musings before we leave

The excitement and the work are crowding in. No French done tonight. But Women in Black still, tomorrow. Last Sunday I had to get my pen out while Ray was preaching.

He was doing the last of three sermons on the liturgy, the communion service. They are available now from http://www.stphilipsoconnor.org.au/sermons_index.html (Download Word doc from that page.)

But communion; it makes us family; we eat together... now the "Anglican communion" needs a covenant to make us family. do we? Do we need anything else other than that statement that we will take communion together? What does it mean that we do not? Such is the scandal of the broken communion between various christian groups. Always there are those who will judge, there are those who are not welcome.

And this week too, looking at the various groups that are increasingly out of communion in the Anglican church I heard another familiar theme. "We are the victims"... to me it comes from people whom I perceive as having the power and using it unwisely. But perhaps there is something more here. Are we all victims in a war, in an argument? It is only after one side has won that they can say they were the victims and responding to aggressive action on the part of the other. There is probably a whole academic field on this. The science of mediation and conflict resolution.

But last week Australian ABC TV audiences saw news from Sderot; there are still rockets being fired from Gaza and we had a long essay in the effect that they have on the people of this area. Yes, victims, but...

ABC did not show Gaza. (a later story was about vacation summer schools teaching young boys to be terrorists though.)

We are all victims, but that means we do not, cannot act.

Anglicans need to talk to one another. Break bread with one another. Take communion together.

If there is an impassable gulf between people, then it needs to be bridged. not easy; not comfortable. (Taiwan's suffering in last week's cyclone shows us that.)

and to be a bridge means to be walked over and stretched. pulled every which way.

that is something to which we could all aspire perhaps.

may you be pulled and stretched and walked over!