after a few days; the second was stolen by cattle raiders, re-branded with the facial scars of the raiding tribe and sold to one of those husbands suffering the twin misfortunes of a barren first wife and insufficient cow-wealth to purchase a second.

Known Unknowns and Unknown Unknowns

2011-09-11T17:30:00Z

...Because if I know
         then, knowing,
                  I can no longer unknow
                         what I know
                                  and I know
that the consequences of knowing
       will change me.

Egypt's Good Week: Reading the Entrails

2011-02-14T22:10:33Z

Sunday 13 February 2011

Greetings, Peacemakers:

It's been quite a week, hasn't it? Not just for Egyptians; not even just for Tunisians and Algerians and Yemenians and Jordanians. But for Canadians and US Americans. For the United Nations. For the world.

Holy Ground: Muslim-Christian relations in a context of civil war

2011-02-14T20:56:23Z

The room is cacophonous with role-played debate and argument, hands gesticulating, brilliant clothing flying, faces wide open with passion and heat. Abruptly it all ceases with a signal from the trainer; laughter, some of it nervous, ensues. Two lines re-form to face one another. The trainer trawls up and down the corridor formed by bodies, probing, questioning, ‘So what happened? How did you feel? What worked? What didn’t?’

WomenPower and Peacemaking

2011-02-14T18:38:00Z

Many pairs of feet of all shapes and colours and sizes are at work in the hot mid-morning Thai sun. The mud sucks and sinks with every step and stomp. The owners of the feet – dancing, circling in what feels like ancient ritual – are mostly 'Burmese', young women, Karen, Kachin and Shan, who live in precarious camps in the forests about 20 kilometres from the Thai border. Some of the feet are Thai, some of them belonging to women who run the Women's Centre for Peace and Human Rights whose extension will be constructed from the bricks soon to be formed out of the mud oozing between our toes. Some belong to young boys and girls of the neighbourhood joining in the fun. A couple of them are Canadian: mine.

Blessed are the Trouble-makers

2011-01-26T21:55:00Z

Blessed are the Trouble-Makers

Bishop Samuel Ruíz Garcia’s death this week leaves a gap of immeasurable proportions, the passing of a generation, some might say. Though others of the progressive wing of CELAM (the Latin American Conference of Bishops), such as Gustavo Gutiérrez1, were better known as the early articulators and later elaborators of liberation theology and the preferential option for the poor, Don Samuel was the beloved pastor of thousands of indigenous chiapañecas and chiapañecos, Tztotziles, Tzeltales, Cho’les, and Tojolabales. Like the 16th century namesake of the highland town, San Cristóbal de las Casas (SCLC)2, and heart of the diocese he led for forty years, Don Samuel was a defender of the indigenous people, whose lives had remained largely untouched by the revolutionary, redistributory changes of 1911 and beyond.

What You Honour Tonight

2010-11-30T22:13:00Z

It is an honour to be the recipient of an award with such a rich history and to find myself in the company of some remarkable and passionate peacemakers. It can often be lonely work in a world in which there are endless resources available, it seems, to prepare for and make war and so little dedicated to the search for other ways to make our planet secure in the best sense of that word.

Postcards from Sudan #1

2010-09-21T21:38:34Z

The website of the Sudanese Embassy in Ottawa features some beautiful ‘postcards’, many of them from either the Meröe pyramid fields at the sixth cataract of the Nile or the marine life of the Red Sea, with enticements to consider scuba diving while in Sudan.

Highway of Heroes: An Open Letter to David Miller

2010-09-14T15:50:00Z

Highway of Heroes: Open letter to David Miller, Mayor of the City of Toronto:
Peacemaker Autumn 2010

I would like to register my strong objection to the co-naming of parts of Bloor and Bay Streets and the Don Valley Parkway as the ‘Route of Heroes’. Three years ago you did the right thing in rejecting the overtures of Legions and others whose interests are linked to war to change the name of the DVP; now it's parts of Bloor and Bay, as well.

They Have a Dream

2010-04-01T14:00:00Z

The Khartoum Monitor carries news of yesterday’s attack on an Army Base in North Darfur by one of the rebel groups – to which the military responded with an air attack on nearby villages, the dead not yet counted. The ceasefire in a brutal war of attrition that has left 2.5 million homeless and at least 350,000 dead, enjoys the respect of neither side. The government is once again escalating the violence, targetting humanitarian aid efforts, hoping perhaps to present a status quo of permanent destruction prior to further UNAMID deployment in the months leading up to national elections. President Omar al-Bashir chafes under his indictment by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, throwing tantrums that reach across the peripheries of this war-torn land.

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