"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." - Abraham Lincoln

Upcoming Conference: "Eden to Aotearoa: From Biblical Hope to Ecological Action"
May 30th to June 2nd 2008 - A Rocha Aotearoa New Zealand's first national conference will be held in Raglan during the Queen's Birthday weekend, 2008.
The worsening environmental crisis has caused Christians throughout the world to rediscover ecological hope in the Bible. A Rocha has been acting on this hope since 1983 through conservation projects now in 18 countries. This conference is to inspire Kiwis to hope Biblically for our planet, and empower us with the practical skills we need to work out the A Rocha vision in Aotearoa NZ.
http://en.arocha.org/nz/index4.html

Interview with Tom Sine and Jarrod McKenna
Tom Sine joined me on my morning radio programme on 98.5 Sonshine FM along with Jarrod McKenna from Peace Tree Community. While Tom’s book talks about the many ways that people are re-imagining church, Jarrod is part of a community that is living out faith in simple ways in the Perth suburb of Lockridge.
http://eliacin.com/?p=702

On Forgiveness:
 “Providence watches over each of us as we journey through life, providing us with two guides: repentance and remorse. The one calls us forward. The other calls us back. Yet they do not contradict each other, nor do they leave the traveller in doubt or confusion. For the one calls forward to the Good, the other back from the evil. And there are two of them, because in order to make our journey secure we must look ahead as well as back.”  - Soren Kierkegaard

 “Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.” - Anne Lamott

 “Though justice be thy plea, consider this: That in the course of justice none of us should see salvation.  We do pray for mercy, and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy…” - William Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice)

 “There is a hard law…When an injury is done to us; we never recover until we forgive.” - Alan Paton

[We’re in Cambodia for the next two weeks.  It is a land in need of healing as the articles below illustrate.]

Last Breakfast in Cambodia
Cambodia today is not unlike the Cambodia of my youth — there is deep poverty and enormous wealth, side-by-side. There is unrest beneath the surface, the unrest that helped to make the horrors of the last century possible.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/opinion/26siv.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Trying to Understand a Heart of Darkness
On Dec. 26, 1971, François Bizot, a 31-year-old French ethnologist, walked away from a jungle prison in Cambodia after three months of incarceration by Khmer Rouge guerrillas. He had talked his way to freedom, but he also owed his life to his captor and interrogator, a math teacher turned Communist revolutionary who went by the nom de guerre Duch. During long conversations with his jailer, Mr. Bizot concluded that the young man's idealism was misguided but sincere…
 “It's like young Nazis in the 1930's who put on brown uniforms with swastikas: they didn't know what the uniform would come to symbolize. I think the only answer is to look inside ourselves, not others. The Nazi, the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan killer is a man who looks like us. That's my only conclusion.''
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D05E2D71030F934A15750C0A9659C8B63&fta=y

Researchers Put Together Story of the Khmer Rouge
''She was a Khmer Rouge,'' came a man's voice as a crowd of villagers gathered to watch. When the communist Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, causing the deaths of more than a million people, she had been one of their recruits. Now, more than two decades later, Mr. Vanthan Dara had arrived to hear her story -- part of a team of independent researchers who are travelling the country, stitching together the history of those years.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9404E4DA1F31F936A2575AC0A9649C8B63&fta=y

REFLECTIONS: CAMBODIA; 'We Just Waited for Our Moment to Be Killed'
Few countries suffered as deeply as Cambodia over the last half-century. The tiny, beautiful Southeast Asian land was a battleground among the great powers and the scene of hugely destructive American bombing during the Vietnam War. Then its own internal demons rose from within its people's brutalized psyche. Cambodia became the scene of horrific mass killings by the radical communist Khmer Rouge, who from 1975 to 1979 took the lives of as many as one-fourth of the population of eight million. Cambodia has still not recovered.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0DEEDE1030F932A35752C0A9669C8B63&fta=y

Victim's family hugs accused
A NSW Supreme Court jury took only 40 minutes yesterday to find a man not guilty of murder in a fight outside a Sydney hotel over a packet of pistachio nuts.  And in an extraordinary scene inside the King Street court complex following the verdict, the family of the dead man - Samoan-born "John" Hunuki Tamapeau of Mortdale - and his fiancée, Nicola McColl, wept and embraced the accused, Damien Peter Hopper, in an expression of forgiveness, some kissing his cheek.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/04/23/1208743039803.html

The Way to Peace Can Be Paved With Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Negotiation
Peace activists are often accused of being naïve dreamers when it comes to dealing with conflict or dangerous enemies.  So what is the alternative? Usually it’s to fight fire with fire (i.e., revenge and retaliation).  The very nature of peacemaking, however, is not to fight but rather to confront “the opponent” with intelligence, craftiness, humour and a thirst for justice. We have some splendid examples of this approach in Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Dorothy Day, just to name a few. Sceptics recoil and sputter that such people were exceptions.  However, let’s not forget that these “peace heroes” inspired ordinary people to follow them and choose to become part of a movement for change.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/18/8379/

