Good day folks and hopefully a good weekend. As its fish on Friday I should like to share a longer section from `GOD HAS A DREAM`, by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. As I say, this is longer and this is because I want to get across how important it is to be in the battle for the Glory of God to be victorious! So please try and stick with it and oh yes, try not to be distracted by any mistakes I make and dont notice; as I believe what Tutu has written can aid those of us brothers and sisters, working as Sacred Service agents! God has chosen us from all eternity to be an indispensable part of His divine plan.
When according to the Christian faith, we had fallen into the clutches of the devil and were enslaved by sin, God chose Mary, a teenager in a small village, to be the mother of His Son. He sent an archangel to visit her. I envision it happening like this.
Knock, knock.
"Come in."
"Er, Mary?"
"Yes."
"Mary, God would like you to be the mother of His Son."
"What? Me!! In this village you can`t even scratch yourself without everybody knowing about it! You want me to be an unmarried mother? I`m a decent girl, you know. Sorry, try next door."
If she had said that, we would have been up a creek. Mercifully, marvelously, Mary said, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word," and the universe breathed a cosmic sigh of relief, because she made it possible for our Saviour to be born.
Mary was a poor teenage girl in Galilee and reminds us that tranfiguration of our world comes from even the most unlikely places and people. You are the idispensable agent of change. You should not be daunted by the magnitude of the task before you. Your contribution can inspire others, embolden others who are timid, to stand up for the truth in the midst of a welter of distortion, propaganda, and deceit; stand up for human dignity and decency at times when these are in desperately short supply.
God calls on us to be his partners to work for a new kind of society where people count; where people matter more than thigs, more than possessions; where human life is not just respected but positively revered; where people will be secure and not suffer from the fear of hunger, from ignorance, from disease; where there will be more gentleness, more caring, more sharing, more compassion, more laughter; where there is peace and not war.
Pur partnership with God comes from the fact that we are made in God`s image. Each and every human being is created in this same divine image. That is an incredible, a staggiring assertion about human beings. It might seem to be an innocuous religious truth, until you say it in a situation of injustice and oppression and exploitation. When I was rector of a small parish in Soweto, I would tell an old lady whose white employer called her "Annie" because her name was too difficult: "Mama, as you walk the dusty streets of Soweto and they ask you who you are, you can say, `I am God`s partner, God`s representative, God`s viceroy-that`s who I am-because I am created in the image of God.`"
To treat a child of God as if he or she were less than this is not just wrong, which it is; is not just evil, as it often; not just painful, as it often must be for the victim: it is viritably blasphemous, for it is to spit in the face of God. Each of us is a "God carrier," as St. Paul put it. Human beings must not just by rights be respected, but they must be held in awe and reverence. If we took this seriously, we should not just greet each other. We should really genuflect before one another. Buddhists are more correct, since they bow profoundly as they greet one another, saying the God in me acknowledges the God in you.
In the Christian point of view, our God is one who took our human nature. Our God said, "Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these, My brethren, you have done it unto Me. You don`t have to go around looking for God. You don`t have to say, "Where is God?" Everyone around you-that is God. It is because God has said this about each one of us, that our faith in God demands the obedience of our whole being in opposing injustice. For not to oppose injustice is to disobey God.
To oppose injustice and oppression is not something that is merely political. No, it is profoundly religious. Can you imagine what the gospel means to people whose dignity is trodden underfoot ever day of their lives, to those who have had their noses rubbed in the dust as if they didn`t count? Can you think of anything more subversive of a situation of injustice and oppression? Why shoud you need Marxist idiology or whatever? The Bible is dynamite in such a situation. In South
Africa when they banned books, we told the government the book they should have banned long ago was the Bible, for nothing could be more radical, more revolutionary, as we faced up to the awfulness of injustice, oppression, and racism.
