I was asked recently by The Revd Chris Arends to be part of An Evening Service for Justice and Peace in which he was to receive the Archbishop of Cape Town Award for his work in the field of Peace and Justice. The service took place at St Stephen’s Church, Pinelands and was attended by invited guests. The St Stephen’s Taize group was also in attendance. There were three reflections, the first On Race and Identity by Ms Zandile Hoorn, the third On Patriarchy and Gender by Dr Miranda Pillay and my reflection, the second On War and Violence, which I now share with you.
Amos 5: 24
But let justice roll on like a river, and
righteousness like a never-failing stream!
Langston Hughes, the African American poet who influenced deeply the Haarlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s,
Wrote this short poem of 4 lines which exposes a country’s journey of Injustice.
Justice
That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes
That justice is blind is ingrained in us
We see it as a good thing
Hughes exposes its weakness, it many sins
Her eyes are violently disfigured by those who wield power
By the systems the powerful have created
To their advantage.
the Irish Rebellion 1916, put down viciously by the British
The horrific cataclysm of the First World War,
the Russian revolution 1917 –
a world descending into violence and repression
A 1919 prophecy arises in this poem by William Butler Yeats
Many of the phrases speak for themselves
The Second Coming
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
When we close our eyes to injustice and the pain and hurt and violence that it brings on our country, institutions, communities, women and children, the poor and destitute, then something macabre and the very opposite of the Good News of the birth of Bethlehem comes into being. People whose gaze is blank and pitiless as the sun
Amos:
There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes
and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.
13 Therefore the prudent keep quiet in such times,…
14 Seek good, not evil,
that you may live.
We have our heroes and prophets like Amos, the towering figures of Mandela and Desmond Tutu and many others, all of you amongst them…
Jeremy Cronin, expresses how he feels in the presence of Mandela
– yes, small, but settles on something in particular…
Poem for Mandela
It’s impossible to make small-talk
with an icon
Which is why, to find my tongue,
I stare down at those crunched-up,
One-time boxer’s knuckles.
In their flattened pudginess I find
Something partly reassuring,
Something slightly troubling,
Something, at least, not transcendent.
It is his hands …we all have hands, hands at the ready, safe hands, wounded hands, healing hands, put your hand to the plough in the service of Peace and Justice in the service of the kindom…
bobcommin.com 
So important. Thank you.
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