Concerning the Crisis in Gaza and Southern Palestine-Israel--TRAGIC!

This short meditation on GAZA and Palestine-Israel was written 15 years ago during another war:-(

But, here now, in the 21st century, both sides are even more extremist, more self-centered, prideful, intolerant, unjust, war-gung-ho, abusive, dismissive of civilians' lives--all in the name of orthodox Judaism and orthodox Islam or at least cultural religion...

Please stand up for the True and the Compassionate when it comes to Palestine/Israel,
where the slaughtering by both sides is punishing the innocent as well as the guilty.

Photo of Ramallah Friends School

Hold all people in the Light.

The whole situation of Palestine/Israel in the last 150 years is so very convoluted and complicated.

NO ONE has any quick answers or solutions for the extremely complex tragedy.

NO HOPE IS POSSIBLE UNTIL BOTH SIDES CHOOSE to FORGIVE and agree to compromise!

The ultimate irony is that both the Palestinians and the Israelis genetically come from the same ancient peoples of the region!
What divides these multi-millions of haters isn't biological but religious and political and cultural.

It was tragic when I lived in Palestine/Israel in 1974, worked on a Jewish kibbutz, stayed briefly with a Palestinian Muslim family who befriended me in Nablus. And for many years since, I've followed the daily news there and read many books from the perspective of both sides.

Please support some of the groups that seek to bring light and reconciliation there-- the Quaker/Friends School in Ramallah, Palestine for the last 100 years.

And in the past, Christian Peacemaker Teams and Brother Andrew's involvement in bringing Jew and Palestinian Muslim together, even going to HAMAS to share his perspective with its leaders (when the government of Israel had dumped them midwinter into Lebanon years ago.

Support Eli Chacour a Palestinian/Israeli Palestinian priest who shares the true, the good, the kind, the just with both warring sides. Chacour has worked with and started a school/university for all peoples of the area--Christian, Muslim, Druse, and Jew. He has also befriended seculaerists and non-theists.

That is a start.

Here are several books that might assist in helping everyone to better (and more historically accurate) understand the complexity, hatred, intolerance, of the area:

Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life by Sari Nusseibeh and Anthony David

Blessed are the Peacemakers
by the former assistant mayor
of Ramallah, Audeh Rantisi who co-wrote it along with Ralph Beebe of George Fox University and Northwest Yearly Meeting.

Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour
We Belong to the Land by Elias Chacour

Chacour's father, a Palestinian Christian said that they needed to love
the Jews (when the Jews were escaping lethal violence in Russia and Europe to the M.E.).

Yet later
the Israeli army kidnapped him and Chacour's brother
and dumped them in a foreign country.

Then the Israeli Army blew up
their Palestinian Catholic church and drove all of the Palestinians
out of their homes and town.

The Israeli government has never allowed Chacour and other Palestinians to come back to their home.

Yet Chacour still shows love to the Jewish people, and to Muslims, Druze, and all others.

Sounds like the "Lamb's War--a war of love, justice, and peace! --the only war worth having.

Peace in the LIGHT--the Caring, the Good, the True, the Just,

Dan Wilcox
http://infiniteoceanoflightandlove.blogspot.com/

Finding the Way Forward

It seems that real growth in ethics, justice, and other sorts of human advancement comes like a forest fire. First there’s an initial spark--not more stirring of cold, dead ashes of past events and forms--

and then a patch of ethical flames, and finally, a roaring forest fire of change--of a new movement toward truth.

To whimsy this profound reality versus the conservative tendency to hideout in past achievements:
That was then,
zen is now:-)

Consider this adapted Zen story:

A well-known professor from George Fox University went to visit a Quaker human rights activist. As the friendly activist got out a bottle of spiced rum2 and a large glass for the tired traveler, the brilliant Professor Kno described his ideas of what Quakerism was,
is,
and ought to be. He explained its treasured historical forms, committees, and meetings. But then rung his hands, as he spoke, because Friends as a movement was seriously declining in attenders, and experiencing a severe loss of adherents. Kno pulled out charts and statistical analyses and waved them, considerably upset.

Yet the activist remained quiet so Professor Kno spoke on and on with more erudition and vast knowledge. Meanwhile, the activist poured more liquor into Kno’s untouched glass.

Even when rum reached the brim of the Professor's glass, the activist kept pouring. Alcohol overflowed, spilling onto the tray, table, and down onto the carpet and their shoes, until the professor could no longer stand it.

“Stop!” Kno almost shouted. “Can’t you see my glass is too full?”

“This is you,” said the activist. “How can you find new insights, new truths, until you first decant some of that glut and surfeit in your glass--your own excessive assumed opinions, speculations, and conclusions?

“How can we find new ethical insight, more clarity and Light unless we first clear our rigid forms from our glutted, surfeited, stained glass?”



Side Note: 2See the video: Quaker Speaks
Did the early Quakers drink alcohol?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ2kPDjojPE


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Important Guest Post on Same Sexuality

See below past the brief intro. for the guest post: "A Man with No Past" by Fernando Alcantar

Brief intro:
There are so many Christians and other theists who have recently come out as same sexual. Has this always been true--that many spiritually concerned and focused people have hidden their same sexuality?

And there are so many churches and denominations including Friends arguing over same sexuality, even splitting up as Indiana Yearly Meeting did, and North Carolina Yearly Meeting and Northwest Yearly Meeting are doing now.

