From dissent: peace

I wrote a few days ago of a new group of British Jews who were determined to tell the truth as they saw it, rather than cave in to pressure to ever agree with Zionist outlooks. As I read this excerpt of a Muslim response, it seems more and more that nationalism and military force and centralization of power (ever threatening dominance here in the USA) are modernist dinosaurs, furiously thrashing about in a final frenzy of self-preservation. Ironically, it appears that those who allow – and even encourage – dissent, find themselves at the front edges of a new thing: the possibility of peace.

Click the title for the whole story at The Independent.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Muslims can learn from this new Jewish group

The IJV is no different from the Muslims now emerging to halt the influence of the Muslim Council

Published: 12 February 2007

… IJV is condemned because it dares to break free and think creatively about what it means to be Jewish in this troubled century. Honest diasporic Jewish people are becoming painfully aware that memories of the Holocaust have been manipulated by fundamentalist Zionists, for whom the only true test of Jewishness is that you support whatever the state of Israel chooses to do, right or appallingly wrong….

In key ways, this breakout faction is no different from the many Muslim challengers emerging to halt the influence of the monolithic…

Light (readings for Feb. 18, 2007)

I have seen light in faces.

I think.

Most memorably, I watched a teen-aged girl at a youth camp on a hot summer’s night fifteen years ago. She had taken some unexpected steps toward God. They had not been easy. I watched, through the crowd.

Head held high, tears on her cheeks, she radiated light. “Was that light?” I asked myself then and now. It did seem like it.

It wasn’t the kind of light you’d light a room with. And maybe others didn’t see what I saw. But it really did seem like there was some kind of gentle radiance streaming out from inside of her.

The light theme winds all through the Bible. Light is the first creation of God in the Genesis story. And the Bible ends in heavenly Jerusalem, whereension in which we see full, un-reflected reality.

This week’s readings speak of the effects of this light on some remarkable people: