An Advent Meditation on Justice

 What follows is an Advent meditation which was shared today with my brothers and sisters in the Lindisfarne Community.  May it be a blessing to others.

Brothers and Sisters,

Many of us are deeply troubled by the violence in our streets.  Race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, class, even religion, all the things we thought back in the 60s and 70s that we'd confronted and named and faced down seem to be roaring back with a vengeance to divide God's beloved children into warring camps. And yet, the very word, religion, comes from a root that means to bind back together what has been separated.

Learning from the past

It has been an interesting day so far.  I have followed up some small tasks for work, corresponded with a colleague about the state of things in our department, prepared to teach a Reiki class coming up next week, attempted to mend a fence with a friend (we'll see if that succeeds), made plans to reconnect with a former student tomorrow, and written a section in my dissertation.  It's the writing that is moving me just now.  It's a section on the Life of St Cuthbert, a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon monk who served the monastic community at Lindisfarne.  This monastery was founded by Irish monks who were invited by the Anglo-Saxon King of Northumbria to bring their distinctive form of Christian practice to a largely pagan area of north-eastern England.  In the late seventh century there was a clash between Christian missionaries sent from Rome to convert the pagans, and the Irish-trained monks who were already there.  Rome won, but the Irish communities continued on, and Cuthbert was one of the leaders who stepped into that difficult situation to be a peacemaker, a healer, and a servant among his people.