#The Stones Cry Out - Voices of the Palestinian Christians

[marcogiovenale]

"the stones cry out. voices of the palestinian christians" / yasmine perni

  The Stones Cry Out – Voices of the Palestinian Christians. A film by Yasmine Perni. 56 min. Language: English, and Arabic with English subtitles https://www.thestonescryoutmovie.com

[burnt-scone]

Me: As someone descended from Jewish refugees, I very much support the Jewish community. I always try my best to call out Antisemitic content and people. Like that dude fired by Mojang for antisemtic posts he made, the guy who created the villagers. Big nosed, greedy people obsessed by shiny stones and protected by Golems. Interesting. 😐

Ppl: So you support Israel?

Me: Fuck no.

Ppl: But, you just said-

Since 1948, they've terrorized innocent people who welcomed them with open arms. Before modern Israel, Muslim, Jewish, and Christian Palestinians lived peacefully and saw each other as cousins. Israel killed all that opposed them in the Nakba, including Jewish Palestinians. Also, back in 48, a lot of Jewish people disliked the formation of Israel because it was seen as MAN controlling the Will of G/D. G/d would welcome their people home when they saw fit. But man decided by spilling blood they'd take it by force all for themselves.

Ppl: But what about the bab-

Me: The Twitter post claiming 40 babies were killed by Hamas was a lie, confirmed a lie by Israel themselves. The only babies murdered have been murdered by Israel. And they've already admitted they're doing this to build a tourist city. They murdered thousands, and they plan to murder millions. They've destroyed holy sites, even Jewish ones, all so they can build a place for tourism. They spill blood to make money. That government doesn't give two shits about human lives.

Ppl: But Hamas-

Me: -Is considered a Terrorist group? Most radical groups now seen as heroes in history were once considered terrorists or something similar by the governments they opposed. If someone attacked you and you defended yourself, and you broke their nose. Now everyone's saying you're the violent one. Everyone is funding your bully, and the bully is always making sure you don't have the resources to fight back as hard, and they're constantly striking. One day, they shoot themselves in the toe. They lie and say you did it. Later, they admit you didn't shoot them, but they got permission from their mommy and daddy to kill you. So they're shooting all these big illegal fireworks at you. You have bottle rockets. Finally, the world is caring, and the world sees the bully was lying and using mommy and daddies' influence to get away with it. Mommy and Daddy killed and hurt people. Why can't they? The people seeing all this are begging for someone to do something to stop your bully, but their mommy is looking away, and their daddy is giving them more illegal fireworks. With you gone, they can tear down your house and build a big fancy tourist trap city. They might even get to tear down their other neighbors' houses. All for "Greater Israel. " Wouldn't that be horrific?

Ppl: But those in power said Palestines lying?

Me: But those in power are the ones paying for this to happen. They're the ones with the loudest voices, but they're the ones funding everything happening. They're the ones who say what their media can and can't say. They don't want you to believe live footage. They don't want you to believe videos and photos proven real and unedited. Any time they're told that they're doing wrong, they try and say it's cancel culture and that they're the real victim. Even though they're taking your money and using it to bomb children while they relax in comfy offices. Our nation's in debt, but they're using your money to murder babies. So you're murdering babies, what happened to being "pro life"?

I've had this conversation in similar orders on repeat, and every time, they end up restating the same claims that Israel admitted weren't true and they themselves lied.

They pretend mass genocides aren't happening, and they pretend Lebanon and Yemen aren't under attack now. And just Israel, America is crying to the world that they're the victim when soldiers went missing, soldiers they sent into invade Yemen.

America be like: We sent ships and men to invade them and their allies, and they fought back, I don't get it 🥺

This is Genocide isn't a Arab/Muslim VS Jew thing. It isn't Antisemitic to call out Genocide. Colonizers are ethnically cleansing an entire civilization. And that's wrong. They're using illegal warfare, basically using the Geneva Warcrimes list as a checklist. They've attacked every single hospital in Palestine and still claim they haven't bombed or attacked a single one, while under oath. They murder people who surrender, they prevent medical care or nutrients from getting to civilians, they use chemical weapons like white phosphorus, and THEIR MAIN TARGET IS CIVILIANS.

There is no excuse for their actions. If they were really after Hamas and claim to know where they are, they'd have used more than one surgical strike, and there would be almost no civilian deaths. If this truly was a war and not a Genocide, they would've let food, water, and medical aid into Palestine. They wouldn't have bombs ambulances. They wouldn't murdered thousands.

This isn't Jews versus Arabs, this Israel, a government power versus civilians.

[pepoyellow]

The Stones Cry Out from yasmine perni on Vimeo.

