There was a report in the BBC website this week about a joint statement from the Muslim Council of Britain and the Jewish Board of Jewish Deputies urging followers of their faiths to "export peace" to the Middle East.  it's unprecedented and is good news though the BBC had to highlight that there had been disagreement over what to say about civilian deaths. It's only natural of course that there should be disagreement over wording in such a statement. In my experience joint statements, especially if they refer to sensitive issues take a good deal of negotiation. Those involved in the negotiations are trying to express their common commitment to peace but as representative bodies they have to take into consideration the strong feelings of their own constituents and not alienate them.  It is a delicate task. 

There don't  seem to be many conflicts in the world that polarise people as much as the Israeli - Palestinian conflict, which I have heard described as the most persistent and intractable global conflict of modern times. To try to take a moderate view and see the situation from both sides is to appear a traitor to some.  I'm sure many of my Christian friends think I am pro-Israel while my Jewish friends think I am pro- Palestinian as I try to see both sides in a dreadful situation in which there seems very often to be no real commitment to peace.  Jews in this country are often held responsible for the actions of a secular government in the Middle East and while many of them do not agree with these actions they are hesitant about saying anything in public as they feel lsrael has very few friends. Many Jews of course do protest about the war and declare 'not in my name'. They are horrified at what is happening in Israel but they also support the need for security and the right of Israel to survive.  Will there ever be peace in that land? And can we contribute to it?

I recently came across this article about a Palestinian, Bassam Aramin whose daughter Abir was killed in 2007 by Israeli border police and an Israeli Robi Damelin whose son David was killed by a Palestinian sniper in 2002. Together, they tour the world with The Parents Circle, an advocacy group whose members have lost close relatives to the conflict. They’re asking people not to take sides. According to them, when outsiders pick a side in the conflict and try to influence the situation on the ground from afar in divisive ways, they aren’t helping. As Robi Damelin has said, “Please do not take sides. Please do not be pro-Israel, do not be pro-Palestine, because what you are doing is feeling very good about yourself. But what you are doing is importing our conflict into your country and creating hatred between Jews and Muslims. And that doesn’t serve any purpose at all, and certainly doesn’t help us.”

Perhaps there is a message here on how to work for peace. And no doubt the statement from a Jewish and Muslim body, while recognising differences, shows a determination not to let those differences develop into hatred.  The statement is so unprecedented that I think it's worth having it in full:

There is no doubt that Muslims and Jews have deeply held views about the conflict in Israel and Palestine. We acknowledge that our communities may disagree about the origins, current reasons and solutions to end the conflict. But there are also points of agreement.

The death of every civilian is a tragedy, and every effort should be taken to minimise such losses. The targeting of civilians is completely unacceptable and against our religious traditions. We pray for a speedy end to the current conflict and for a lasting peace for all.

In spite of the situation in the Middle East, we must continue to work hard for good community relations in the UK. We must not import conflict. We must export peace instead.

Whilst everyone has the right to voice their political opinion, be that in a rally or on social media, we must be mindful of how we convey our protest. There can be no excuse for racism, violence, or other forms of intimidation, when expressing views in the media, on the streets, outside shops or online.

We condemn any expression of Antisemitism, Islamophobia or any form of racism. We call for Muslim and Jewish communities to redouble efforts to work together and get to know one another.

We need constructive dialogue to limit our disagreements and identify the widest possible range of areas for cooperation. There are more issues that unite us than divide us.

May the God of Abraham grant our World more peace, wisdom and hope.

Not to import violence but to export peace instead - that's the work we are about in the belief and hope that it's effects will reach beyond our own boundaries. It is to offer the world an alternative voice and vision.

I'm just back from my annual retreat on the island of Cumbrae at the mouth of the River Clyde. It's a small holiday resort but the Cathedral of the Isles in the only town Millport gave me the opportunity for prayer and reflection.  Enjoying the sun and beauty of the island , it was great to see so many families and young children enjoying themselves in very simple ways. It seemed a long cry from the world I had left behind and it was easy to think about peace rather than war. Now that I'm back nothing has changed and once again I'm bombarded with what Pope Francis calls the 'Third World War'.  This interfaith journey can be difficult and brings me into contact with the very worst of human nature as well as the best. in times like this it's important to remember that best and the number of good people working to make the world a better place. Some of them do this in quiet and hidden ways but others are heroes that inspire the rest of us not to give up.

