Friends,
As your BYM Representative to Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC),
and also as a member of the Executive Committee of the FWCC -Section of the
Americas, I pass along this important and heart-felt message:
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FWCC General Secretary Gretchen Castle responds to the Pope's call
for a day of prayer and fasting for peace on 23
February
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As General Secretary of FWCC, I received a letter from the Pontifical Council
on behalf of Pope Francis inviting all people of faith to join in a day of
prayer and fasting for peace on Friday 23 February. In particular, we are
asked collectively to pray for the cessation of violence and social-political
tension in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.
Each January the Pope writes a message for the World Day of Peace. He asks us
to take stock of our indifference to God, to our global family, to our
connectedness, and to all of creation. Indifference takes away our humanity
and it affects our ability to care for one another at both individual and
communitarian levels. He writes: “We are called to make compassion, love,
mercy, and solidarity a true way of life, a rule of conduct in our
relationships with one another. This requires the conversion of our hearts:
the grace of God has to turn our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh (Ezek
36:26), open to others in authentic solidarity.”
The United Nations expects the recent Congo offensive against Ugandan militants
to displace 370,000 people, compounding Africa’s worst displacement crisis. As
reported by Reuter’s world news, “Persistent conflict in Congo’s eastern
borderlands with Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi and insurrection in the center of
the country have displaced 4.3 million people internally. Last year, it lead
the United Nations to declare Congo a lever three humanitarian emergency – on
par with Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.”
A Guardian headline this week read ‘UN outrage at Syrian suffering’: ‘We can no
longer stay silent’. After eight years of war, the scale of suffering across
Syria has reached unprecedented levels, with access to aid blocked in three
major population centres and growing displacement with more than 13 million
people in need across the country.
The Quaker United Nations Offices in New York and Geneva work on behalf of
Quakers in the areas of Peace and Disarmament and Peacebuilding and the
Prevention of Violent Conflict. QUNO works with the UN Prevention Platform and
does continuing work in Burundi.
As Quakers around the world, let us join together in prayer and fasting, not
only for the DRC, South Sudan, and Syria, where there is so much destruction
and displacement, but also for the countries where leadership issues are
causing risk and disruption: Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Let us pray
for Friends in all of Africa, the largest of the four Sections with two of the
three largest groups of Quakers: Kenya and Burundi. Remember the Friends we
love and those we have yet to meet, and let us pray that they will know God is
near.
Gretchen Castle
FWCC General Secretary
What can I do?
Plenty. From wherever you are…
- Pray, fervently and deeply. As an everyday practice.
- Learn more, particularly about the countries where Quakers live and
worship. Let it enlarge your heart and compassion. Let it expand your
awareness of systemic injustice. Let God’s presence in this suffering change
you.
- Support Quaker organizations that support Quaker presence in the world
(from local level to world level). Send messages of support. Give financially
to Quaker organizations. Sign up for e-newsletters and follow on social media.
- Be an ambassador for the Quaker way of being in the world. Be patterns and
examples, expressing the joy of God’s presence. Commit to the Quaker
persistence that causes us to keep imagining a better world and working toward
it.
- Talk to anyone who shares this passion for peace. Move your concern
outward, even as you hold your concern inwardly and ask God for companionship
and wisdom.
- Be peace.
To sign up for e-news:
FWCC World Office
QUNO
UN Wire
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