The Stones Cry Out - Voices of the Palestinian Christians

A film by Yasmine Perni

56min Language: English / Arabic Subtitles: English

thestonescryoutmovie.com

[globalworship]

A Toast to the Mystery of the Incarnation in the Margins

Father Kenneth Tanner is a priest in the Charismatic Episcopal tradition. He pastors Holy Redeemer church in Rochester, Michigan. http://holyredeemer.us/

I’ve never heard him preach, but avidly read his spiritual meditations that he frequently post on FB like the several I’ve reposted below: The choice of art is by him as well.

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The God who speaks all things into being, makes himself speechless

When the divine community we call God created the visible (and invisible) universe they spoke words like "let there be light" and things that were not in one moment began to exist in the next. Stars. Planets. Oceans. Mountains. Trees. Animals. Flowers.

All these things and more were breathed into existence by God. When the Father began to make all things, our wisdom tells us that it was the Son by whom the Father spoke all things into being; Christ spoke the things that were not as though they were and they were so. Orchid. Zebra. Maple. Everest. Atlantic. Jupiter. Andromeda. And so on.

Instead of speaking humanity into existence, our wisdom tells us that God hand-crafted men and women from the clay, breathed into our motionless humanity the breath of life, invested flesh with his image, and gave us something the rest of creation does not have except metaphorically: the divine capacity of language.

Though all living things communicate, only humans have the gift of speech and this capacity is creative (like God) or destructive (like the dark powers), depending on our choice.

The mystery of the Incarnation is so great that every year—in this time of Advent and Christmas, six blessed weeks of waiting and celebration—I eventually see something I have never seen before, encounter a facet of the birth narrative I missed or neglected or did not see in all its beauty.

The season from Thanksgiving to Epiphany allows Christians to marinate in the story of the Word made bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh and we come away not as spectators but as *participants* in the mystery.

Ponder with me the humility of a God who speaks all things into existence making himself speechless, making himself incapable of sounding words.

The Sacred Three invite a teenager into their community and ask her to bear God—to bear the One who cannot be contained—in her tiny womb. She consents. And in her womb by the Spirit the Son who spoke the far-flung galaxies into motion aeons ago comes to complete silence, knit together in that holy space by a mystery that Jesus' forefather David knew was awe-inspiring and wondrous.

Christ emerges from her womb into this world of struggle and pain and vulnerability and beyond crying out as most babies do, he has no power to address his human brothers and sisters beyond the glory of his personal presence among us as God and man together.

Mary lays the Word made silent into the feed box. And the Word submits to silence until in the mystery of his genuine humanity God learns to speak as we all do by being spoken to—primarily by hearing the voice of the teenager who welcomed him to be born in her.

Words like "immah" (mother) or "abba" (father) Jesus learns from Mary. And as he learned to speak as we all do, his words in time begin to reveal the majesty of his unique person so that while still a boy all the men of wisdom in the Temple marvel at his speech, as does everyone who encounters in the gospels the mystery of divinity and humanity that is spoken in Jesus Christ.

"I am the door." "I am the bread of life." "I am the light of the world." "I am the resurrection and the life." "Do good to those who hate you." "I have called you friends." "Father forgive them." "Love your enemies."

Above all—here in the Word made flesh—all other words about God find the tongue that interprets them *in* Jesus Christ.

I am astonished, and in my heart I am on my knees, before this mystery that God becomes silent for us and for our salvation. So much—infinity, it seems, by this account—can be spoken without words. The divine community who spoke the worlds into existence as One God reveal their love in a profound wordless action.

The mystery is great. Good news of great joy. Glory in the highest!

https://medium.com/@kennethtanner/when-the-divine-community-we-call-god-created-the-visible-and-invisible-universe-they-spoke-words-630408c99457 https://www.facebook.com/kenneth.tanner/posts/10214615909528800 http://www.clarion-journal.com/clarion_journal_of_spirit/2016/11/the-god-who-speaks-all-things-into-being-makes-himself-speechless-kenneth-tanner.html

‘Madonna and Child’ by Parker Fitzgerald (pencils) and Brittany Richardson (colors). Layout by Brian Gage Design. https://ninebreaker.deviantart.com/art/Madonna-and-Child-72795161

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Christmas Happens in the Margins

Christmas is not about greatness but smallness, not about strength but weakness, not about force or coercion but invitation and welcome. Christmas does not need anyone to accept its joy or embrace its light.

Christmas happens in the margins, away from the spotlight. Christmas is elusive for the proud and the blustery, and threatening to every form of politics: Judean or Roman, British or Irish, Indian or Pakistani, Russian or American, Chinese or Korean, Iranian or Iraqi.

Christmas is about the vulnerability of God, about the revelation that God is the servant of his universe, that if we too serve the creation with God then we join his smallness, an insignificance that displays for all to see the mystery of a profound divine weakness, a humility that casts down all greatness and arrogance and elevates poverty and lowliness.

