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A Sense of Powelessness

30/3/2022

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At the end of last week Pope Francis dedicated the world, particularly Russia and Ukraine, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He encouraged Bishops throughout the world to unite with this prayer and repeat it in their own diocese. Here in Glasgow over 2,000 people gathered in George Square in the centre of the city to pray the rosary and join their prayers for peace with his.  While the war in Ukraine is no longer the first point on the national news it is still in people’s minds as is a recognition of how fragile peace in Europe has been and is. There is also a recognition that nuclear weapons pose a real threat to the world and to support them because they are a deterrent is a delusion. Above all though there is a sense of powerlessness, of ordinary people being caught up in the hubris and ambition of politicians, of being able to do nothing to make an impact on the situation.

And yet we try.  There have been many statements calling for peace, even letters, from very public people like the Pope, the World Council of Churches, the Dalai Lama and from less significant figures and organisations. I am usually in two minds about such statements and wonder if the motivation for them is a fear of appearing indifferent and the effect is to help the organisation feel they have done something rather than nothing without necessarily making any impact on the situation. It’s very hard to stay with the pain and the sense of powerlessness and do nothing.  At present there is a petition on the internet calling for the end of nuclear weapons, hoping to get one million signatories. It is an open letter from ‘Nobel Peace Laureates and Citizens of the World against War and Nuclear Weapons’, saying that this moment is either the end of nuclear weapons or the end of humanity. But will governments listen to this?  The fact that President Putin has threatened to push that nuclear button but not done so (yet) might cause some politicians to underline how important nuclear weapons are as a deterrent – but only if possessed by the right nations!  
 
Prayer is also a way of helping us overcome a sense of powerlessness, particularly if done in community. Uniting with others, like the thousands in George Square last week, gives a sense of strength and support. No doubt people will be expecting different things from that prayer. For some there will be a belief that a God who is all powerful could intervene to bring about a change of heart and restore peace.

For others this prayer is more a statement of solidarity, that awakens compassion within our hearts and expresses itself in action.  For others the prayer will be said in a spirit of repentance, recognising that the fear and pride that seems to be motivating President Putin lives in our own hearts. The Pope’s act of consecration, something that has a long tradition in the Catholic Church, took place within the context of a penitential service at which the Pope was seen to humbly acknowledge his own sinfulness within the context of the sacrament of penance as well as then administering that sacrament to others. Within the public prayer he identified himself with all of humanity when he prayed
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“we have strayed from that path of peace. We have forgotten the lesson learned from the tragedies of the last century, the sacrifice of the millions who fell in two world wars. We have disregarded the commitments we made as a community of nations. We have betrayed peoples’ dreams of peace and the hopes of the young. We grew sick with greed, we thought only of our own nations and their interests, we grew indifferent and caught up in our selfish needs and concerns. We chose to ignore God, to be satisfied with our illusions, to grow arrogant and aggressive, to suppress innocent lives and to stockpile weapons. We stopped being our neighbour’s keepers and stewards of our common home. We have ravaged the garden of the earth with war and by our sins we have broken the heart of our heavenly Father, who desires us to be brothers and sisters. We grew indifferent to everyone and everything except ourselves. Now with shame we cry out: Forgive us, Lord! Lead us now on the paths of peace”.
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 Is this not a catalogue of the sins of humanity and truly should we not be ashamed of them?  We are implicated in them, and we all have the potential to perpetrate great injustices and violence within ourselves. But we also have the potential for the opposite. The generosity of the public in donating to charities working in Ukraine and working with refugees, offering to open their homes to refugees has been outstanding and shown us humanity at its best. Two images from the news stand out in my mind – one is of the large number of families waiting at the Ukrainian border to welcome refugees into their homes and the other image is of a row of empty push chairs waiting at a railway station in Poland for any family that needed one - signs of real generosity and goodness which can inspire and even console us as we do out bit in sowing seeds of peace.

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What to do about it.

