Sermon for Mid-Winter (26 June) - with thanks to Elizabeth Johnson

Theologian Karl Rahner has suggested we’re in the wintry season; and he wasn’t talking about this present spell of cold weather.  “Keeping his eye on middle-class, educated European persons who are trying to live a Christian life”[1], Rahner suggests that we are living in a world that no longer finds it easy to communicate the faith. 

Would you agree?   Have you noticed that no longer is it ‘socially correct’ to go to church?  Do you notice today that Christian belief is called into question “not only by atheism and agnosticism but also by positivism” (i.e. accepting only as true that which we can know from data accessible from the natural sciences)?  Do you find yourself wondering – along with your friends – why bother with faith, when many people live good ethical lives without subscribing to Christianity.  Do you ever ponder the pluralities of faith, questioning the exclusive claims some insist are part of Christianity?    If you are asking some of these questions; if you are concerned about how your everyday life and your Christian belief engage with and shape each other; if you are one of those many Christians wanting to take seriously this secular, humanist, pluralist culture in which we dwell and of which we inhale, you too may identify this sense that people of faith (at least in the part of the world) find themselves, in this epoch of history, as in a wintry season.

For many of us, the "complex inner and outer worlds" which we inhabit are part of an ambiguity that seems to make up our reality.  But, let me assure you, this place of questioning, wondering and complexity is no cause for despair.  Winter can be a very fruitful place to be.  Rahner suggests that for many of us today “agnosticism which knows it doesn’t know ... is the way God is experienced today.” "Since mature spirituality requires integrating the basic experiences of one’s life into a wholeness before God", our present day culture is no stumbling block; rather, it forms a crucial element in the act of faith.

This wintry, regenerating time is not a time of yearning for the past; nor of hiding from the present.  In this winter time, we are invited into the womb-like darkness, to seek new forms of warmth, to allow a generating or re-generating process that will bring forth growth; growth, which at this present moment, we cannot conceive – and may not even be able to dream of.  Like a pregnant woman, unable to see what is happening in the darkness, we must trust and focus on the growth that is happening. 

In a time of wintering, it is essential that we don’t waste our time on things that are extraneous to the faith.   "The luxuriant growth" of churches full of those who attend because it is the socially cultural thing to do, extensive church programmes and secondary beliefs – "all these leaves and fruits that unfurled in the season when Christianity was dominant in the culture" – these have all fallen away.  "The trees are left bare and the cold wind blows.  In such a season," theologian Elizabeth Johnson suggests, "belief must get back to basics.  It will not do to spend energy on what is peripheral and unessential, as if it were high summer.  To survive, people of faith [must] return to the centre, to the inmost core that alone can nourish and warm the heart in winter."  In the bleak mid-winter, there is only one big issue and that is, according to Johnson, the question of God.

Both Johnson and Rahner are scathing in their criticism of preachers and teachers in this winter period.  It is of deep concern that "much of what people hear in the preaching and teaching of the church draws on a primitive idea of God unworthy of belief, rather than communicating the reality, the beauty, the wonder, and the strange generosity of the mystery of God. " According to Johnson – and I think she might well be correct – the "average sermon, along with the popular piety it encourages, has a basically retarded notion of God... acknowledging neither the absolute difference of God from the world nor the marvellous truth that God’s own self has drawn near as the inmost dynamism and goal offered to the world.  All too often sermons work", she writes, "with the tired ideas of modern theism, reflecting on pre-critical mentality that sees God as a particular element of the whole, even if the highest."  These tired sermons refer to God as someone (yes, an identifiable being) "whom we can calculate into our formula of how things work, thus replacing the incomprehensible God with an idol.  They fashion the Holy in the image of our own concerns, our neurotic fears, our puny hearts, rather than honouring the improbable outpouring of love by which God not only sets up the world in its own integrity but, while remaining radically distinct, gives the divine self away to this world. " These tired sermons, offered by worn-out preachers, "neglect to inform us of the most tremendous truth: that we are called into loving immediacy with the mystery of God who self-communicates to us in unspeakable nearness.  After listening to such dismal sermons, can we really say that the word “God’ brightens up our lives? She asks.  Unfortunately, Rahner wrote, it is more often the case that the words of the preacher fall powerlessly from the pulpit, ‘like birds frozen to death and falling from a winter sky.’"

And, in defence of preachers and teachers for a moment – might I not say too that even when preachers do provide new ways of thinking – prayers with new language – hymns with new imagery – so often we only allow these to sit on the surface – and not to scour out the old unhelpful negative images of the past.

"In this wintry season, Johnson suggests that church statements about God are ordinarily too naive and too superficial to help believers, let alone convince unbelievers.  In a sense the onslaught of atheism might perform a service, prodding faith to purify notions of God that, while they may be traditional, are woefully deficient to the point of being idolatrous.  Is God dead?  If we mean the God imagined as a part of the cosmos, one existence among others though infinitely bigger, the great individual who defines himself [of course, always HIM-self] over against others and functions as a competitor with human beings, then yes, the God of modern theism is dead."

I find myself wanting to say to most atheists:  Tell me about the God you don’t believe in – I doubt that I believe in ‘him’ either.  But we cannot engage in that debate, if we don’t have an adequate understanding of who or what God is for us today.   As Rahner claims “the struggle against atheism is foremost and of necessity a struggle against the inadequacy of our own theism.”

"Through a life time of writing, teaching, and preaching, Rahner set out to uncover truth about the living God that would provide warmth and sustenance in winter.  Holding himself accountable to everyday believers, he focused particularly on those beset by doubts engendered by the precarious existence of Christian faith in the secularised, scientific-industrial societies of modern Europe.  He made their doubts his own and responded to them with the full force of his penetrating grasp of the resources of the Christian tradition.  His method engaged people not by pouring solutions from above into bewildered souls but by inviting them to take a journey of discovery into the virtually uncharted territory of their own lives ...[inviting] the ordinary, average person on a personal journey that ends up being a journey of mind and heart into God."

So, let’s take this winter time seriously – let’s embrace it as a time of inner growth and warmth.  Let’s be brave and allow the last leaves of an old theism to drift away – let’s clear them, burn them, use them as compost to allow the new to grow.  Let’s take the task seriously and act as if our lives – and the new lives to come – depend upon it (as they surely do.)

Thanks be to God.  Amen

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[1] This sermon relies, almost exclusively, on and quotes extensively from Elizabeth A. Johnson, Quest for the Living God 2008, p.28-31.

A Sermon for Trinity Sunday - 19 June 2011

Some parts of a week, in the life of God’s people here in Dunedin:

Monday, 2.20pm tremors felt from an earthquake 6.3 on the Richter scale, 9km deep, 10km south east of Christchurch

                        And can we say: ‘God created … and it was good’?

Tuesday, 8.40am, the barely-visibly pregnant young woman has her first scan and sees her 12 week-old fetus bouncing, swallowing – a tiny new life living and growing within her.

                        And we might say: ‘God created … and it was good’!

Wednesday, hundreds of people’s travel plans in New Zealand and Australia are disrupted because of ash spewing from a volcano thousands of kilometers away.

                        And would we say: ‘God created … and it was good’?

Thursday, a long and full lunar eclipse seen in the skies – even as school choirs moved, sang and delighted in the local Big Sing.

                        And we say: ‘God created … and it was good.’

Friday, a teenager’s funeral is held, attended by some of those same singing, vibrant young people from the previous day’s Big Sing.

                        And how could we say: ‘God created … and it was good.’

Saturday, a large group of friends gather to celebrate life in what is described as a somewhat riotous 60^th birthday party .

                        Would we bother to say: ‘And God created … and it was good’?

And here now on Sunday, the people gather, on this the day our tradition says God rested.  Here we are, gathered to make sense of the week – to seek meaning – to explore wonder – to face fear – to find strength – to worship the mystery that takes us beyond the tight confines of our singular selves into the joys and possibilities of love, healing and peace.

Here we take a breath to see a wider perspective than the immediate. 

We know how difficult it is to affirm the good in life, when we zoom in on problems and tragedies, whether they be in Christchurch or Chile, or in our own lives.  We also know that if we ignore the pain and celebrate only the joy and delight, we may fall into the trap of  Pollyannaism, with all its associated unreality.  What can we say about this life and its goodness, which our tradition affirms?

Here, we know that when we enter that wider perspective – that Ultimate Reality, which we name as God, our assumptions about life and death will be challenged and broken open.  Here, in this wider perspective, we know that

Or, in the more traditional language of Christianity:  here we know, through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit, that death has been overcome.

“without the death of stars, there would be no planets and no life.  Without the death of creatures, there would be no evolution… without the death of mountains, there would be no sand or soil …without the death of plants and animals, there would be no food. Without the death of old ways of thinking, there would be no room for the new …[Here we know that] the gifts of death are Mars and Mercury, Saturn and Earth…[and] the atoms of stardust within our bodies … The gifts of death are [forests] and soils, [mountains] and lakes [and food that sustains us.]  The gifts of death are seeing, hearing, feeling… wisdom, creativity and the flow of cultural change.  The gifts of death are the urgency to act, the desire to fully be and become … The gifts of death are lives that are fully and exuberantly lived, and then graciously and gratefully given up, for now and forevermore.”[1] 

In his book Thank God for Evolution, Michael Dowd reminds us of the different ways in which we can use language.  “Humans” he writes, swim in a sea of meaning no less than fish swim in water.  We cannot avoid it.  Problems arise when we fail to distinguish the factual, objectively real from the meaningful subjectively real – when we mistake our interpretations for [the facts or account of an event].”[2]  Dowd differentiates these two by using the highly evocative language of day and night.  Day language is used to describe events and facts; it’s the usual everyday discourse of our lives:  Monday, earthquake; Tuesday, scan; Wednesday, travel disruptions; Thursday, lunar eclipse, Big Sing; Friday, funeral; Saturday birthday party.  Night language explores the meaning of our experience through story, image and poetry, creating a world of possibility, mystery and hope.  Night language tells the story of creation in Genesis 1.  Here sweeping metaphor, poetry and vibrant images resound as our ancestors seek to explain the source of ultimate reality – the source of life.    And God created … and it was good.

 We destroy the wonder and mystery if we attempt to turn this night language into day language – suggesting it provides facts and reasons about events.  Today we borrow from the night language of our ancestors – adding nuance from our day experiences of a very different time – a time when God is no less active, no less known, no less experienced.  For we now know, in a way our ancestors did not know, “that the Universe can be counted on over time – it can be trusted, deeply trusted – [not to remain the same but] to move in the direction of more diversity, more complexity, more awareness more transformation and growth… we know that our Universe can be counted on – deeply trusted – to provide every creature and every age with all sorts of problems and breakdowns, stresses and difficulties, and occasionally even full-scale cataclysms to deal with.  What we’ve recently discovered … [and what our night language must now take into account] is that problems and breakdowns are normal, natural, even healthy for an evolving, maturing Cosmos.  Indeed, they seem to be essential for creativity.  As it turns out, every evolutionary advance and every creative breakthrough in the history of the Universe, as best as we can tell, was preceded by some difficulty, often of great severity.”

And so now we say – “Nothing is lost on the breath of God”.  Now we say: We believe in God who has created and is creating … and it is good.

Michael Dowd reminds us of the story of the dinosaurs that “ruled the continents for more than 150 million years (much longer than us).  During this time … mammals were small scruffy creatures who stayed in burrows and mostly came out just at night, because … they were terrified of big, ugly, carnivorous dinosaurs.  Then one spring day, a terrible catastrophe struck.  An asteroid 10 miles across, travelling at a speed of 50,000 miles per hour, crashed into our planet just off … what is today Mexico, punching out a crater 100 miles wide.  Imagine all the nuclear weapons that our species has ever created being launched and arriving at the same destination at exactly the same moment … and then multiply that by a thousand….the sky turned into a cauldron of sulphuric acid.  It also triggered a magnitude 12 earthquake, which is a million times more powerful than a magnitude 6 earthquake.  This, in turn, unleashed at least six mega tsunamis, several of which were more than 100 metres high.  … [The result of all this was that] three out of every four species alive at the time went extinct.  The biggest creatures were hit the hardest and thus each and every species of what we loosely call ‘dinosaurs” went extinct….All in all, it was not one of Earth’s better days. But thankfully, from our perspective, it was precisely this catastrophe that allowed those mammals who survived in their burrows to flourish and diversify, culminating in all the amazing mammals of the world today, including ourselves.  So: no catastrophe, no whales or dolphins, no dogs or cats, no giraffes or elephants, no lions and tigers …and of course, no me, no you."

So the next time a comet crashes into your psyche” Dowd writes “or your life feels like sulphuric acid is raining on your head, or the next time a magnitude 12 earthquake rocks your world and you feel like you want to hide away in a dark hole for several months, just remember: in a few million years, things will be fine.  Seriously, though, the next time you’re greeted by a [100 metre high] tsunami” in your life, the next time your travel plans are disrupted by volcanic ash, or liquefaction appears in someone’s – or even your own backyard – difficult as it may be for the moment, it may be helpful to place it all in that much bigger perspective – remembering we are all “part of an amazing, creative Universe that turns chaos and catastrophes into new growth and opportunities as regularly as day follows night.”[1]    Thanks be to God who has created and is creating.  Amen.

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[1] Michael Dowd, p.54-55.

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[1] From Litany: “The Gifts of Death” in Thank God for Evolution Michael Dowd 2007/2009 p.98-99.

[2] Michael Dowd, p.114.

[3] Michael Dowd, p.54-55.

A Reflection for Pentecost - with thanks to Ralph Milton

It was only a matter of weeks after the resurrection experience.  Life had returned to normal – whatever that was.  Peter was getting irritated “Close the window, will you John. All that singing out there is getting on my nerves.”

“Come on, Peter,” said Mary, “After all, it is the feast of Pentecost. Remember, we’re celebrating the wheat harvest! This is a happy festival. And they have no reason to be upset.  It wasn’t their best friend hammered up on a cross and left to die like a common criminal.”

“Right! But I don’t have to listen to it.  Close that window, please, now,” snapped Peter. “Any new business?” Nothing but gloomy silence from the group of men and women gathered there. They had gone through the unpleasant business of choosing a successor to Judas, the man who had betrayed Jesus. Now they had their full quota of twelve men, to match the twelve sons of Israel. [not counting, of course, the women and children]. Everything was neat and in order. And lifeless.

“So what do we do now?” John wanted to know. “Perhaps we should put up a monument or something. People are already starting to forget that Jesus even existed.”

“Yeah,” Philip agreed, but there was no enthusiasm in his voice. “Maybe we could start a collection for a monument. A statue of Jesus. Or something.”

The gloom hung like a damp cloud over the disciples--the women and men who were gathered together--the rag-tag group of people who had known Jesus, who had loved him, who had heard his voice, had felt and seen the hope for a new way of living together in love. And then had watched him die. Some had seen what they were calling a resurrected Jesus, but the others didn’t really believe their story. Now they were together, a kind of memorial society for Jesus of Nazareth. Somehow it seemed important to stay together, but nobody really knew why.

“It’s stifling in here,” said Mary. Peter gave her an annoyed look as she got up to open the window. A cool breeze came in, along with the sounds of singing from nearby homes celebrating Pentecost. The breeze cooled Mary’s face. That helped a little.

Mary began to hum, eventually bursting into song. She sang an old song she had known since her childhood, a song she and the other women had often sung together.

“My soul proclaims the greatness of God,

and my spirit rejoices in God, my Saviour

You, O Most Mighty One have done great things for me

And holy is your name...”

She sang quietly at first, humming some of the parts, then louder, and it seemed that as she sang, the breeze from the window became stronger, blowing back her head-dress, teasing her hair, lifting her spirit. She sang in a full-bodied contralto, a voice she hadn’t used since that terrible day they had watched their dearest friend cough and wretch and bleed and die.

You have cast down the mighty from their thrones

and have lifted up the lowly

You have filled the hungry with good things

and the rich you have sent away empty

You have come to the help of your people

for you have remembered your promise of mercy

The promise you made to our ancestors

To Abraham and Sarah and their children for ever

“Sarah’s not in the song. You’re changing the words,” grumped Peter. Mary grinned at him. “She is now!” she laughed. She hadn’t felt herself smile for so long, and it felt so good. She sang the song, with her own new words, all over again, louder than before, and some of the other women joined in. And the next thing they knew, they were dancing.

They were dancing out the pent-up anger and grief and frustration and confusion. They were dancing out the hope, the tiny, fragile hope they still had in spite of all that had happened.

They danced and they sang, and the men at first disapproved, then began to smile, then some of them joined in the singing and the dancing. Even Peter couldn’t sustain his grump. Even big, flat-footed Peter danced an awkward, joyful kind of dance and sang loudly off-key.

And the wind picked up and blew hard through the room. They opened other windows, they sang louder and danced their hearts out. Something was happening. Something electric. Something crackling with energy. Something had taken hold of their spirits and was moving them, motivating them.

Faces appeared at the windows. The door was opened. Curious neighbours looked in. Neighbours and their guests who had gathered from everywhere for the feast of Pentecost. They saw the dancing and the singing, and ecstatic, laughter-filled attempts to explain to the neighbours what was happening, when nobody really knew what was happening. There were tears and there was laughter and the dancing got faster and the singing got louder until everyone collapsed into an exhausted, happy heap.

“They’re drunk!” sneered one of the neighbours at the door.

“Ooo, no! Not drunk. Not drunk at all,” laughed Peter, who in the end had danced as hard and sung as loud as anyone. “At least, not drunk on wine. Sit down, and I’ll tell you what’s going on.”

“Do you remember the prophet Joel,” he asked. The neighbours nodded. Of course. “Joel prophesied that the Spirit of God would be poured out on all people. ‘Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,’ Joel said. And that’s what you are seeing.

“Jesus of Nazareth. Do you remember him? He was killed. He was crucified. But he promised he would send the Spirit again in a new way. Well, this is it. This is IT!”

And Peter began to dance again; to dance and to sing with a slow, awkward, passionate grace, with intensity and power and with a brightness in his eyes that literally sent shivers through the people standing around.  ...

They tried many times to describe what happened that Pentecost day. Some said they saw tongues of flame dancing over their heads. Others remembered speaking in strange tongues, or singing in strange tongues which everyone seemed to understand. Sometimes they would even get to arguing about what happened that day.

And when those arguments would begin, Mary would interrupt - “Does it matter?” she would ask, “We know the Holy Spirit came to us that day and filled us with excitement and love and passion. That’s the part that’s important. The Holy Spirit can come in a hundred different ways to many different people. It doesn’t matter how. It only matters that we’re open to the Spirit, and that we respond with our lives.”[1]

E te whanau, on this Pentecost Day the Holy Spirit invites us, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah – of Mary and Peter – to turn from our listlessness and apathy and join in the dance of life.  We may respond in different ways, but whatever steps we take, whoever our partners will be, may we never forget the call on our lives to bring hope, justice and love to the whole world.  It is through our actions – enlivened by the power of the Holy Spirit – that the hungry will be fed, the lowly will be given a place to stand and God’s promises will be fulfilled.  Thanks be to God, Amen.

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[1] Ralph Milton, “The story of Mary of Magdala, “…this is it folks!  This is IT” (slightly adapted)

http://www.story-lectionary.com/ralph/Ralph-Pentecost-story.html

Sermon for Ascension Day - Guest Preacher, Liesel Mitchell

Choosing Life – 5^th June 2011, Knox Church

Good morning.  For those of you who I may not know – or don’t know me, my name is Liesel Mitchell and I have been coming to Knox Church for almost two years.  Since last year I have been one of the youth group leaders here. 

My background is Christian – growing up with parents as ministers meant that was non-negotiable as a child – however as a teenager I was given choice.  I chose more and more to stay away from both church and religious practice.  I trained to be a teacher which took me to South Korea which other than being a wonderful experience challenged my outlook on life.  One of the biggest restructurings for me was the concept that there may be more than one way of doing things – and my way just might not be the only one. 

Feeling somewhat like I was starting again – and needed to start again with all the life pieces that the experience in Korea had unstitched and re-stitched for me I made the choice to return to NZ after eight years in Korea and begun post-graduate study in Peace and Conflict Studies here at Otago University. 

I am currently working on my masters thesis which focuses on the topic of nonviolence.  I am becoming increasingly aware of how this study weaves the various strands of my past into a choice for life.  How do I live in this world in an honest and integrated way which makes sense?  So in this space of half formed thoughts and half way through the research and writing process, Sarah has kindly invited me along to share with you this morning. 

We all make subtle choices every day that may contribute to whether we are choosing life, and yet how aware of this are we?  It may take disaster, a tragic accident, a testing of personal boundaries or a situation that has spiraled out of individual control to expose the deeper core of what some may call our “survival instinct” or the deeper understanding of choosing life.

With this in mind, I want to take you on a journey back in time to the 1980’s.  This may summon up memories of your own.  I know for me this was a time when I was celebrating life in the shape of holidays by the river with friends, weekend trips to the beach, family picnics and the freedom to be a kid who could walk anywhere I wanted in a neighbourhood where you still knew most of your neighbours.  When I think of the 1980’s I feel safe.  Loved.  Alive.

South Korea, at this very same time, was in the grip of a military regime which was slowly but surely shutting down any pretense of democracy under martial law. 

In May of 1980, the people of Gwangju, South Korea were grieving the lives of hundreds – possibly thousands – of neighbours, friends and loved ones who had been massacred.   Gwangju is a city that is geographically similar in size to Dunedin.  A basin.  Surrounded on all sides by mountains and hills which made it ideal to seal off completely.  No one else knew what was happening as the killing begun.

It’s called many things but it’s often simply referred to as May the 18 or 오일팔.  It may not be a day that we, sitting here in Dunedin have ever even heard of, but it marked the beginning of approximately 10 days of terror and fear for the people of Gwangju. 

What would this be like?

Paratroopers and riot police had been deployed and they entered the city late on the night of the 17th of May.  The next morning, students gathered outside one of the universities in the city, unaware of its closure, but protesting the military presence who blocked entry to the campus.  Student protests were not unusual.  Military or police presence were also not unusual at these events.  But this time the rules had been changed and the students were sent into a state of confusion and chaos when the military police turned on them.  The intention was not to disperse the crowd.  The intention was to cause harm.

An account of this is given in the book, Contentious Kwangju “…a squad of soldiers…charged the students and waded into the crowd swinging their batons.  The students were beaten, clubbed, knifed and bayoneted” (Shin & Hwang. 2003, p.xv).

The students were speaking out against a destructive regime which was threatening to shut down their education.  They were choosing to stand strong in their belief in this, and were choosing to do it with their collective presence and their voices and cries for their university to remain open.  They did not have weapons and according to accounts of the event, it has been documented as being nonviolent on the part of the students.  The military was instructed to use violence.  They were instructed to go against what I would call the choice for life in each of us and destroy the lives of others.

This poem was written during the days of the Gwangju massacre by the poet김준태 and it’s called광주, 아 광주, 우리 나라 의 십자가 (Gwangju, oh Gwangju, the cross of our nation)

Our father: Where has he gone?

Our mother: Where has she fallen?

Our sons: Where were they killed and buried?

And our lovely daughters

Where are they lying, mouths agape?

Where are our spirits

torn apart, ripped to shreds?

Let’s now cross the seas to the east of Korea and arrive in Beijing, China – more specifically, that huge overwhelming expanse of space, in the heart of a pulsing city – Tiananmen Square.  June 4^th, 1989 – what many of us may remember as we saw the images in the news – the day of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

This too, was a student protest against a controlling regime.  Students and gradually the citizens of Beijing too, staged a massive sit-in in Tiananmen Square demonstrating against the government. 

This was a much more organized movement than Gwangju, with permanent camps of rotating students keeping a constant presence and pressure on the Chinese government.  The students’ established routines and were the peacekeepers between the military occupation and citizens whose anger and aggression sometimes had the potential to destroy the nonviolent tactics of the students.

The nonviolent protest in Tiananmen Square went on for almost six weeks, ending tragically on June the 4^th, with the deployment of the 27^th Army.  The protesting students, like the students in Gwangju, had placed a certain element of trust in the military as there was a clear mandate that the People’s Liberation Army was to serve and protect the people of China.  So when the 27^th Army replaced the soldiers that the students had grown to respect and form relationships with, there was no reason for fear.  But like Gwangju, the confusion and chaos scattered and panicked the crowd as the 27^th Army followed orders, made their intentions clear and opened fire on an unprotected, openly nonviolent group of people.

This is an excerpt from Liao Yiwu’s poem entitled “Massacre” which he was arrested for writing.

A massacre is happening
In this nation of Utopia
Where the Prime Minister catches a cold
The masses have to sneeze to follow
Martial law is declared and enforced
The aging toothless state machine is rolling over
Those who dare to resist and refuse to sneeze
Fallen by the thousands are the barehanded and unarmed
Shoot, Shoot, Shoot
Humans and stars are falling and running
Indistinguishable, which are humans and which are stars
Troops followed them into the cloud, into cracks on the ground…

Both massacres were horrific acts.  Both resulted in huge loss of life.  But that was not all.  Underlying these tragedies was the choice for life and nonviolence made by thousands of young people.  We continue to honour their choices which have shaped the ongoing political landscape.  Their stories are a reminder of hopeful living.

Like Jesus who taught nonviolence, chose life even in his own death, and then appeared to leave us, the stories of the people of Tiananmen Square and Gwangju too are somehow still able to speak to us with a power, a hope and choice for life that violence never has.