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A Toast to our Maker Made One of Us

The humanity you share with Jesus Christ is seated next to the Father, forever bearer of Mary's DNA with a yet-beating heart and wound-marked hands with which to embrace us and—we should not forget this—memories of his life with us as one of us.

Memories of home-cooked meals and frigid desert evenings. Sawdust memories of hard work and sweat. Recollections of wine and friends and laughter at midnight. He made our sometimes brutish but (somehow also) beautiful existence his own and did not spare himself any of our sleepless small hours, our helplessness in the face of the suffering of children, our hunger for bread, our world weariness—this endless, gnawing awareness of contingency—and our bone-tired aches at end of day.

So a toast to our Maker made one of us, a real high priest who knows our justice-starved laments and our human joys, the sound of the wind in the trees and of birdsong; who is acquainted with our tears of shattered anguish; who knows our music and cuisine, our courts and our cemeteries; who loved us in the face of torture and agony.

To him who rules all times and places, who made all things seen and unseen, now made judge of his human brothers and sisters by the things he suffered, be glory and honor forever.

https://www.facebook.com/kenneth.tanner?hc_ref=ARSDueoQFTTPjONIpQmiaJFqyr2nJg-pWamb_EvFlOQjup4BN_gUkm2diS_gLvLz5tA&fref=nf

‘Madonna and Child’ modern icon by EvitaWorks https://www.etsy.com/listing/122130677/mary-and-jesus-folk-art-icon-religious?ref=related-3

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The One

The One who cannot be contained in Solomon's temple (much less the expanding universe) is contained in the womb of a Palestinian-Jewish teenager. The One who is timeless and omnipotent and changeless makes himself truly vulnerable and contingent to all the natural forces he has breathed into existence as he lays in a feed box, dependent on Mary and Joseph for nourishment and protection, as he somehow holds together the wood of that manger that cradles him in Bethlehem. The One who is the origin of all things and who holds all things in existence—galactic to microscopic—is the carpenter from Nazareth. He who made the Pleiades and Orion now sets beams and crafts tables with his stepfather, sweeps sawdust from his forearms. The One who baptizes with the Holy Spirit and fire is baptized with water so that humanity has a baptized God. The One who does not eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats is now in Jesus a hungering creature of necessity, set to fast in the Judean desert. The One who owns the cattle on a thousand hills and Lord of angel armies is now homeless and a sojourner, cloaked against the cold night air and all alone, tempted by satan. The One who never sleeps and who ever watches over Israel naps on a boat out on Galilee. The One who embodies the Law dines with tax collectors and wine enthusiasts. The One who is a consuming fire of holy otherness beyond all comprehension, who dwells in light inaccessible from before time and forever, embraces lepers, prostitutes, the blind, and all who are ritually unclean; he shines on all who sit in darkness and the shadow of death. The only One who is without sin forgives and does not condemn as he draws in the sand, throws no stones, and takes all condemnation upon himself. The eternal One hangs on a tree as the sands of his mortal life seep from the hourglass until "it is finished." The One who knows no sin bears the sin of the whole world. Nazi sin. Rapist sin. American sin. The sins of children. White collar sin. Blue collar sin. Red light district sin. Stained glass sin. Domesticated sin. Christian sin. The almost endless banality of evil. Your sin. My sin. These and other sentences like them are what we mean when we say that Jesus Christ is both God and man. The Gospel has a definitive content. The contemporary church (across all denominations and movements) may have misplaced this bright Lantern, or forgotten about it altogether, but it shines on in the darkness and the darkness can never extinguish it. The Word became flesh and took up residence among us.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10211138299550724&set=a.2253573056187.137248.1154125675&type=3&theater

‘Holy Family’ by Janet McKenzie https://www.janetmckenzie.com/prints.html

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The Incarnation and Rescue

It must be self-evident to most people that humanity needs rescue from sin, violence, and death. A God who participates in sin, violence, and death is not other than fallen humanity but a projection of our worst fears and hatreds. A God who liberates us from sin, violence, and death is good and welcome news from outside ordinary human experience and thought. Such a God would be light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made. And it is the Incarnation that makes this God known to us, and makes this God real for us. For it is the nails driven into the flesh of Christ by humanity and spirits of darkness that decisively counter and make vain all human, demonic, and anti-Christian imagination that the Father who creates and upholds the world by love is in some other part of himself the one who destroys the world or his Son. There is a destroyer but his false, homicidal way of violence, abuse, coercion, and death is defeated by the humility of God acting in Jesus Christ. He is the father of detestable instruments of death like nuclear weapons, for only a "god" who hates humanity and creation would author such abominations, and in sin we partnered in their "creation" with this god's hatred of the image of God in humanity and in human civilization, his hatred of creation, his contempt for the Incarnation. The nails driven into the flesh of Christ are also the nails driven into the coffin of the idea that the Living God sends evil or participates in darkness or desires the death of anyone.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10211110130166507&set=a.2253573056187.137248.1154125675&type=3&theater

Feast of the Epiphany icon, artist unknown

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The Babe Who Breathed the Stars into the Astonished Sky

Every moment — all our breaths — ought to resound with praise for this radical identification of God with us.

Mary is as baffled and quietly grateful as we are; that God chose her, that he sides with humanity permanently against all who oppose us, even our own hatred of ourselves.

At the end of a long season of bearing, at the end of a long journey, at the end of a long day and after excruciating pain, after holding him close to her heart, she stops bearing God for the first time since she said to Gabriel "let it be."

She lays his bright flesh in a feed trough, swaddled against the anxiety of leaving her womb, nestled by wool and straw from the cold night's sting.

The One who was God before all worlds lies there, as helpless against fragile existence as any of us, bound to the poverty of homelessness, a slave now to the elements he created, a hungering creature of necessity, soon to be an immigrant fleeing political terror, held aloft from the damp ground by wood that as God he holds together.

At the dedication of the Temple, Solomon said of this tightly wrapped bundle of dust, "the heaven of heavens cannot contain you." Yet contained he was for nine months within this weary teenager, smeared with dirt, sweaty from her labor, catching her breath in time with this baby, the One who in the beginning breathed the stars into the astonished sky above them.

The beginning and end of the Christian revelation of God, of all that Jesus does for us and for our salvation, is this baby, this mother, this manger, this dust, this sweat, these halting breaths.

Come let us adore him. Repeat the sounding joy. Not only this week, not only this season, but with every breath.

Excerpted from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-kenneth-tanner/too-great-a-mystery_b_4499218.html

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Christmas is for Worship [2013] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-kenneth-tanner/post_6280_b_4344762.html

Some are worked up about a “war on Christmas.”

Not me. I am not compelled to “reclaim” or “rescue” Christmas from the many who ignore and the few who despise its magnificent origins.

How can I be anxious or offended? I am in too much awe of its startling truth: that a baby is God, gasping for air, clasping for mother’s milk, flailing his small limbs in a feed trough; taking on my frailty, contingency, vulnerability, that I might share his everlasting nature.

The baby is now Lord of all things visible and invisible, forever one of us, still bearing his now glorified, nail-scarred flesh at the Father’s side, making all things new for all, hallowing every star in the far-flung cosmos — matter’s maker now made matter, redeeming every atom and every stoney heart. This reality overpowers me with its brilliant mystery.

I want to share this authentic Christmas. I want everyone to know this God become clay so that all might be like God.

Whether others believe the story, whether they practice holy Christmas — with deep joy that prostrates before his Incarnation — does not dampen my praise or slacken my faith. I do not skip a beat. It does not alarm me.

The season society calls “Christmas” falls short of this great mystery, but I wonder if the frustration and anger of some believers springs from an unexamined need for the culture to boost our untested faith in the God who became man. Can we trust the real deal without their cooperation or support? Why does so little set us at odds with our neighbors?

Should we not welcome the chance to embody genuine belief and practice, to live incarnate love in the face of all lesser versions and visions of Christmas? This is an opportunity. This is our calling.

After all, the first Christmas occurred in obscurity, without tinsel or holly. In a small town, in a cave amid manure, straw, and animal breath, Magnificence came forth breathing, born of a woman and almost no one noticed. A star and angels are needed to find him, down a blind, trash-strewn alley, the holy family are huddled against the night air.

At dawn, the world went about its business, unaware that a glory had shone that night that would never be put out, a glory that in time will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. No lack of awareness or poverty of reverence, no stubborn denial, can prevent this.

It’s time to worry a lot less about getting Christ back into Christmas (he can’t be blasted out of Christmas, no matter how hard anyone tries).

What needs to get back into Christmas is worship. As it was with the shepherds and angels, Christmas is about worship before it’s about anything else: falling on our knees, falling flat on our faces, adoring the brilliance of this God who comes to us as a baby, lying in a feed trough, breathing with other animals, wrapped tightly against the cold and the anxiety of leaving his mother’s womb.

If every Christian worshipped that majestic mystery at Christmas, lived thatworship in every moment of our celebrations, yes, but also actually worshippedin churches, storefronts, cathedrals, living rooms and high schools on Christmas Eve and/or Christmas Day — wherever the body of believers they call home worships weekly — we wouldn’t have to worry about getting “Christ back into Christmas.”

All would see that Christians worship Incarnate Love as their first priority on this day — not their decorations, or gifts, or lights, or money, or family, or food, or tinsel, or charity or even their merely human, corporate goodwill but their God.

When the wood of the manger joins the wood of the cross, when Jesus Christ is revealed in the worship of a people captivated by the hardwood glories of Bethlehem and Golgotha, we will no longer need to talk about reclaiming or rescuing anything.

Christmas does not require our defensiveness or salvage operations. It beckons us to a deeper imitation and worship of Divine Clay.

