Part 2: My Monastic Adventure
Part 3: Commentary on the Recent Violence in Jerusalem
Part 1: Links to my pictures from Israel/Palestine
Click here to see pictures from my trip to Jerusalem!
Part 2: My Monastic Adventure
Tomorrow I embark on a new summer adventure: being a monk for a month. I will be spending a month as a guest at a Trappist monastery in South Carolina called Mepkin Abbey.
I will take part in all the components of their life including silence, meditation, prayer together seven times a day, and daily work. I am hoping that this will be a special time of drawing near to the Lord and really learning about silence, solitude and prayer. I also hope to use this as a time of discernment related to future calling and ministry.
I will be checking email about once a week as well as my cell phone messages. Please do pray for me during this time. Also, if you have prayer requests, please send them to me as I will have plenty of time to pray :).
Part 3: Commentary on the Recent Violence in Jerusalem
Many of you have probably seen the latest news of violence in Jerusalem: a Palestinian living in Israel attacked a bus while driving a bulldozer killing several people. What a tragedy. Immediately this was declared the latest act of Palestinian terrorism. This man, however despicable the act, was not a terrorist and did not belong to any terrorist organizations. The Israelis responded with calls to cut off this man's whole neighborhood from Israel with the infamous wall. This is to affectively isolate and withdraw the citizenship of everyone in his whole town. Furthermore, his home, which houses 22 people (!) is scheduled to be demolished. What a tragedy.
In the US it would be as if a school shooting was done by a black student from a poor inner-city neighborhood and then the US government demolishing this student's family's home and then calling for his whole black neighborhood to be punished by removing their citizenship and booting them out of the country. This is collective punishment and this is racism. Inflicting pain on others does not do away with our own pain and it does not provide security. Let us pray for both the victims of this attack as well as for the family of the attacker.
BBC does a good job in covering the story. Please read the story at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7490212.stm:
No comments:
Post a Comment