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Maybe I lost a few bloggers already, but I tell you I could go on, because what the archbishop writes is so powerfull. The six years I spent in the Philippines, I saw the spirit of God there a lot more than here in england. I dont think it was only because there were street children there and not in the west. Amongst even the poor, those who believed were happy. Also amongst the rich, there were those like a senators son and his rich friends who were on trial for rape and possibly murder. Its such a time ago I forget a lot of the facts. I do remember one was the son of a senator Web! I think maybe because there are so many more poor than rich in the philippines then thats why so many more are blessed. Here in the west so many, are if not comfortable then actually weighed down with wealth and many with bodyfat. There may not come a lean winter for them to use it up. I have proberbly nearly half a stone of excess fat stored up for a rainy day, so am not being hollier than thou. All I am saying is we all have to hear the wake up call. Lest the time comes that we are asked the question, "when I was hungry did you feed me?" I should hate to have to reply, "No I ate your whole families share!
Now can I leave you with an upside. Hmm Okay, first, this is the prayer of St Athanasius.
May we `trust in the grace of your eternal Word, who took upon himself our humanity that we might share his divinity.`
Okay it seems I havent left you. Those that have had enough go and do something uplifting.
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Back to the near the knuckle stuff
Also I say we can choose life and ask of ourselves that we become a blessing to all around us. Not just those that love us, but those whom may hate us and also all Gods creation. Many Hindus, Buddhists and some of us Christians say sorry if we accidently kill even an insect. I can shamefully admit to last summer killing a wasps nest on my balcony. Also nearly killing other people some twenty years and more ago. Its come back on me and retrospectively as the wasps were concerned. Not wasps, but some viscious little bees kept stinging us up at our rest house in the phillipines. Also in Cagayan De Oro city, people twice tried to kill me. Once I was on my own and had to fight off and run from about six attackers after one of them smashed me on the side of the face with a rock. Next time I was in the city with a couple of philipinos, one of whom was the mayors nephew, the other was an americans right hand man. We were attacked ourside a bar in the city by about twenty young men. We fought them of and made our escape. I needed three stiches just by my armpit. One of the attackers went to stab me in the heart but I blocked him, but caught the knife in the top of my arm, then punched him which sent him flying. Afterwards I did question if my actions were that of a Christian. On both occasions if I hadnt defended myself its likely my sons would have lost me. One of my attackers got sacked from his job because Ben, a filipino friend who was employing him for a foreigner found out that him and his friends had planned to knock me out and leave me in the highway to be run over by trucks. After that I was singing a bit from a song for awhile, `You can knock me down but I get up again, cos your never going to keep me down.` I did thank God for whatever guardian angel he has assigned to my life. That angel sure has had his job cut out for him. Stopping me at times from succeeding in my attempts at killing people and then stopping me getting killed.
Then there was the time my darling wife killed herself and unwittingly gave me a brain injury. Police arresting me for murder and then charging me with aiding and abetting her suicide. Me on remand awaiting trial in Bedford prison. Contemplating one day in a bath in the prison hospital, if I should just sink under the water and breath in oblivion. How glad I am that I decided it wasnt my life to take. My sons wouldnt have been here today and you wouldnt be reading this!
Thanks be to God that in previous years on the two times I had tried to kill other guys I hadnt succeeded; otherwise only God knows, I may have failed at the first hurdle in the Philippines when guys planned to kill me. The trick now is that I dont forgive those who try to kill me, or back in england have stolen from me, because I am a saint and want to love my enemy. Nope, its because I get it that really there isnt any us and them; we are all just one body. So I love my enemy, even at the times that its my own ego. That way I can aknowledge and hopefully diminish that which seperates me from God and althings created and uncreated.
Creating more space as the universe expands. One song/universe. Lets all try to sing in harmony.
ALL WE NEED IS LOVE
I survived so much when others havent been so fortunate, that I give thanks and praise to God for.
So this is Peter, or those who knew me in the Philippines, Pedro, saying have a good weekend and know that you are loved. Love and smiles from bro Peter
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