[gracewithducks]

Go to Bethlehem

We are entering the season of Advent – a time of year when we in the church talk about preparing for Christmas, preparing our hearts to go to Bethlehem, to see what God is doing there.

 But this year, that has me thinking: because I – pretty literally – just got back from Bethlehem. And I’ve seen what God is doing there – and I’ve seen what people are doing there, too. And it’s not quite what we imagine it to be.

 The first time I travelled to Bethlehem, it was almost eight years ago – and I was completely unprepared. I already knew, on some level, that Bethlehem in real life wasn’t going to look anything like the little starlit town I imagine every Christmas Eve. But even as a pastor with two advanced degrees in theology, I was completely unprepared for the reality of Bethlehem.

 For one thing, Bethlehem is no longer the little town that it once was. For another, on that first journey, I remember my guide waving his hands as he showed us a landscape with very few trees – and a whole lot of rocks. And he shook my expectations when he told me that Mary’s husband was likely not a woodworker but a stonemason – and the manger in which the baby lay was not a wooden structure, but one hewn from rock. And the stable in which he was born was most likely, in fact, simply a cave, a cave where animals could be easily kept, a cave where Mary withdrew in order to find the shelter and privacy she needed to do her work that night.

 Already my imaginings of the Christmas story were turned upside down. But then we entered the city of Bethlehem itself. And built over that humble cave, where Mary and Joseph went to find a quiet and secluded corner for her son to be born – built over that simple cave is this great big ornate fortress of a church. Painted Orthodox icons, dimmed with the smoke from generations of incense and candlelight, and bright red lanterns, poor boxes and prayer boxes and more icons, so many icons, gold icons, silver icons, full color icons of Mary and the Christ-child fill the space.

 And this is what I remember from my first visit: I remember that the church was big, and the church was very dark, gloomy and foreboding. Our guide pointed to faded mosaics and artwork and bemoaned their loss, because unless all the Christian denominations who have a stake in that holy site agreed, no restoration could ever take place. I remember how he warned us not to hurry, not to walk too quickly – and not to laugh, because apparently, laughter isn’t holy enough to grace that holy place. Apparently, there’s no place for laughter in the place where a child was born.

 I remember that the church felt large, cavernous, dim and full of shadows – and even though it was so crowded that we didn’t even have the option of waiting in the long line to enter the cave where Christ may have been born, at the same time, I remember the church feeling very empty, very far from the quiet corner where God once crept into creation, very far from the intimate place where a mother first cradled her holy child – I remember the church felt pretty far from anything holy at all.

 I remember my first footsteps in that drab and disappointing church… but more than that, what I remember from that first journey to Bethlehem was what it felt like to enter Bethlehem itself.

 What I remember most about that journey was the wall.

 Maybe I had been sheltered. Maybe I was naïve. Maybe I’d spent so much time learning about the history of the holy places that I never really bothered to study what’s happening there today. Because until I saw it firsthand, I didn’t even realize there was a wall at all.

 But then we went through the checkpoint. And our guide told us the story of the wall: the wall built around Bethlehem, supposedly for safety, but really for control; a wall that follows no established or agreed upon borders; a wall that keeps Palestinians from being able to travel, to move freely, to live their lives. He told us how he has to allow several hours in the morning to travel from his home in Bethlehem to meet us at the hotel in Jerusalem, even though it’s only a few miles, even though he has all the proper permits and papers to get him through. He told us about his friends and family who couldn’t even go to Jerusalem at all. He told me of the homes that were stolen, the land that continues to be grabbed, stolen away from families who’ve lived and worked that land since before the time of Christ – stolen because of some misconstrued idea that God wants it that way.

 And I looked at that wall: that great big concrete barrier turning the little town of Bethlehem into a giant open-air prison – I looked at that wall, painted with graffiti calling for peace and for justice – I looked at that wall around the place where Christ was born, the very place where we celebrate the miracle of God’s presence with us, God who was born to a poor young couple, a young family who could find no safe shelter except the cave where the animals rest, God who chose to enter the world in a small and occupied village, among the oppressed and the desperate, the last and the least – I looked at that wall, and realized, not very much has changed at all.

 I remember wondering how it could be happening. I remember wondering when the world would stand up and say something, do something, to bring good news to the poor and release to the captives once more.

 Last year, I went back to Bethlehem. The wall was still there… with several years’ worth of new graffiti – including a caricature of our president, hugging the wall and promising, “I’m going to build you a brother.”

 Last year, we visited the church – and it was covered with drop cloths and work lights, a work in progress, as the ancient faded artwork was being painstakingly restored. It was a bright light of hope, because it meant that all of the Christian churches who share the site had managed to agree on something – and that’s progress.

