Monthly Archive for February, 2009

The Gangs of Vancouver

Published on February 28, 2009 by Will Loewen. Closed

Even though I’m cur­rently out of the coun­try, I still fol­low Canada’s news cour­tesy of daily news pod­casts from our national broad­caster.  There really isn’t a lot of good news these days.  Weather fluc­tu­a­tions wreak havoc all the time and the eco­nomic down­turn is dev­as­tat­ing peo­ple all across the coun­try.  But what’s trou­bling me par­tic­u­larly is the nature of vio­lence I am hear­ing about in Vancouver.

Vio­lence in our streets and in our busi­nesses is always fright­en­ing to hear about, but there is one story that is most promi­nent in my mind.  A group of large heav­ily armed men attacked a man in a pub­lic build­ing, repeat­edly using their deadly weapon on him.  All of this was in full view of other peo­ple who were pow­er­less to inter­fere.  The attack was even cap­tured on secu­rity video cam­eras.  In time the attack­ers were iden­ti­fied and asked to explain them­selves to a jury of their peers, as well as TV news cam­eras.  They expressed no regrets and rarely offered any infor­ma­tion at all that would help in the legal pro­ceed­ings.  It seems as though they think their tough image and their code of broth­er­hood will help them recruit more mem­bers and intim­i­date their foes.  I am quite sure that all of these attack­ers will walk free very shortly, and I can’t help but fear for the safety of Van­cou­ver residents.

Who are these men and why will they walk free?  They are RCMP offi­cers.  The dead man was Robert Dziekan­ski.  And now you know the rest of the story.

Obvi­ously this story has com­pliex­i­ties far beyond my abil­ity to under­stand.  What I was try­ing to do was to draw a par­al­lel to the gang vio­lence plagu­ing many Cana­dian cities, Van­cou­ver most of all.  It goes with­out say­ing that if I had to choose between meet­ing an RCMP offi­cer or a gang leader, I would feel safer with the Moun­tie, but the par­al­lels were too easy to make.  Imag­ine a turf war between rival gangs where a man was gunned down by four men of the same gang.  In time it would sur­face that there was a mis­un­der­stand­ing, and other peo­ple nearby tried to inter­vene.  What would it take to con­vince a jury that these attack­ers were jus­ti­fied?  Would any­one seri­ously believe that they felt threat­ened?  Could they con­vince any­one it was a mea­sured response?

When Jesus said, “Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword,” he wasn’t just talk­ing about phys­i­cal death.  What he meant was that if you gain wealth by exploit­ing those below you, don’t be sur­prised if some­day you are exploited by some­one richer than you.  I’m not at all advo­cat­ing or jus­ti­fy­ing vio­lence or dis­pre­spect  towards those who’ve affirmed to pro­tect our streets.  I do how­ever think it is dif­fi­cult to demon­strate this kind of behav­iour and main­tain the moral high ground at the same time.  Today’s gangs believe they are pro­tect­ing some­thing too.  That is why they fight and kill when they deem it nec­es­sary.  That is why they never admit fault, they give no infor­ma­tion on the crim­i­nal actions of their peers and they refuse to respect legal court pro­ceed­ings.  It seems to me that the only dif­fer­ence between our guys and their guys should not be that ours are wear­ing state issued uniforms.

From time to time, I do and say stu­pid things, and when I do, other peo­ple, includ­ing the police, expect me to own up to it. In our churches, we call that repen­tance, stil the church doesn’t have a per­fect record either.  With great power comes great respon­si­bil­ity.  A long time ago, soci­ety was happy to take away the power that the church once had, partly because it so often mis­used that respon­si­bil­ity.  My hope is that the same thing doesn’t hap­pen to the police.  I believe the church is most effec­tive with lit­tle to no power, but it cer­tainly doesn’t work that way with the police.

God’s faithfulness

Published on February 24, 2009 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , .

“How do you expe­ri­ence God’s faith­ful­ness?” She poses the ques­tion to the group for our weekly time of devo­tions. I’m on ‘sab­bat­i­cal’ and have made a point of not going in every day to the office at which I used to spend most of my wak­ing hours, but I’ve also made a point of being there for Tues­day devotions.