15/3/2022

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 “We see things as we are not as they are” is an often quoted saying. Today it’s clearly illustrated in the story being played out by Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine. President Putin has an idealised view of what he calls ‘Rus’, a Russia of the first millennium that included Ukraine, Belarus and Crimea and he seemingly wants to return to that and set himself up as Czar of all Russia, even if he doesn’t use the name. For him this is a sacred task and the land of Russia, as it was, is a sacred land. Those nations that disrupt this unity are not legitimate and are to be crushed. Ukraine on the other hand sees itself as a thriving democracy, with a strong sense of its own identity, wanting to be associated with the European Union and part of NATO. For them this present conflict is a war of aggression, and the world is looking on with horror at the destruction of cities in Ukraine, the wanton killings and the millions of women and children fleeing the country – women and children mainly because the menfolk are staying to fight and defend their country. Putin won’t even acknowledge that what he is doing is war – rather he calls it a special operation to rid the country of anti-Nazi elements and restore Russian unity. What’s to be done about it.

Protests, demonstrations, prayers, sanctions, show the breadth and depth of opposition to the war but this makes no difference to Putin who knows that his threat of using nuclear weapons and the fear of other nations that this present conflict could escalate into a third world war keeps the rest of the world looking on powerlessly. One of the saddest things about this war for those of us who are Christian is that the Russian Orthodox Church of which Putin is a member supports him wholeheartedly. Well, maybe that’s not quite true. An orthodox priest in Russia was arrested and fined for criticising the war; there have been anti-war protests in some cities and many of those protesters will belong to the Orthodox Church; the  Russian Orthodox clergy Amsterdam have separated themselves from the Moscow Patriarchate and asked to join the ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople; more than 280 Russian Orthodox priests and church officials from around the world have signed an open letter, expressing their opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It is the head of the Church, Patriarch Kirill who is firmly standing on the side of Putin. Kirill is Ukrainian and believes in the one nation of Russians, Belarusians, and Little Russians (Ukrainians). In a reply to the World Council of Churches he blamed NATO member states for what he sees is a strategy for undermining and weakening Russia which must be protected at all costs. We see things as we are not as they are. What’s to be done about it.

I don’t think I have felt just as despondent about the world as I do at the moment. We’ve come through, or hopefully are coming through, a pandemic which revealed to us our global fragility and need for cooperation. We have faced the growing threat of climate change, particularly at the last COP gathering in Glasgow, and our responsibility for the future well-being of our planet. We are now facing a war which could easily escalate into a world war and even lead to the use of nuclear weapons and the end of the world as we know it. There seems to be a desperation among people at government and local level to show Putin and Kirill how much they oppose the war and call for peace. No wonder people are afraid of the future which, at the moment, seems so very insecure. What’s to be done about it.

There are of course things that can be done – protesting, letting our voice be heard, supporting charities working on the ground to care for the people of Ukraine, welcoming refugees into our societies, making sure that Russians and Ukrainians citizens in our own land feel supported and respected for it happens so often that conflicts abroad can easily spill over to violence at home. Many people are doing this. What about prayer? Will that help? Will it change President Putin’s heart? Perhaps it can send good energy and hope to the peace talks that are taking place at the same time as the bombing and destruction continue. I’m not too confident about that but for many of us it may be the least we can do to feel we are doing something.

Perhaps the prayer that needs to be prayed is that which feels the pain of this suffering, the pain of the inability of our human family to live together in peace, the pain that those suffering and those perpetrating the violence are our brothers and sisters and because of this we are all implicated. And this is not the only war being waged by our brothers and sisters.  This war in Europe is at present dominating our media but there is also conflict in Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Ethiopia and elsewhere. Perhaps these conflicts are more easily forgotten as they are further afield and don’t touch us in the same way. So too with refugees. Thousands of people in Britain are opening their homes to Ukrainian refugees but there are thousands of refugees from other parts of the world all trying to find safety and deserve equal treatment. Taking time to pray is to open ourselves to this pain. Will this then help us  to see our human family as one and commit ourselves to friendships and relationships that extend beyond definitions. Without that I doubt peace is possible. 

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    I am  a Catholic nun, involved in interfaith relations for many decades.  For me this has been an exciting and sacred journey which I would like to share with others.

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