Posts

We are all Israel and Gaza

“It is vicious barbarity by Hamas in response to even more serious, vicious barbarity by the Israeli government,” was my first thought that came to mind. I find Hamas’s action repugnant in its atrocity and senselessness. I can only understand it as an evil expression of hatred, revenge, despair and powerlessness accumulated over eight decades. […]

The possible and the impossible

“That’s the way it is” we say, not knowing if we mean a realistic lucidity or a defeatist abandonment. That’s the way it is, and anything else is not possible. That’s the way it is, and it is impossible to stand up, wait, breathe, hope, create: to be or to make being more. What is […]

Penetrating the crevices of life

Life consists in opening cracks until finally understanding that that was the way to follow. And then I am again surprised by the capacity of life to find loopholes to let me continue creating. This is something that stuns me, as someone who well understands that life surpasses us and is beyond and above everything […]

Bernard Besret: the utopia of Boquen

In the hot afternoons of the first week of last August, in the shade of a lime tree in Champigny-sur-Veude, a peaceful French village surrounded by wide sunflower and corn fields, I read with both enthusiasm and uneasiness Béatrice Lebel-Goascoz’s doctoral dissertation Boquen entre utopie et révolution1965-1976 (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2015). It is a […]

Memories, traces, hatreds

There are lights that do not go out, memories that won’t fade, hopes that are not lost, and people and facts that are not forgotten. Let us always think that in Life it is not so much the steps we have already taken that count, nor the steps we are taking…, but the footprints we […]

I stand by what I said

I stand by what I said: justice, in spite of the law and social habits, in spite of money and charity. Humility, to be myself. Liberty, to be a human being. And poverty, to be free. Christian faith, to walk in the night, and, above all, during the day. And in all, brethren, I stand […]

If only we knew the path to peace….

The prophets of Israel had announced peace –Shalom– for a later time, the messianic future that would witness the coming of the Messiah, the king descended from David, the “Prince of Peace” (Isa. 9:5). Then, Isaiah wrote, “They shall beat their swords into mattocks and their spears into pruning-knives. Nation will not lift sword against […]

Prophecy of Isaiah (ch. 2,1-5)

This is what Isaiah, son of Amoz, saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem: In days to come, the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills. All nations shall stream toward it; many peoples shall come and say: “Come, let us climb the Lords’s mountain, to the house […]

Happiness of the gaze

Happy those who stop their gaze without haste, those who do not shy away from the others’ gaze. Happy those who fix their most attentive gaze on the most every day events, and apparently insignificant. Happy those whose immediate, daily problems do not prevent them from reach the horizon. Happy those whose eyes have been […]

THE STRUGGLE WITHOUT EVER LOSING OUR HOPE

If we lack the voice, if we cannot say what we want, if we cannot shout the pain of our complaints, I’ll stay with her today: HOPE. If we lack truth and justice, if we don’t have the courage to fight for her, if our struggles are on dry land, I’ll stay with her today: […]