Reflect­ing on her ques­tion, I real­ize these weekly times of gath­er­ing, pray­ing, shar­ing, singing, laugh­ing, think­ing, feel­ing, incar­nate the faith­ful­ness of God for me. As lives shared in this com­mu­nity cycle and re-cycle the love of God among us, I see the image of God’s unchang­ing love, pro­vi­sion, com­fort and guidance.

Mem­bers of the group share their expe­ri­ence of God’s faith­ful­ness as pro­vid­ing for needs, answer­ing prayer either in short term or long term, direct­ing plans for future, enabling ful­fill­ment of dreams and visions, and being a com­fort­ing pres­ence in times of chaos and sor­row. None of us had much trou­ble find­ing evi­dence of God’s faith­ful­ness in our pasts, and still trust for God’s faith­ful­ness in the future seems much more difficult.

Hear­ing these sto­ries, reflect­ing on my own expe­ri­ence, and med­i­tat­ing on our scrip­ture and hymns together, I decide to con­tinue sur­round­ing myself with peo­ple and activ­i­ties that affirm my trust in God’s stead­fast love in my life. What this might look like, I don’t know yet, but I pray that it leads to my faith­ful­ness in response.

On landscapes and the soul

Published on February 20, 2009 by Hinke Loewen-Rudgers. 1 Comment

Last week I took a break from Ara­bic study by join­ing in on a group bike ride from Mad­aba to the Dead Sea. This par­tic­u­lar Jor­dan­ian group of cyclists does a trek every Fri­day, with the more seri­ous fin­ish­ing the 60 km while oth­ers (like me) reach their lim­its ear­lier. It was mar­velous to get out of the vast and seem­ing never-ending city of Amman and into the vil­lage coun­try­side of Jor­dan. On a bike you can still be part of the scenery around you in a way that a car doesn’t allow.  We drove by olive groves, cit­rus trees, camels and don­keys lin­ing the roads. Bedouin chil­dren came to the road from their small shel­ters to greet the cyclists, all mutu­ally enjoy­ing the nov­elty. As we got closer to the Dead Sea, more and more cars of fam­i­lies were parked along the roads as they enjoyed a Fri­day pic­nic over­look­ing the salt — white edged body of water. Moth­ers cov­ered entirely in black along­side moth­ers in trendy skin-tight jeans with the manda­tory head cov­er­ing attest to the diver­sity of Islam in this country.

Every­where the ter­rain is rugged, hilly and desert. There is some­thing men­ac­ing and intrigu­ing about desert ter­rain. Wilder­ness seems to heal my soul in ways at the same time that I feel its capac­ity to hurt as well as heal. I’m read­ing “The Solace of Fierce Land­scapes,” by Belden C. Lane. I’ve just begun the book but he has touched on the large num­ber of desert and moun­tain expe­ri­ences doc­u­ment in the Bible. He writes,

“…from the psy­cho­log­i­cal appeal of haz­ardous land­scapes to the mythol­ogy of peak-and-vale expe­ri­ence in West­ern sym­bolic life, from the use of wilder­ness motifs in the Bible to desert and moun­tain imagery in the his­tory of spir­i­tu­al­ity, a crav­ing for the wild splen­dor of God recurs repeat­edly in the recesses of the human soul. When peo­ple are drawn geo­graph­i­cally to the remote edges of our world, they are car­ried metaphor­i­cally to the edges of them­selves as per­sons, invited to an empti­ness as exhil­a­rat­ing as it is fright­en­ing. Encoun­ter­ing over­whelm­ing fierce­ness at the end of all pos­si­bil­i­ties, they know them­selves to be loved in wild and unan­tic­i­pated grace.”

