Here's a synopsis of the Middle East situation by prof. Mazin Qumsiyeh:

In the Middle (Dark) Ages, there was instability/mayhem in Europe. In those decades, the Arab and Muslim world lived its golden age of secularism, discovery, and science. Europe was divided between secularists and religious zealots trying to maintain Church domination. But the Arab world, unlike Europe is not left to its own devices to evolve. We are not independent to guide our future whether in Egypt or Syria. The implanting of Israel here as a spoiled child of Western imperialism and the subsequent continuing interference prevented either secular or Islamic forces to gain real independent power. It also prevents natural evolution. Imperial forces toppled secular nationalists represented by Gamal Abdulnasser and through the Egyptian military prevented political Islam from taking a foot hold.  There is a game of occasionally supporting one faction over another as long as that faction leaves Israel and Western Corporate interests alone.  This is the strategy of divide and conquer.

Citizens of Western Countries must demand that their governments stop supporting this sick game of divide and conquer that also fosters Christian, Islamic and Jewish fanaticism. Long-term, there will be separation of religion from state politics whether in Palestine (Israel as a “Jewish state”) or in Egypt or elsewhere.  We will have our own renaissance.  But for now, perhaps it is important that all forces (left, Islamic etc.) to join hands against the real enemy and gain true sovereignty of our countries.  It has been nearly a hundred years since the Sykes-Picot agreement (1916) and the Balfour Declaration (1917).  Is it not time to end the mayhem that they generated?  This will give us space for then arguing and pushing for whatever form of government people choose. In that case, diversity of ideas will be an asset not a hindrance. This will give us space and substance for natural evolution. 

Lenin & Francis

Here's a meditation by Richard Rohr:

Shortly before he died, Lenin is supposed to have said that if the Russian revolution were to take place over again, he would have asked for ten Francises of Assisi rather than more Bolsheviks. He eventually realized that something imposed by domination and violence from above only creates the same mirrored response from below. It is just a matter of time. He realized that the only communism that would ever be helpful to the world was the voluntary and joyous simplicity of a Francis of Assisi. (As a Franciscan, I am indeed a “communist” as we share all things equally and from a common purse.) That element of the practice of the early church (Acts 2:44) and of Jesus (John 13:29) was never expected of the rest of us. (One does wonder why some things become mandated from one mention by Jesus, and other things are totally forgotten?)

Voluntary simplicity was normally not lived by the clergy—certainly not the higher clergy—and therefore why would we, or could we, ask it of the rest of the church? Jesus was training the leaders first, because you can only ask of others what you yourselves have done. He was initiating them as spiritual elders, much more than ordaining them as “priests” (which is an Old Testament word never used for his apostles) or church ministers. Francis tried to correct that by refusing ordination and also by his rush toward simplicity.

Once we saw the clerical state as a place of advancement instead of downward mobility, once ordination was not a form of initiation but a continuation of patriarchal patterns, the authentic preaching of the Gospel became the exception rather than the norm—whether Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant. The first human “demon” that normally needs to be exposed is the human addiction to power, prestige, and possessions. These tend to pollute everything.

Once we preach the true Gospel, I doubt if we are going to fill the churches.

The Crack in Everything

Here's a thought from Richard Rohr,

Leonard Cohen’s song, “Anthem,” states in the refrain: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” It sounds a lot like Paul’s statement about carrying “the treasure in earthen vessels” (2 Corinthians 4:7). These are both much more poetic ways of naming what we unfortunately called “original sin”—a poor choice of words because the word sin implies fault and culpability, and that is precisely not the point! Original sin was trying to warn us that the flaw at the heart of all reality is nothing we did personally, but that there is simply “a crack in everything” and so we should not be surprised when it shows itself in us or in everything else. This has the power to keep us patient, humble, and less judgmental. (One wonders if this does not also make the point that poetry and music are a better way to teach spiritual things than mental concepts.)

The deep intuitions of most church doctrines are invariably profound and correct, but they are still expressed in mechanical and literal language that everybody adores, stumbles over, denies, or fights. Hold on for a while until you get to the real meaning, which is far more than the literal meaning! That allows you to creatively both understand and critique things—without becoming oppositional, hateful, arrogant, and bitter yourself. Some call this “appreciative inquiry” and it has an entirely different tone that does not invite or create “the equal and opposite reaction” of physics. The opposite of contemplation is not action; it is reaction. Much of the “inconsistent ethic of life,” in my opinion, is based on ideological reactions and groupthink, not humble discernment of how darkness hides and “how the light gets in” to almost everything. I hope I do not shock you, but it is really possible to have very “ugly morality” and sometimes rather “beautiful immorality.” Please think and pray about that.

Jacques Ellul - Anarchie et christianisme

i just picked up Jacques Ellul's book 'anarchie et christianisme' and found a few quotes/notes:

La révélation de Jésus ne doit pas donner naissance à une religion. Toute religion est porteuse de guerre...mais la Parole de Dieu n'est pas un 'religion', c'est la plus grosse trahison d'en avoir fait une.

The revelation of Jesus mustn't give birth to a religion. All religion creates war... but the Word of God is not a 'religion', the greatest treason is to have made one from it.

La vérité , c'est une personne! Il n'est pas question d'adhérer à une "doctrine chrétienne":il est question de faire confiance à une personne qui vous parle.

The truth is a person! It's not a question to adhere to a "christian doctrine" it's a question of trusting a person who speaks.

Dieu continue à aimer sa création, il attend d'en être aimé.

God continues to love his creation, he's waiting to be loved by it.

Dieu est amour, l'homme est le répondant de cet amour, l'amour ne peut pas être obligé, contraint, ordonné... LA LIBERTÉ

God is love, mankind is the 'guarantor' of this love, love can not be obliged, forced, commanded... FREEDOM!

Le Dieu biblique n'est en rien une machine, un grand ordinateur avec qui on peut pas discuter et qui fonctionne selon un programme et l'homme n'est pas pour Dieu un robot qui n'a qu'à exécuter la décision de son constructeur.

The God of the Bible is not  a machine, a powerful computer with whom one can not speak and which fonctions according to a programme. And humankind is not for God a robot who has no choice but to execute the decision of its constructor.

Are You Ready To Turn On The Light ?

Here's an AdBusters message:

Here’s the question everyone is asking: “Is Edward Snowden a hero or a criminal, a whistleblower or a traitor?”

But the question they should really be asking is, “Does America still have its original revolutionary backbone, or are we a nation of sheep?”

Conventional opinion says that the CIA will have Snowden extradited and then criminalized, put on trial like Bradley Manning, demonized like Daniel Ellsberg, or even murdered like Garry Webb – that he will spend at least ten years in prison, or life, or worse. This may well happen, but there is another, much more tantalizing possibility that Snowden’s courageous action has triggered, something much more momentous – a sudden unexpected shift in the American Psyche – a realization that since 9/11 something has gone terribly wrong in the land of the free and the home of the brave… that the NSA, CIA, FBI are starting to smell like the East German’s Stasi, The Russian KGB, The Fascist police states of the 1930’s and 1940’s – that Americans are spying on Americans… that we are being treated like a nation of petrified snitches cowering in the dark… and that the time has come to turn the light on in America.

This weekend, someone working at NSA headquarters might just get fed up, once and for all, with spying on their fellow citizens and turn on another light in that big, black box… telling us in detail how things really work in there.

Then, maybe next week, a CIA operative at the Pentagon will suddenly decide to come clean and tell us how the Iraq war really started and provide us with one of those torture videos that were supposedly destroyed.

