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i applaud jimmy carter

Posted on April 22, 2008 | Filed Under peace, politics

I applaud Jimmy Carter for his courage, for engaging the leadership of Hamas in dialogue, for searching out any avenues for moving the peace process forward.

He has been criticized for meeting at all with Khalid Meshaal, by both the Bush administration and the Democratic presidential candidates. Dialogue should be absolutely contingent, they argue, on Hamas’ recognition of Israel and renunciation of violence. But it seems to me if the goal of a peace process is made a precondition to dialogue, then the process will surely go where it has always gone … nowhere.

Start talking! Explore options! Get the people who …

peace on earth

Posted on December 21, 2007 | Filed Under humility, peace, poverty

Rachel Simons lives in Galati, Romania, a field worker with Word Made Flesh, an Christian organization committed to “serving Jesus among the poorest of the poor.” She works with Galati’s street children, providing them educational and recreational and spiritual programs, and interacting with them on a daily basis in their own context on the streets.

The following is taken from one of her recent prayer letters:

… around the holidays I constantly run into children begging outside of restaurants, shopping malls, supermarkets and at stop-lights. They know that people tend to give more in December, so they bear …

ucc petition to end the iraq war

Posted on June 22, 2007 | Filed Under peace, ucc, war

Along with thousands of United Church of Christ members and supporters, I call for an end to the war in Iraq, an end to our reliance on violence as the first, rather than the last resort, an end to the arrogant unilateralism of preemptive war.

I call for the humility and courage to acknowledge failure and error, to accept the futility of our current path, and I cry out for the creativity to seek new paths of peacemaking in the Middle East, through regional engagement and true multinational policing.

I call for acknowledgement of our responsibility for the destruction caused …

hope for northern ireland

Posted on May 8, 2007 | Filed Under peace, tolerance

Even you is the blog of Elane O’Rourke, a UCC pastor in Campbell, California. Her posts are always thoughtful, well-reasoned, well-written … and faithful to the mind and heart of Jesus. I have given her blog a permanent place on my blogroll (see sidebar).

Today Elane celebrates the formation of a Catholic/Protestant unity government in Northern Ireland in a post entitled Thanking the God of the Irish. Her response to this historic political breakthrough shows deep empathy and an appreciation of the long and painful struggle of the folk of Northern Ireland. She concludes her post this way:

I give …

the voice of a prophet speaks to us still

Posted on April 5, 2007 | Filed Under justice, peace, spirituality, war

There comes a time when silence is betrayal …
Martin Luther King

an easter prayer

Posted on March 20, 2007 | Filed Under peace

Wow! That was my reaction on reading this Easter letter written by the chair of our congregation’s board of deacons. I knew immediately I had to share it with all of you. Hear his prayer … and, if you will, make it your own!

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of scientists, the …