8 May 2024 A Candle in the Window Peter Millar
Words to encourage us in these times.
God so loved this world that he got involved.
On a poster
Lord make this world last as long as possible.
Prayer of a young person in Pakistan
Our lives begin to end on the day we become silent about things that matter.
Martin Luther King
All of us can discover hope in the small,
often unobserved epiphanies of every day.
Peter
A piece of Light
There is a piece of light in all of us,
the grandmothers and grandfathers,
children orphaned by war,
the feeble, the lame and disheartened,
the successful as well as the searcher.
There is a piece of light in all of us,
maybe hidden or buried with pain,
perhaps pushed in the corner by shame.
Seen or unseen, the light is there, ready to kindle,
eager to expand, refusing to be tightly contained.
As soon as the tiniest space is allowed it quickly emerges,
floods outward, illuminating the darkest of places.
One single candle lights a little dark space.
Many candles light a world full of people
desperately in need of each other’s glow.
Each lone light makes us stronger
when we all stand together.
*Unfortunately I am unable to find the name of the person who wrote these lines.
Why we are here:
Each day we hear about various protests in many parts of the world. As we all know, protests have been with us for a long time, and before my illness I participated in many protests in different parts of the world. Although I was not there in person, I was indirectly involved in a large public protest in Seattle in the States. This was part of a global protest against the power and policies of the World Trade Organisation which that year (1999) was holding a Summit in Seattle. Last week I came across a statement in relation to that WTO meeting that many of us around the world had supported, and I want to include it here because the words are so meaningful twenty five years later. After you have read this statement, composed at a time so different from our own, the primary question in our mind may be “Has anything changed?” – despite millions of people, as we all know, longing for a more human and tender world order. I think such a question has no easy answer, but what I do know is that millions of us have not abandoned a commitment to name injustice in its many incarnations in 2024. The search for a more tender and aware humanity goes on. Peter
Because the world we had imagined,
the one we had always counted on is disappearing.
Because children are starving
in the shadows of yachts and economic summits.
And because our planet is crying out in pain –
WE ARE HERE.
This is a manufactured world you have come to codify and expedite but we have come to tell you there is something we wish to buy.
What we wish for money no longer recognises, like the vitality of nature and the integrity of work. We don’t wish for cheaper wood, we wish for living trees.
We don’t wish for engineered fruit, we wish to see and smell the food growing in our neighbourhoods.
WE ARE HERE because a voice inside us, a memory in our blood, tells us you are not just a trade body you are the blind tip of a dark wave that has forgotten its source.
WE ARE HERE to defend and honour that which is real, natural, human and basic against this rising tide of greed.
WE ARE HERE by the insistence of the spirit and the authority of Nature.
If you doubt for three minutes the power of truth or the primacy of Nature, try not breathing for that length of time.
Now you know the pressure of our desire. We are not here to tinker with your laws. We are not here to change you from the inside out.
This is not a political protest –
IT IS AN UPRISING OF THE SOUL.