One such hero is Archbishop Oscar Romero who was murdered in El Salvador in March 1980 while he was saying Mass in  a small hospital chapel. He was aware that his life was in danger from the death squads who targetted the poor and those, who like the Archbishop, stood up for justice, equality and a cessation to the violence that terrorised the country.  He has always been regarded as a martyr and a saint by many Christians but the Catholic Church has never formally declared him a saint, though the process to do this began in 1997.  While the Church of England was willing to honour Romero as a modern day martyr and even has his statue above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey the Catholic Church seemed hesitant, fearing, it was thought, that to do so was to support  liberation theology, something Pope John Paul and Benedict XVI, with their fear of marxism and communism  were loath to do. 

But it looks as though this is about to change.  Last week Pope Frances admitted that Romero's path towards official canonisation had been blocked by  his predecessors and that “now it is unblocked.”  For Francis canonisation is not a question of theology but of how a person lives out their faith.  This surely gets to the heart of things. So much harm has been done in the name of  truth and dogma and if all religious people lived according to the ideals of their faith the world would be a better place. Like Oscar Romero, Francis is clear that the Christian faith means  condemnation of structural injustice, of greed, of violence, of discrimination. It means responding to the presence of God in the victimised and voiceless. It means treating others as our brothers and sisters, seeing in them the God in whose image they are made. And of course Christianity is not alone in this.  Nor is Romero the only one to have worked for these ends.

Alberto Hortardo was a Chilean priest who died at the early age of 51 having  founded an organisation ' Hogar de Cristo'  to provide homes and shelter for poor and abandoned young people in Chile. He was an educator dedicated to making Catholic Social Teaching more widely known and understood,  publishing  a number of important books and founding  the journal ‘Mensaje’.  He is the Jesuit highlighted in this month's British Province Calendar who believed that living the truth was much more important than talking about it. 

Alberto was obviously an important person in Chile and his sanctity was such that Benedict XVI had no problem in canonising him. And yet there must have been political connotations to his work as he helped establish the Chilean Trade Union Association.  It's not possible to be a saint in private and any commitment to justice and service will lead to confrontation with authority.

in my own community Dorothy Stang was murdered at 73 years of age in 1995 because of her decision to live in poverty and simplicity in Brazil.  She worked with the Pastoral Land Commission and fought with them  for the rights of rural workers and peasants. Her defence of  land reforms  in the face of  threats from logging companies led to her cold blooded murder.  Like Oscar Romero she knew her life was in danger but she courageously remained true to her commitment and work for justice, drawing strength no doubt from her faith. She said "I don't want to flee, nor do I want to abandon the battle of these farmers who live without any protection in the forest. They have the sacrosanct right to aspire to a better life on land where they can live and work with dignity while respecting the environment".
 
The spirit of these three people lives on and can be an inspiration to those like myself who can get overwhelmed by the evil perpetrated in the name of religion - an evil so graphically seen daily on our television sets and in our media.

I've just come across an article in the National Catholic Reporter about the situation in the Middle East where Christians of all denominations are being expelled. We have sights of people leaving their homes with absolutely nothing.The full article can be read at http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/how-can-we-rescue-christians-middle-east. I thought this excerpt was relevant and important and indicates how important Muslim-Christian relations are  for peace - as are Muslim - Jewish relations for peace in Israel/Palestine.

'The fate of Middle East Christians can no longer remain the province of protest and advocacy. The religious liberty lobby needs to organize in a more constructive, more consultative way to meet this "existential threat." Rescuing Middle Eastern Christianity has to have the same priority that the defense of Jews has had for the last 60 years. Indeed, it requires higher status now, because for Middle Eastern Christians, the hour of communal and cultural destruction is at hand.

