This morning I surprised a Ma and Pa Duck out scouting for a nesting place.  Memo to Ma and Pa: there are better places than a bush besides a busy sidewalk…good hunting.  A few minutes earlier I remarked to a fellow walker in the Health Center my prediction that there’s at least one decent snowstorm in Minnesota’s future before we actually have Spring.  Stay tuned.

Today ws the Easter egg roll on the White House Lawn.  There is ginned up  controversy about it, revolving around Christian themed Easter eggs, and the LGBTQ+ proclamation for March 31 which this year happened to coincide with Easter.    Here’s an article I received yesterday about the controversies.

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March 17 I mentioned an 0n-line presentation Monday, March 25, featuring an Israeli professor discussing how Palestinians are presented to Israeli students.  I participated.  The presentation was one hour and excellent.  Here is the YouTube rebroadcast.  It is very worthy of your time.

Mary, who watched the replay said this about it: “Thanks for an exceptional talk.    Great to see you in action and good humor.   May share talk with neighbors on both sides…”

At the beginning of the March 17 post, I made this comment about the Professors topic, about how Palestinians are portrayed in Israeli school texts: “The emphasis…by Prof. Nurit Peled-Elhanan … is common in how national histories are conveyed.  All who feel they’re part of a dominant culture or ideology have their blind spots.  For instance, Native Americans did not factor favorably into the official narrative of American History, and still don’t…. ”  Of course, we all have our blind spots, as individuals, as subordinate groups….  The majority blindspots are the most dangerous in the short (current) term.

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Given the continuing intense conflict in Gaza, I wondered and worried about how the issue would be addressed in my church during this years Holy Week commemoration of Jesus’ death and resurrection..

I’m a lifelong Catholic, so I’ve seen a lot of Easter seasons. I’m at church most every Sunday.   Over my 83 years I’ve had considerable interest in church/church & church/state relationships.

I’ve calculated that there have been over 1400 Sunday Masses since I joined Basilica of St. Mary in 1997, and while I don’t keep a tally, I rarely miss Sunday Mass at 9:30.  In my lifetime, over 4,300….

As such, I think would pass as a qualified observer of the Catholic liturgy as it has been practiced over the years.

This year I heard and saw the Passion read on Palm Sunday, and the Archbishop speak on Easter Sunday.  Friday night, Good Friday, I participated on-line in the annual observance of Tenebrae, which Molly tuned in and said as follows: “I really appreciated your advance notice regarding [Tenebrae]. It was powerful, and incredibly well-planned, and carried out. The participants’ work with light and darkness, and the interspersing of word and song, were beautifully sequenced. The addition of Rabbi Zimmerman at the end was a real surprise to me, and added depth, indeed.”

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Of course, overlaying everything for me was the continuing situation in Gaza.  I understood that Rabbi Zimmerman (Temple Israel) would speak. She is not a stranger at Basilica’s Tenebrae, which has been an annual liturgy at Basilica for over 20 years.  She and colleague Rabbi’s have always impressed.

Overall, I felt the observances I witnessed at this years Holy Week were all appropriate and positive.  I wondered how the politics of the time in history would intersect, and how the Passion story would be treated.  There was no edginess at all, which was very welcome.

Rabbi Zimmerman, long-time Rabbi at Temple Israeli, gave a particularly outstanding message, not side-stepping Gaza.  Her focus was on Mother’s loss – the women who attended to Jesus’ body in the Passion story.  She called our attention to an international group, Parents Circles Family Forum, Palestinian and Israeli families who have lost family members in conflicts.  Take a look.

At the end of her remarks, Rabbi Zimmerman received a sustained standing ovation from the filled church.  This recognition is very unusual, and was richly deserved.

There is a long, long road ahead, but one step at a time and peace and justice can succeed, thanks to all of us.

We all, individually and as parts of groups, can impact positively on the future.  But we need to be on the court.

POSTNOTE April 2: 

Gaza is a terribly troubling topic to take a stand on, or to write about.  Just today Israeli precision bombs killed several food aid representatives in clearly marked vehicles.

People are forced into taking sides.  Like everyone, I’m a single individual, feeling impotent.

In the narratives in these kinds of situations, there is always an effort to target a person or an entity as being responsible.  So, it is said that it is Hamas; or it is Netanyahu; on and on.

For me, during Holy Week, I most engaged in trying to see how organized religion dealt with this most historically difficult issue – the crucifixion of a Jewish man by the Romans with the tacit approval of the Jews: the Passion story.

As I pointed out above, I felt the organized religion in my background – Catholic – in my area, handled the issue and all that surrounds it in a constructive way.  So it was with the Jewish leadership, and most likely the Muslim leadership as well.  Of course, my perception is mine alone.

It’s more complicated than that, of course.

My Church is an immense entity: it is said that about one in four Americans in one sense or another is “Catholic”.

But this designation is essentially meaningless.  All Catholics do not similarly participate; nor do they believe identically; or position on political or other issues.  Those who make policy may think or try to represent that they speak for everyone, but they don’t.  Like any association in this country, people can participate if/as they wish, and choose in the many ways available to them to take positions or not.  Catholics are no more an Army, than are Jews, or Muslims or anyone.  The problem come from who is selected to lead by whatever means.  That is an extremely complex topic.

For me, personally, I have come to the conclusion that I can have an impact, but that my impact will be very small.  But there are others who might agree with me – I may never meet them. – who advocate the same way for the same thing somewhere else.

Only by participating in the conversation can anyone make any difference at all.  It is not enough to blame someone or something else.  As Gandhi is supposed to have said, we all must be the change we wish to see in the world.  Even Gandhi didn’t’ see victory in his lifetime, or even still.  But there is no question that he made a big difference.  We can be so as well.