 We also visited Bethlehem Bible College, where we got to meet some of the Christians who work, who study, who live and who are leaders in the community. And we heard from a young mother who teaches at the college, a young woman who thanked us for coming to the school. She spoke of the floods of visitors who come to the church up the street, who come to see the “holy stones” – but, she said, nobody cares about the “living stones” – the people who actually live and work and worship here. And she spoke to us about how, just a few nights before, she heard her children wake up coughing and crying in the night. And then she, too, started gagging… because the soldiers had released tear gas in the neighborhood. She said, “They don’t care about my family, about our children, about our neighbors, gagging and coughing on the gas. This is just how we live. They want us to leave. They don’t care about us at all.”

 And to a person, every one of us in the room was appalled. Every one of us was outraged, heartbroken, that anyone could so carelessly and callously throw tear gas at children, and not even care.

 This year, I went back to Bethlehem. The art in the church is bright and beautiful. There’s still a line of crowds waiting for their moment to pray in the cave where Christ was born.

 And there’s still a wall. And the people are still oppressed. Another generation of children are growing up behind that wall. And what really bothers me is that this time I didn’t feel any surprise. This time, I didn’t feel any righteous indignation – because Bethlehem isn’t quite so far away from where we live after all. We live on land that once belonged to other people, land that was stolen away by force and deceit. We are building a wall, an irrational wall built out of fear and a misconstrued promise of false security. And we are a people who throw tear gas at children – children who are standing on our doorstep, begging us for help.

 For too many years, we in the U.S. have bemoaned the “War on Christmas.” And there is a war on Christmas – but it has nothing to do with the phrase “Happy Holidays.” The War on Christmas shows itself when we gather to light candles and sing hymns about the miracle of Christ’s coming – while we deny that story with our lives. When we proclaim the wonder of Virgin Birth, and we praise Joseph for standing by his young bride, while at the same time we doubt and deny and undermine the voices of women and ignore the experience of people of color and turn our backs on the victims around us today – then we have turned our backs on Christ. When we pretend that we would have made room for the Holy Family on Christmas night, while we close our borders and close our hearts to those searching for shelter today – then we are lying to God and to ourselves. When we sing about “peace on earth and goodwill to all people” but while at the same time supporting preemptive strikes and propping up racist systems – when we demand our neighbors respect our holy days though we don’t respect theirs – when we sing about peace but don’t study peace, or live by peace, or work for peace in the world – then we are the ones waging war on Christmas.

 And when we turn our hearts towards some imagined Bethlehem of the past, but ignore the realities of injustice, violence, and oppression in Bethlehem today – much less the injustice, violence, and oppression taking place all around us, done in our name and even by our own hands – then we have turned Christ away once again.

 The good news that we sing about and celebrate every year is the promise that Christ came to bring good news, to bring hope, to everyone, everywhere. And maybe you and I aren’t big enough all by ourselves to help everyone, everywhere. We so easily get distracted debating whether we should be helping these people or those people – that we end up not helping anybody at all.  Maybe we each can’t do everything. But that doesn’t let us off the hook: because we can all do something; we can all help someone. And we are called to do just that.

 You know, in the church year, we use the color purple twice: we use it during the season of Lent, when we take a good look at our lives, when we consider our mortality, and when we repent of our sin, when we try to clear away the things that come between us and God and us and others – and we commit ourselves to doing better… but we also use the color purple during the season of Advent, this season when we prepare for Christ to enter in. And we don’t just use purple because it looks really sharp with red and green – we use purple because this, too, is a season of reflection and repentance: a time to take a good look, to clear the way, to turn around, and to commit ourselves to doing better.

 As we enter the season of Advent, as we prepare ourselves to “go to Bethlehem,” as we do the work of making room for Christ in our hearts and in our lives – friends, let’s go further. Let’s make room not just for the spiritual Christ child, but for the Christ in the world around us, the Christ who promised to be with the last and the least: the refugee Christ, the hungry Christ, the homeless Christ, the imprisoned Christ, the oppressed Christ, the Christ who still knocks, looking for someone who cares enough to open the door and let him in.

 Let’s commit ourselves to keeping Christmas holy: by giving, by sharing, by advocating, by loving others as we love ourselves. Bethlehem is all around us. The holy family is still searching for compassion. May our hearts be softened, and our hands be open, not just in theory, but in truth, today.

  O Lord of all people and all places, you chose to enter into the world in a humble place – and in doing so, you made it holy. You chose to enter the world in the midst of poverty, desperation, violence and oppression – and you promised to meet us still in the poor, the desperate, hurting and oppressed people around us today. Open our eyes to see your face in the faces of your beloved siblings; open our hearts to embrace others as we would embrace you. May the places we walk this week be made holy by your presence, and may your love be revealed by our presence, as we follow you. In the name of Christ we pray; amen.