It is time Anzac Day was replaced
We need a day set aside to remind us that war is the ultimate human failure. This would be the day when we hear speeches about suffering and destruction of property and not about noble sacrifice. We would be reminded of the hacking coughs and trembling hands suffered by our returned soldiers in the decades following 1918. We would be reminded of the civilians who were firebombed in Tokyo and Dresden in 1945. We would be reminded of the four million Iraqi refugees now in Syria and Jordan and the landmines still maiming in South-East Asia. The list can go on. We would even be made aware that more American veterans of the Vietnam War have now committed suicide than were killed in that war. Anzac day is a day of delusion. It is a day of marches and bands and flags and talk of heroes by important people on podiums. We have created a day of celebration of nationhood when we need a day of recognition that war is nothing but the ultimate human failure.
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7258&page=1

Anzac day: a faith event?
A faith event is not about parades and prayers. A faith event is about confession and the creation of four million Iraqi refugees and an untold number of soldiers disturbed and disabled. It’s about the condemnation of evil whether that of the suicide bomb or the cluster bomb; it’s about a rededication to peace, and not to out of control budgets for maiming and killing.  Anzac Day services might be a lot of things, but they are not faith events.
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7279&page=0

On the Journey Towards Living Nonviolently
We live each day surrounded by images of the horrors of our world. Each week brings stories of a world weary with violence. How can we not feel powerless in this? How can we remain committed to a life of nonviolence when so many of the world's ways seem to point in the other direction?
My husband and I were asked to reflect on this dilemma at a recent Christian Peacemaker Teams workshop. Through preparing for this workshop, we realized that living nonviolently involves two separate yet interconnected practices: an outer, visible witness to a life of peace; and the more hidden, attentive work of being present to the small details of our lives. The outer practice is more noticeable, and is often more gratifying-who doesn't feel better after participating in a peace march? And yet, as I learn over and over again, the greatest impact I can have in my tiny world is the way I choose to be present to others and to the world around me. If, daily, I can speak to my children with absolute patience and listen to them as deeply as I would wish that listening from someone else; if, daily, I refrain from the easier tack of speaking ill of someone in order to appear stronger myself; if, daily, I make choices that cause less damage to this beautiful planet-then I know my journey of nonviolence continues, despite the invisibility of its workings.
In a world so broken, I need to believe that living peacefully, both in the grander picture and in the smallness of my own life, will make some difference to the work of "creating something new in the skin of the old."
- MADELINE BURGHART has been connected to L'Arche for twelve years and is presently a house leader with L'Arche Toronto. She lives in the Toronto Catholic Worker community with her husband and three sons.
http://www.henrinouwen.org/

Anabaptist Story:  MCC in Cambodia
In Cambodia, MCC seeks to operate through local partners and strengthen organizations’ abilities to meet objectives they have set. MCC works with growing local organizations by providing financial resources or personnel who serve as advisors or give technical assistance. MCC works in peace, agriculture and education. Young people travel from Cambodia to serve in Canada or the United States through the International Volunteer Exchange Program (IVEP), and young people from the United States or Canada serve in Cambodia through the Serving and Learning Together Program (SALT).
http://mcc.org/cambodia/

Building peace after terror
http://mcc.org/cambodia/photogallery/

1 Peter 4: 12-14; 5: 6-11
        My dear friends, I know that you are under the heat at the moment, but there is nothing unusual about it, so don’t let it throw you. It comes with the territory and it gives you the chance to prove yourselves. You can even count it an honour that in such suffering you are following in the footsteps of the Messiah. Once you have got through this, you will enjoy it all the more when his true glory is out in the open for everyone to see. Nothing will ever wipe the smiles off your faces! If people treat you like scum because you are associated with Christ, you are still on a winner, because the Spirit of God will be with you and will cover you with glory.
        Keep yourselves down to earth. Hand the reins over to God and don’t think such dependence is beneath you. God will put your name up in lights when the time is right. God loves you and is always ready to take care of anything that is stressing you out, so hand it over and let go of it.
        Discipline yourselves, and be ready for anything. The devil has set himself against you, and he is always cruising around like a hungry croc, ready to make a meal of anyone who is not on their guard. Hold him at bay and don’t concede an inch. Stand your ground and trust God to back you up. Remember that your brothers and sisters all around the world are feeling the heat just as much as you. None of you will have to suffer it for too long though. The God who, in extravagant generosity, has called you to be one with Christ and share in his glory forever, will personally put you back on your feet and give you all the support, strength and confidence you could ever need. To God be all power, forever and ever. And so say all of us!
©2002 Nathan Nettleton LaughingBird.net