Last night we had “Prayers in the Pergola” reflecting on Armistice day and peace, William Stringfellows article ‘The Marks of Involvement’ was referenced:

“Christians are those who take history very seriously.  They regard the day-to-day existence of the world realistically, as a way of acknowledging and honouring God’s own presence and action in the real world in which human beings live and fight and love and vote and work and die. And Christians know, more sensitively and sensibly than other people, that this is a fallen world, not an evil world but the place in which death is militant and aggressive and at work in all things. Christians know that in this world in which, apart from God’s work in all things, death is the only meaning, all relationships have been broken and all human beings suffer enstrangement from one another and alienation from themselves. Of all people, Christians are the most blunt and relentless realists.  They are free to face the world as it is without flinching, without shock, without fear, without surprise, without embarrassment, without sentimentality, without guile or disguise. They are free to live in the world as it is.”

How are we living into this understanding of reality? We are called to see and understand… perhaps especially those things at which it is uncomfortable to look too closely. We do not live in isolation. In a world where war and violence affect so many – not only today’s fight but the generationally wounded – how can we speak resurrection and hope into that?