[the-record-columns]

Jan 10, 2018: Columns

A story of unmeasured kindness

By KEN WELBORN

Record Publisher

    Elsewhere in this edition of The Record is some information on a trip Mike Staley and me took to Durham last weekend on behalf of the Rotary Club by attending the annual convention of the NC Association of Agricultural Fairs. 

    It truly is an interesting event which I look forward to each year, and the trade show aspect of the convention is one of my favorite parts.  Every kind of entertainment imaginable is available, up to and including a three-ring circus.

    Well, as most of you know by now from the column my wife, Laura, wrote in early December, our beautiful Pit Bull/Boxer dog was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and is a very sick puppy.  Mercifully, Powder has made an amazing comeback thanks to the treatments he has received and good ole' Jenkins Livermush. 

    Yes, livermush.

    In late November and early December, we were worried sick about Powder.  He hadn't eaten anything he could keep down for what seemed like forever, when one night, I cut up a few slices of livermush and fed him little pieces by hand.  Not only did he eat it and keep it down, it somehow revived his appetite and he has eaten uncounted blocks of what I am now calling a new miracle food, Jenkins Country Livermush.  I even sent word by my friend Allen Langley in Shelby to pass on to the Mauney family, who produce the Jenkins food line, that they needed to add "Can Raise the Dead," to the labels on their livermush.  During Christmas, at least 5 people sent a package of gift wrapped Jenkins Livermush to Powder, which he duly ate, and for which he was clearly thankful.

    While our dog is still deep in the woods, as the saying goes, we have been truly thankful for the past 7 weeks with Powder, whether the time is borrowed or not.

    How in the world does this tie in with the Fair Convention?   "Well, I'll just tell ya," as my old buddy Leonard Cooke used to say.  Among my favorite regulars at the trade show is a young woman named Michelle Harrell who operates Skybound Canine Entertainment, featuring The Magical Poodles who always put on an amazing show that is truly magical.

    When I stopped by the "WOOF" booth to speak to Michelle, she introduced me to a young lady who now works with her, and  told her that, a few years ago, I had shared with her one of her all time favorite dog stories and wanted me to tell it again.

    Of course, she did not have to twist my arm, so I told her co-worker  the story of helping move my daughter Jordan when she left Wilkes for Lunchburg, Virginia.  Suffice it to say it was a blue day, and, while her boy friend Jason Hammer seemed like a good guy, I really didn't know him.  I tried to fall back on the fact that Jordan has more common sense than most, but it still was a long, sad day.

    Then, when we pulled into the driveway to Jason's house, Jordan said something didn't seem right.  I was ready to back out of the driveway and go back to WIlkes, but she laughed at me and asked for a moment to check things out.  Jordan has a dog, Jason has two dogs, and there was a fourth dog barking--that is what she noticed.

    It turns out that during the time Jordan was in Wilkes finishing her move, one of Jason's tenants had moved out of a rental house in the dark of night and left a 10 year old Pit Bull female tied to a tree,  Jason knew that if he took that dog to the pound it would be a dead dog in 14 days. Instead, he took the dog to the vet, had her checked out and her shots all updated, and brought  her home.

    Jade the Pit Bull became a part of their family and I never worried about Jordan again.  He could have taken that dog to the pound and no one would have ever known the difference--but he didn't--he simply had too kind a heart to do so.

    Fast forward to two years later when Laura and I were visiting Jordan and Jason in Lynchburg.  I noticed a cut-out place on their deck with a narrow w ramp attached.  Upon inquiry, I found that Jade had arthritis and it hurt her to climb the steps up to the deck, so Jason built her a "handicap ramp," so she could come back inside without crying.

    Jade lived with Jason and Jordan the rest of her life.

    I love to tell this story of unmeasured kindness, and I thank Michelle Harrell for remembering it.

Epiphany

By Laura Welborn

Epiphany service at the Lutheran Church - An Appalachian Christmas was a wonderful end to the Christmas season.

the Christmas season.

The music by local musicians was so inspiring and true to the spirit of our Appalachian heritage with bagpipes by Eric Sparklin and harp by Benjamin Barker and many more.

The Wilkes Acoustic Society were perfect hosts to this event. When you think of Epiphany I think of the saying, “It's about the journey, not the destination,” but in this case it did seem about the destination.

Then when the angels sent a message to the magi to go a different way home I thought, "I wish I had warnings when something bad was going to happen and how to circumvent it."

 So often it seems I make a mess of something that started out with the greatest of intentions and I think just what I could do if I had warnings of upcoming disasters. I sometimes wonder if I don't listen closely enough to hear the warnings or if I am just not paying attention to the signs.

"A tiny part of your life is decided by completely uncontrollable circumstances, while the vast majority of your life is decided by how you respond to them. Sometimes changing your situation isn’t possible—or simply not possible soon enough. But you can always choose a mindset that moves you forward. And doing so will help you change things from the inside out, and ultimately allow you to grow beyond the struggles you can’t control at any given moment.

