Throw Your Pebbles - A Blessing For 2020
Shelby Mathis captures HOPE while at Joint Christian Committee’s Center in Saida, Lebanon. August, 2019.
“And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been” ~Rainer Maria Rilke
The New Year always holds such promise for me. It’s like a do-over. The past year with all its joy and heartbreak is finished. It’s time to start anew.
It’s easy to fall into despair, well maybe not despair, but anxiety, as we approach 2020. There will be an election in the U.S. We are divided and angry. We mistrust each other and anybody different than ourselves. I am truly troubled by this. My country seems less and less like the place I grew up in, like a place I know.
Then there is my beloved Middle East. Iraq has exploded with violent protests demanding an overhaul of the political system. More than 400 people have died since it began.[1] In Lebanon, a country that is a second home to me, there has been two months of anti-government protests as the economy is literally in freefall.[2]
As for Palestinian refugees, the United Nations has approved UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) mandate for another 3 years. This agency provides relief services to over 5.5 million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, West Bank, and Gaza.[3] The agency remains in financial crisis since the U.S. ended (already promised) funding in 2018.[4] Cutting services in medical clinics and schools. Generations of Palestinian refugees are sitting in permanent camps without basic rights while a 71-year conflict continues without a just solution in sight.
I am witnessing, after 16 years, conditions worsening for Palestinian refugees across all areas of life – employment, education, conditions in the camps, relief offered, and a strangling of opportunities. They are feeling a particular pinch in Lebanon's economic slowdown, especially after the recent nationwide protests in the country.
It’s not good. The news is not good. It feels dark. Period.
I keep asking myself what do I want to offer in 2020.
Dread. Anxiety. Fear. Depression. Throwing in the towel. To go to bed and pull the covers over my head and hope it all goes away.
All of those are options for me and I might vacillate between them day by day.
But when I challenge myself, what I desperately want to offer is change. That things can be different. We can work together to make a place for everyone in this world. That there is enough for all of us. We can offer peace and blessing to everyone, no matter what their race or religion or political opinion might be.
That we could be together.
“What we would like to do is change the world--make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute--the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words--we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.” ~Dorothy Day
Dorothy Day is one of my personal heroes and put meat around the bones of what I am trying to say and what I desperately want to offer 2020, and to you.
Love each other.
Love our neighbor.
Love our enemy.
Fight for justice.
Fight for those considered worthy and unworthy.
Extend grace.
Give.
Bless.
Hold gratitude.
Be a light for others.
Offer hope.
Throw your pebble.
Believe it makes a difference.
[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/iraq-protests-nomination-prime-minister-due-monday-191216073526844.html
[2] https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/15/middleeast/beirut-protest-intl/index.html
[3] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/renews-agency-supporting-palestinian-refugees-191213172530511.html
[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45377336