Dave Roviks song They are Building a Wall

Dave Roviks is in Australia. 

Listen to this song at http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=111310&content=songinfo&songID=6265034

Our walls are built of razor wire and the deep ocean, but we are building walls. (A poster seen in Wales which came from an Irish Peace conference: The Walls of Division do not reach to Heaven!)

Lyrics

They're building a wall
A wall between friends
A wall that justifies
Any means for their ends
A wall between Semites
Rich and poor
Brothers and sisters
From not so long before
Many feet thick
And twenty feet high
No one can look through it
And into the eye
Of a person you might know
To whom you might confide
Now just a stranger
On the other side

They're building a wall
Between water and land
So we can eat fruit
And they can eat sand
A wall to make sure
That our orchards will grow
And our kids can get fat
And not need to know
Of the cities in ruins
And the children in fear
That your fathers and brothers
In tanks might be near
A wall to keep quiet
That which you fear most
So you don't have to listen
To your grandfather's ghost

They're building a wall
Between future and past
A wall to keep separate
The chambers of gas
From bulldozers, gunships
And the tears of a child
Dignity, love
And all honor defiled
To remove reality
From your facts on the ground
A wall to keep distant
The terrible sound
Of the houses that crumble
And the children that die
A wall to keep separate
The truth from the lie

They're building a wall
And at such a cost
Land, money and safety
And all the lives lost
A wall made of brick
But bricks can be broken
When the people of Zion
Have finally awoken
And said no more walls
No more refugees
No more keeping people
Upon their knees
And then the history books
Will someday recall
Before apartheid was ended
They were building a wall

Created February, 2004
Copyright David Rovics 2004, all rights reserved

Atonement

http://michaelcardensjottings.blogspot.com/2010/07/gods-friendship.html
A long post from Michael. It is so good to see him back. This is theology that talks the language which talks to me. That is about creation, about consciousness and renewal of the creation. The ideas may be behind much of the way we talk about our religion, but perhaps I need to "interpret and translate" too much when I hear it. I will be preaching in a few weeks time and want to tease out this idea of the language we use influencing the way we think.

but back to atonement: this paragraph comes some way in to the blog post:

"Atonement was key to the old Temple Judaism of the time (and remains so for Rabbinic Judaism too) such that what really happened was that Christians interpreted the execution of Jesus in light of the rituals and theology of the Day of Atonement as practised in the Temple (in 30CE at Jerusalem and one also at Leontopolis in Egypt). In these rituals the High Priest slaughters first a bull and then a goat and then takes the blood into the Holy of Holies. The blood is then sprinkled and smeared on various parts of the Temple. The Day of Atonement is part of the New Year festival at the autumnal equinox which celebrates the creation of the universe and the renewal of creation. Blood is life and the animal blood represents the blood/life of the High Priest who represents Yahweh, the LORD, who creates and renews creation by an outpouring of the divine life. In esoteric Judaism, this outpouring is understood as the Tree of Life of Kabbalah by which creation occurs through the outpouring of the divine light through the 10 Sefiroth or emanations that comprise the Tree and mapping the process of creation, of consciousness. In Christianity, Jesus on the cross pours out his blood/life as befits the Heavenly High Priest through whom all creation came to be. Jesus on the cross instantiates the divine processes of creation, atonement, renewal. More than anything else atonement is about healing creation, making it whole, restoring it to balance, which is why a key aspect of Jesus public career is healing the sick. Jesus also forgives sin; forgiveness and healing more often go hand in hand in the gospel accounts. Healing, renewal, liberation, and forgiveness are all part of the ancient Jewish theology of Atonement as expressed not only through the annual rituals of Yom Kippur but the associated sabbath and Jubilee years which were proclaimed on the Day of Atonement."

and a little later on:

"Nevertheless, while the Temple rituals of atonement were no doubt profound and awe-inspiring, death on the cross is not. It is brutal, disgusting, horrifying and shameful. Crucifixion was meant to debase and degrade as well as kill. So the sight of a person hanging bloodied and brutalised on a cross is not self-evidently an instantiation of the divine creative and healing process, far from it. I think it is this fact that lies behind the Christian stress on kenosis, self-emptying, that is understood from very early on as a hallmark of the divine, of the divine as manifested in Jesus. The god of Christianity is a god who submits to degradation and abandonment and death - eloi, eloi, lama sabacthani - this is a god who knows despair and brokenness. In other words this is a god who approaches humans on the same level, sharing human pain and desolation, who will submit to brutal death rather than summon legions of angels to lord it over humans."

Now, Michael does use another blog, so I feel no shame using his, but there is just so much more. He is really writing about apokatastasis; I leap a bit to say: universalism... Origen is one of my favourites and he was called (after his death) a heretic for this. But it stays with the eastern church. the west abandoned it totally but we should revisit it. I recommend the whole of Michael's post. now I return to "Le Tour" (maybe that is why I don't write these things myself! :-) )