And then, maybe an army intelligence officer will fill us in on what really happened in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Yemen – letting us know who our allies really are and which regimes we really support in the deep global state behind the veneer of mainstream media. Then…

Maybe on July 4th someone at The Whitehouse will remember that this nation was built upon revolution… and that the nation’s integrity, democracy – hell, the nation’s entire future – depends upon the existence of people like Snowden who dare to tell us what really goes on behind closed doors, and that these otherwise ordinary people continue to summon the courage and humanity to come out of the shadows and take a stand against institutionalized criminality.

Maybe, like at the end of a movie, when the hero finally reveals his true identity and everyone rises to applause, an unstoppable wave of courageous souls will now stand up in solidarity and turn the lights on all over this darkened nation, kicking off a chain reaction of refusal against the military-surveillance complex that President Eisenhower tried to warn us against half a century ago.

So hey all you dreamers, schemers and expectant souls out there, are you ready to turn on the light?

A World of difference

A world of difference 

For 144 days people around the world have been captivated by photos taken by a man living in a small metal box.
 
The man was Commander Chris Hadfield, and the metal box was the International Space Station (ISS), in orbit 250 miles above the surface of the earth.
 
Between 21 December 2012 and the beginning of this week, when he began his return to earth, Chris took photos of the incredible sights he saw. He beamed them back to earth via Twitter, and soon became a hit on the social media site, gaining hundreds of thousands of followers. 
 
The irony was that for all the millions of dollars spent to send him to space, his fame was built on the photos he took not gazing into the furthest reaches of the galaxy, but looking back to earth. 
 
And what a sight he had to look back at. Commander Hadfield's pictures were truly stunning. It is impossible to look at them without marvelling at the beauty and complexity of this little blue-green ball of carbon spinning in space. We saw snow-capped mountains and the wind's patterns in the desert sand; every imaginable shade of blue in the oceans and crazy streaks of red in the Australian outback; ranks of cloudsqueuing patiently over Hull and the moon rising above the “only planet we have ever called home”. 
 
When we as Christians see such images, we are quickly moved to praise the God who designed and made it all with such care, such precision and such ease. We cry out with the psalmist: "What is man that you are mindful of him?" Or to put it in more inclusive language: “What are humans that you are mindful of us?”
 
Science fiction writer Douglas Adams once imagined a “Total Perspective Vortex” in which a person would be given a momentary glimpse of the size and complexity of the universe and him- or herself in relation to it: "An invisible dot on an invisible dot, infinitely small." The experience, he surmised, would fry your brain. We have an aching need to feel that we have significance, that in some way we matter to somebody, somewhere. The idea that we can't even be seen from the ISS is humbling, and can be crushingly so.
 
The good news, though, for us and our friends, is that the God who made it all is also the God who sees us. You're not an invisible dot on an invisible dot, you're a precious child, known and beloved. And that makes a world of difference.

Jennie Pollock is a freelance writer and editor who lives in central London. 

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The Moment

Here's an interesting thought by Richard Rohr

Isn’t it strange that a religion that began with a call to change or letting go has become a religion that has been so impervious and resistant to change? Many Catholics think that what it means to be a Christian is to be in love with the 13th century, or the 16th century if you are Protestant, thinking that “this is when Christians were really Christians and God was really God.” There is no evidence that this is true but it allows us to create “religion as nostalgia” instead of religion as actual transformation. Some Catholics hanker for “a true Latin Mass” not realizing that Jesus never spoke Latin—the language of his oppressors! Anything to avoid living right now where God is fully present!

What healthy religion is saying is that the real life is both now and later. You have to taste the Real first of all now. The constant pattern, however, is that most Christians either move both backwards (religion as nostalgia) or into the distant future (religion as carrot on the stick) and consistently avoid where everything really happens and matters—the present moment.  Catholics once beautifully called this “the sacrament of the present moment.” The full now is always a taste of something really real. It therefore entices us to imagine the eternal and live in an eternal now. We are just practicing for heaven. How we do anything is finally how we do everything.