Check A Friendly Letter, Chuck Fager's recent blog articles for the details:
http://afriendlyletter.com/breaking-split-over-lgbt-planned-for-northwest-yearly-meeting/
http://afriendlyletter.com/another-day-another-split-attempt-new-target-north-carolina-ym/

Even the huge United Methodist Denomination may split over the ethical issue. Other major denominations have in the recent past.
Etc.

So much division and misunderstanding and sorrow!

But the worst tragedy of the current controversy is that, too often, the very real individuals who are at the center of the controversy get left in the wreck:-(

Think of the loving couples who only wanted to get marriage licenses in Kentucky, but the clerk Kim Davis wouldn't let them.

Remember when Marsha Stevens of the music group Children of the Day announced that she was a lesbian and thankful for being same sexual. What a storm of trouble.

And remember when it came to the news that Lonnie Frisbee, the famous Calvary Chapel assistant minister, was same sexual.

Etc.

I wonder why.

I wonder what all of this controversy says about theism, about Quakerism, about the Christian religion, human nature, human psychology, life, and reality.

Do you have any thoughts about this huge topic?

GUEST POST:

A Man with No Past by Fernando Alcantar

"Fernando Alcántar was born and raised in Mexico and immigrated to the United States as a teenager. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology and a Master’s Degree in Organizational Leadership from Azusa Pacific University, one of the top Christian Universities in the nation.

He is an author, activist...He worked at APU's Mexico Outreach for eight years as Senior Coordinator of North American Partnerships. There, he oversaw hundreds of churches in Mexico and helped mobilize over 9,000 missionaries a year from all over the United States and Canada.

He innovated dozens of new ministries and developed unprecedented partnerships with government officials, nonprofits, schools, businesses, and churches. He has spoken in front of thousands sharing his faith and motivating people into Christian ministry, and traveled around the world serving marginalized communities."
--

Fernado Alcantar:

"I am a man with no past. And you are probably one too.

When I was born, my family put the seal of Catholicism on me and taught me that since I was Mexican, I was Catholic just as much.

The rest is a story I’ve shared on the book To the Cross and Back: An Immigrant’s Journey from Faith to Reason. A story of how as a teenager I converted to Protestant Christianity trying to escape loneliness and seeking healing from childhood trauma.

I then became a state leader for the Foursquare denomination in Baja California...a globetrotting missionary for Azusa Pacific University—one of the largest evangelical colleges in the nation.

And then became head of youth and young adult ministries for the almost 400 churches in the Southern California-Hawaii region of the United Methodist Church.

For about 30 years I obeyed the rules of the Bible as best as I could, including hiding the darkest secret—even from myself—the fact that I am gay. For at least a decade I fought a depression anchored in a never-ending doubt. What happens if I lose faith?"

Read the rest of Alcantar's powerful, sorrowful article at http://fernandoalcantar.com/man-no-past/

What are your thoughts on Alcantar's crisis?

What are your thought on this whole issue?


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Tempest in a Quaker's Thumb, While the World Burns

Disclaimer: The issues dividing North Carolina Meeting and Northwest Yearly Meeting are serious, heartbreaking, and tragic. What I am about to say doesn’t deny that. Concerned people do need to reflect, reason, and discuss controversial issues in order that they may come together to bring hope and change and healing to those in need.

HOWEVER,

Meanwhile the world burns.

The United Nations refugee agency: "Nearly 60 million people have been driven from their homes by war and persecution, an unprecedented global exodus that has burdened fragile countries with waves of newcomers, and littered deserts and seas with the bodies of those who died trying to reach safety."

"The new figures paint a staggering picture of a world where new conflicts are erupting and old ones are refusing to subside, driving up the total number of displaced people to a record 59.5 million by the end of 2014, the most recent year tallied. Half of the displaced are children." (New York Times, June 18)

Of undocumented children detained in Australia for more than one year, 100 percent suffer from some form of mental illness because of their detention.

Think of all the excessive time and energy that is being spent on whether or not meetings can or can’t be part of two regional Friends Yearly Meetings, and how much valuable time and resources were wasted in Indiana Yearly Meeting for several years when it split.

What if instead of focusing on bureaucratic procedures from Faith and Practice, Friends INSTEAD took all that time, energy, and resources to start helping those 60 million people?! And got involved with the millions of other outreach needs--malnourished people, injustices, needed reconciliations, and the giving of hope.

Like so many religions, Quaker history has been rife with hairspitting;-). Shall I list all the controversies and splits?

How much did those thumb studies do to change the world, to rescue the perishing, care for the sick, minister to the suffering?

And what if instead of religious wrangling--spiritual gunslingers--Friends had heeded the call for empathy, compassion, and justice in 1688 when a few Friends protested slavery in 1688 in Germantown, Pennsylvania?

Instead, Friends put off that issue for almost 85 years! How much sorrow, injustice, and tragedy happened while Friends twiddled. And, then again in the 1800's when a few Friends rescued escaped slaves, meetings generally didn't want to get involved.

No, instead the petition against slavery by Francis Daniel Pastorius and three other Friends got lost in the meetings’ monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings. Religious bureaucracy.

No action was taken!

How much different and better might American history have turned out?

Don’t we learn anything from our past?


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox