[Propertalk] 5 Lent a 2017 - part 2

[Joe Parrish]

Excerpt about Dith Pran – a Cambodian photojournalist for the New York Times

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-dith31mar31-story.html

“For slaughter on the scale inflicted by the Khmer Rouge -- an estimated 1.5 million died of starvation, executions, overwork and torture -- the grief could be immobilizing, but not for Dith. He saved Schanberg [NYTimes reporter] from death at rebel hands before facing it himself many times during the four years of the Khmer Rouge's bloody reign. When Schanberg won the 1976  <http://www.latimes.com/topic/arts-culture/journalism/pulitzer-prize-EVHST000005160-topic.html> Pulitzer Prize for his Cambodia reporting at the New York Times, he shared the honor with Dith.

<> 

“In early 1979, when Vietnam invaded Cambodia and drove the Khmer Rouge from power, Dith felt safe enough to return to his village. <>

“A ghastly discovery underscored how lucky he was. Two village women took him into the forest, where human bones were everywhere. Scattered among the trees and clogging the wells were the remains of as many as 5,000 Cambodians, Dith's kin probably among them.

"The grass grew taller and greener where the bodies were buried," Dith later said of the killing fields, which were found in nearly every village in the country.”

<> 

 

 

From: Propertalk [mailto:propertalk-bounces at stsams.org] On Behalf Of Robert P Morrison
Sent: Friday, March 31, 2017 2:54 PM
To: 'propertalk at stsams.org' <propertalk at stsams.org>
Subject: [Propertalk] 5 Lent a 2017 - part 2

 

Here's the second part for Sunday.

 

Blessings!

 

Bob

 

 

            We sigh, we cry, we hold our breaths, our minds stop taking in the human cost and the apparent hopelessness created by human greed, and power-wielding, and, yes, stupidity.

            Yet the prophet discovered that even where there seems to be such devastation and impoverishment of the human spirit, even when whole villages, towns, states are being wiped out; even in West Mosul, and in Sudan, and in South Sudan, and in Yemen – the prophet discovered that wherever we think that no solution can be found; even there, in the depths of misery and chaos, God stands present. God will not, God can not be overwhelmed. God’s love can not be obliterated – by God or by anyone else.

            These are, perhaps, the sort of scenes and situations of which the prophet lamented.

            “I can’t do anything, God. The situation is impossible: the pain, the grief, the thoughtlessness, or worse, the deliberate cruelty; God, life seems so utterly hopeless. I can’t go on!”

            But, if there’s one thing that the Psalms teach us, it’s that yelling when we experience all the crises of our lives is not only O.K. It’s expected! God wants us, NOT to feel depressed or overwhelmed, but, when we DO feel overwhelmed, God wants to hear how we feel. God always wants to have us feel that we can express our feelings, because then God and we, working together, and with others around us, can look to see what responses can be made.

            Nowhere is it suggested that God wants us to do nothing. Nowhere is it suggested that God wants those feelings and experiences to be papered over either. God knows that we HAVE to struggle in order to meet the daily challenges, and to mask that in any way simply postpones the task of dealing with whatever we’re facing, and it will exacerbate the problem.

            God didn’t blind the eyes of Ezekiel or the heart of the psalmist. Ezekiel saw the terror of all those skeletons reaching to the horizon; the psalmist felt so oppressed by the weight of everything going on that neither of the two felt that there was anything which could possibly bring salvation and renewal to their lives, individually and as a community.

            It all looked so hopeless

            Where is God, we all cry, when someone we love dies, or is severely wounded in a car wreck, or in a terrorist attack, or in government-induced disease, famine, and drought by the withholding of basic supplies? Where are you, God? If only You’d make Yourself known, and pay attention to what’s happening. Oh, God! Why?!

            Just as Martha and Mary cried out – why, Jesus? Why were You not here? Why do you come when there’s food to share, and stories to tell, and laughter to last long into the night? Why are you there then and You’re not around when Lazarus and we need You?

            It’s not just Martha and Mary berating Jesus either. We ALL do it, in one way or another.

            So what’s the answer?

            Well, every time this question comes up throughout our Holy Scriptures, as we see in the passages today; every time the question comes up, God/Jesus IS there in one way or another, and we’re told NOT to refuse to deal with our darkness, or to try to ignore it. For if we fail to ask the hard questions we may not find the answer that God has prepared for us in which to participate. And the answer indeed may involve dealing with stench, with unpleasantness, even with the admission that someone CAN and WOULD be able to be the agent to remind us of the Presence of God.

            The Good News is that even when the stench of what surrounds us is enough to make us gag; even when the physical pain is enough to paralyse us; even when the emotional beating we’re experiencing has us at the bottom of the deepest hole there is; even there, as the psalmist points out, even there You are there, O God.

            When our brother, our sister, our child, our parent is threatened with calamity; when we ourselves find that we’ve reached the absolute end of our rope and darkness descends about us, suffocating sounds which might remind us of the world and people around us; even there, as Ezekiel found, as the psalmist found, as Martha and Mary and their neighbours found; even at the point where we feel there’s nothing at all; even there, there is the hope of the promise of hope.

            At no point in our lives are we separat3ed from the Love of God.

            One of the metaphors given in our Lenten discussion programme talked about people being in the dark, and the person who described the situation said that she could be used by God as the switch that brings light to whatever, to whomever is despairing.

            This Presence of God; this inspiration by God to encourage us to turn on the switch for ourselves and for others; this is what Ezekiel, and the psalmist, and Jesus tell us is present for us.

            We can bring life through God working through us. We can bring hope. We can experience this for ourselves as much as for others. We can make this a vital part of our lives and, equally importantly, we can make this vital, AND PRACTICAL, for countless others.

            In the dark of our lives, it may be difficult to find that switch. But it IS there. It’s ALWAYS there. That’s a promise from God!

 

NOTE:

 

[1]            <http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55841> http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55841 

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