Challenging Violence I

These weekly bulletin inserts are offered as a resource to individuals and parishes during the five weeks in Lent and on Palm Sunday and Easter Day 2013. These were created in response to the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December in an effort to help all of us challenge violence in our world, our society, our Church, our homes, and ourselves. The weekly questions in each bulletin insert are posted for online conversation here at www.ctmissionconnect.com

Reading I

Thoughts for Week I
(1) 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 its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. …This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. (President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953)

(2) From Leavings (2006) By Wendell Berry

Before we kill another child
for righteousness' sake, to serve
some blissful killer's sacred cause,
some bloody patriot's anthem
and his flag, let us leave forever
our ancestral lands, our holy books,
our god thoughtified to the mean
of our smallest selves. Let us go
to the graveyard and lie down
forever among the speechless stones.

(3) (there have been 1,935 gun deaths since Sandy Hook)

In a situation where human life seems dirt cheap, with people being killed as easily as one swats a fly, we must proclaim that people matter and matter enormously. – Desmond Tutu

Generous Acts I (www.40acts.uk.org):


Listen
Chris Duffett, Baptist Union of Great Britain
‘Well I think that…’
‘In my opinion…’
‘My feeling is that…’

It’s nice to feel heard. The first rule of most relationships is good communication – but that requires speaking and listening. Make a point of zipping up and opening your ears instead of your mouth. And be on the lookout for those around you who might need someone to talk to today. Resist the urge to give advice unless it’s welcome, and just provide a sympathetic ear to someone in need.

Pray
Ruth Leigh, Writer

If you’ve never thought of prayer as a generous act, then you’ve been underestimating how effective it is. Be encouraged – your prayers are powerful gifts to others. Take time out to pray for a few people today: friends, enemies, co-workers, children.