 Here’s a powerful question that will support you with an attitude adjustment when you need it most: “Who would you be, and what else would you see, if you removed the thought that’s worrying you?”

The disappointments and failure are two of the surest stepping-stones to the places you want to go. When things go wrong, learn what you can and then push the heartbreak aside by refocusing your energy on the present step. Remember that life’s best lessons are often learned at the worst times and from the worst mistakes. We must fail in order to know, and hurt in order to grow. Good things often fall apart so better things can fall together in their place. And what’s better already is the more informed step you’re able to take right now."

The Magi was the perfect example of learning to trust the journey, even when you do not understand it. It also strikes me that they paid attention to the signs and warnings.

 As we enter into this year of 2018, I know I am starting with the joy and blessing of the Appalachian Christmas service and I feel blessed to see the kind of young talent in Wilkes with Elizabeth Carter, Benjamin Barker and Eric Sparklin.

 As we all start our journeys, let us trust the path and be open to the warning signs but mostly to keep moving forward.

Let’s Set the Record Straight

By EARL COX   

In his Christmas message, PA President Mahmoud Abbas blasted U.S. President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital as “an insult” to Bethlehem. 

Like Arafat before him, Abbas exploits Christmas as a stumping opportunity to draw Christian support—in this case, for his dump-Trump rants; to blame Israel for the exodus of Palestinian Christians following the PA’s takeover of Bethlehem; and to compete with Israel’s superior reputation for religious liberty.

Having angrily pulled the plug on Bethlehem’s Christmas tree lights, his speech now emphasized Bethlehem’s significance to Christians: “Over 2,000 years ago, the message of Jesus was delivered from a humble manger in Bethlehem.” Abbas called on world Christians to “listen to the true voices of the indigenous Christians from the Holy Land” as he named Jesus "a Palestinian messenger who would become a guiding light for millions around the world."  

Abbas, a Jordanian, and Arafat, an Egyptian, not only ignored the fact that “Palestinians” did not exist in Jesus’s day—they were invented after 1948—they also demonstrated ignorance of Christianity. If Abbas had any inkling of “the message of Jesus” and the “true voices” of Christians in the Middle East and “millions around the world,” he might have chosen his words more carefully. 

Let’s set the record straight. While Abbas correctly referred to the Bethlehem manger as Jesus’s “humble” birthplace, he may not know that Joseph and his very pregnant wife were in Bethlehem because of a mandatory census requiring everyone to register in his own town. Joseph had to travel to the crowded city of David where every inn was booked, because he descended from the royal house and line of David. 

 As the paymaster of virulent anti-Israel terror attacks, Abbas is doubtless unaware that 700 years before Jesus’s birth, the Hebrew prophet Micah declared: Though Bethlehem was “little” in Judah, yet out of that city “shall come forth to Me the One to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from old, from everlasting.” 

 Christians believe this passage foretells Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. Abbas may not realize the political and governmental significance of Jesus being born in the city of David. Nor does he seem to know that when Roman governor Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus replied, “It is as you say.” 

 The prophet Micah added that when “the one to be ruler in Israel” delivers Israel from her enemies, “the remnant of Jacob shall be … like a lion among the beasts of the forests …who treads down and tears in pieces, and none can deliver.” 

 Evangelicals understand these scriptures as fulfilling G-d’s promise to King David that one of his descendants would sit on Israel’s throne “forever.” Some Bible scholars note two separate gospel accounts that trace Jesus’s lineage from King David to Joseph, Jesus’s legal father, and to his mother Mary. 

 Assuming that Jesus is who he says he is, Abbas is throwing rocks in the wrong neighborhood. Considering his Islamist upbringing, that’s understandable.

 Palestinian and EU leaders make strange bedfellows—a terror-sponsoring Islamist regime and a confederation of Western democracies severely threatened by radical Islam due to their own lax immigration policies. But sadly, there’s a glue that binds them—anti-Semitism and a visceral hatred of Israel.  

For the EU, skating in the same rink as the Palestinians is on precipitously thinner ice—because Europe should know better. They’ve witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust. They’ve opened their doors to Muslim refugees and are beginning to confront terrorism within their borders.  

As countries where Christianity flourished for centuries, Europeans should realize that their anti-Israel views are contrary to their own Bible and spiritual legacy. 

 In Europe (and elsewhere), Christian denominations that don’t teach biblical truth are more likely to embrace false replacement theology, and to practice BDS and other hostile initiatives. In contrast, evangelicals—who tend to read and study the Scriptures—are Israel’s greatest Christian supporters. 

 G-d’s election of and love for Israel and Jerusalem are foundational themes in both the Jewish and Christian Scriptures.

 Israel has been a faithful guardian of these truths, defending religious liberty, and making Jerusalem and its holy places accessible to all peoples and faiths—despite Abbas’s Christmas propaganda to the contrary

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