The great unknown piece in an alternate Christian future is Christian-Muslim relations. The Council of Catholic Patriarchs of the East and other official groups premised the continued Christian presence in the region on coexistence and conviviality in the Arab-Muslim world. Except for a couple of pockets like Jordan and Lebanon, that future no longer seems viable. Reimagining Christian-Muslim relations must be part of any collective reassessment of the future of Middle Eastern Christianity.

Response to the Islamic State's extremism and the future of Christian-Muslim relations should also be on the agenda of moderate Muslims, like the authors of the 2007 letter "A Common Word Between Us and You," who still believe in dialogue and a shared future with the Christian world.

A new initiative on the part of Muslim scholars, as difficult as it might be to organize under current circumstances, would be most welcome. Ideally, it would reject religious intolerance, affirm Muslim-Christian ties and the place of Christians in the Middle East, and uphold the common values that sustain conviviality between the faithful of the two traditions.'

I feel overwhelmed by war.  The Israeli/ Gaza conflict is never out of the news, memorials of the First World War fill our television programmes and news, the IS insurgence in northern Iraq and the displacement of the Christian population steadily continues.  All this while reading a book about the Second World War for my book group.  It's truly heartbreaking.  I'm left with a feeling of hopelessness and powerlessness.  What am I to do with it all?  Shall I bury my head in the sand and ignore it all? Shall I turn off the television when it gets too much, afraid of facing my own pain and loss?  Shall I get lost in numbers and statistics forgetting that all this devastation happens to people as individuals, caught up in their own unique circle of family and friends?  Shall I focus on acts of courage, reconciliation and even heroism? Shall I take one side over the other? Shall I say as many do that this is not about religion but rather is a travesty of religion?  Shall I pretend that religion has no part in it? Shall I be glad that it's all happening in another part of the world, leaving me to get on with my everyday life?  This is just not possible. The world wide web brings these conflicts into our living rooms. It also tells us that we are implicated  in so many ways through history, arms dealing, the arbitrary drawing up of borders, colonial imposition of culture, the denigration of other ways of life etc etc.

Yes it's all overwhelming and I'm not sure I believe that my little attempts at peace-building really do make much of a difference.  Are we just a violent and aggressive race?   If we didn't have sophisticated weapons would we simply fight with sticks and stones.  It was while struggling with these questions that I came across an article in Thinking Faith, the Jesuit on-line journal.  It was about a theologian who also struggled with these questions.

The article, written by Fr Roger Dawson SJ,  tells the story of Johann Baptist Metz, a 16-year-old consript in the German Army who was sent to the front near the Rhine in an infantry company of youths of a similar age. One evening, he was sent with a message to Battalion headquarters; he returned the next morning to find that his company of over a hundred had been overrun in the night by an Allied bomber attack and an armoured assault. He said, ‘I could see now only dead and empty faces, where the day before I had shared childhood fears and youthful laughter. I remember nothing but a wordless cry’.

Metz became one of the great 20th century theologians. He remained haunted by the memory and by this question: ‘What would happen if one took this not to the psychologist, but into the Church … and if one would not allow oneself to be talked out of such memories even by theology?’ What if we wanted to keep faith with such memories – ‘dangerous memories’, he calls them – and with them speak about God?

Metz encourages us, as do all the major world faiths, to recognise the brokeness in human beings, their capacity for greed, power, selfishness, their fear and suspicion of others, their ability to hate and do violence to others. We have to live out our faith not just with the best, but with the worst of humanity.  We cannot run from the memory of events such as the killing fields of Cambodia, the genocides of Rwanda, the battlefields of Afghanistan, the carnage of Syria, the shadows of Auschwitz, and many many more horrors.  These evils are ours, they reside in the human heart and it's only in acknowledging them will we be free of them. 

For Metz, however, war and evil do not have the last word. As the article says, the resurrection of Jesus guarantees that love is more powerful than death,  that good ultimately is more powerful than evil, that life and love are more powerful than war. It's this vision of hope that religion offers us. It's to believe in the ultimate goodness of God and the universe in spite of appearances to the contrary. But it requires solidarity with and action on behalf of those who suffer and those whose hope is most endangered.  Metz's theology is one which allows the realities of evil to confront a triumphant or complacent society with the injustice and victims that that society has created - and to call them to transform it.