Dear CCMJ associates, 

From one prong of our network’s extensive
thought and online penning, comes this wrestling
with how to replace the exploitative economy,
now hurtling humanity towards insanity

Faults, fallacies, false faux pas hidden in our words
form formidable barriers to either sympathy or empathy,
and thence with any certainty to collaboration, 
that vital element of loving God and neighbour
as integral part of our so-called selves

So journeying deeper into conversation,
reconcile each yes from you and no from me,
that we may be intelligible neighbours to each other,
regardless of distance, colour, status, skills
or terminology of both daily and specialised ways.

Let your prophetic imagination and pastoral sensitivity
inform the fashioning of every dialogue,
whether twixt friend or seeming opponent.

eg

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

Ponder the wonders and the woes of words.
Watch patiently your own too ready use and
your perception of the studied words of others.

Recall that child who innocently called God ‘Harold’,
as the Lord’s Prayer tripped repetitiously,
habitually, from adult tongues, hallowing the ‘Name’.

So arises the challenge to see the Lord’s Prayer
in recent scholarly translation from its Aramaic birth.
Note its unexpected stimulation in translation.

“THE LORD’S PRAYER IN ARAMAIC

0 Birthed Father-Mother of the Cosmos
you create all that moves in light.
Focus your light within us—
make it useful: as the rays of a beacon show the way.
Create your reign of unity now—
through our fiery hearts and willing hands.
Your one desire then acts with ours,
as in all light, so in all forms.
Grant what we need each day in bread and insight:
subsistence for the call of growing life.
Loose the cords of mistakes binding us,
as we release the strands we hold of others’ guilt.
Don’t let us enter forgetfulness
But free us from un-ripeness
From you is both all ruling will, the power and
the life to do, the song that beautifies all,
from age to age it renews.
Truly–power to these statements ‑
may they be the source from which
all my actions grow.
Sealed in trust & faith.    So be it.”

Peter