Although that desert makes for a rough­ness nec­es­sary to sur­vive, it also pushes a soci­ety to rely on the soft secu­rity of com­mu­nity mak­ing hos­pi­tal­ity of utmost pri­or­ity.  God’s com­mu­nity of the Old Tes­ta­ment formed in such harsh land­scapes. It cer­tainly didn’t keep them from engag­ing in activ­i­ties or ways of being con­trary to God’s will. Actu­ally going to that metaphor­i­cal edge takes con­scious effort and will or maybe a “let­ting go” of those things that sep­a­rate us from the many dis­trac­tions that keep us from our­selves and from God. 

I often feel pulled between the desire for com­fort and nor­mal­ity and the desire to expe­ri­ence that “wild splen­dor of God” that Lane talks about. For now I rejoin the masses on the streets of Amman, watch­ing the way that I dress, where I look, and how I walk so as not to attract unde­sired atten­tion as I make the trek to and from school. I am com­forted by the pos­si­bil­i­ties of secure rela­tion­ships with those in the cul­ture around me, a cul­ture that intrigues me more each day.  It’s an ancient cul­ture rooted in the tra­di­tions of a nomadic peo­ple that lived every day with the fierce­ness of desert life. The cul­ture has it’s pros and its cons and is of course wrapped up in a par­tic­u­lar reli­gious real­ity that could be end­lessly analyzed…but I’ll leave that to others. 

A Prayer for Peace

Published on February 20, 2009 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , .

My med­i­ta­tions this week float around the ser­mon and wor­ship from last Sun­day. Reflect­ing on Jesus’  heal­ing of the man with lep­rosy in Mark 1:40–45, Pas­tor Seo at Yeoul Church, pushed us to envi­sion the extent of risk and the depth of love Jesus poured out on a vic­tim of dis­crim­i­na­tion, and chal­lenged us to extend that over­whelm­ing, heal­ing, love to each per­son around us, par­tic­u­larly the out­cast. How do we live in this kind of love? On what source do we draw the energy and strength needed to main­tain this in our every day lives? Too much, too big, beyond me. The chal­lenge overwhelms.

And then we prayed together the fol­low­ing a prayer of peace. The peace which fills us and sus­tains us, over­flow­ing into the lives of our neigh­bours, spread­ing God’s good­ness and love in each day of our lives.

God who cre­ated this world,

You pro­nounced it “very good” with won­der and admiration.

Although our sin and mis­takes darken the world you’ve created,

It is still very good.

 

Each day spent with this earth, we hold pre­cious and beautiful.

In the morn­ing when we open our eyes

After your gift of a peace­ful night,

And at dusk as we lie down

After a day together in your presence,

We pray thanks­giv­ing for your walk­ing with us.

 

Hard and sud­den times of suf­fer­ing cross our lives,

Yet as they pass, we awaken,

Even dif­fi­cult moments cre­ate bits of beauty.

God, we want to live your cher­ished gift of life

In abun­dance and sharing.

Be with us in our every day-to-day.

Amen.

 

(“A prayer for peace” by Oh Sang-Yeul, Kim Eun-mi, and their sons Myeong and Gyeom writ­ten for wor­ship at Yeoul Church in Seoul, South Korea. Trans­lated by Cheryl Woelk.)

The lessons of a new language

Published on February 11, 2009 by Hinke Loewen-Rudgers. Closed

For the past cou­ple of weeks I’ve been absorb­ing as much Ara­bic as I can in 4 hours a day for 5 days a week. Lan­guage is an amaz­ing thing. It gives you a key to a cul­ture and has a way of hum­bling you like few other things. The minute I think that I’ve grasped a con­cept, a huge num­ber of excep­tions are intro­duced and that small amount of con­fi­dence I may have built flies out the win­dow. At the same time lan­guage learn­ing allows us to build rela­tion­ships with peo­ple. In those rela­tion­ships we are often the stu­dents while oth­ers are the teach­ers of vocab­u­lary, cus­tom, and cul­tural under­stand­ing. It is a unique oppor­tu­nity to take a respect­ful and appro­pri­ate stance in a new cul­ture of which we have lit­tle to no under­stand­ing. How many times to we as for­eign­ers enter a coun­try with a pre-set agenda and assump­tions of what a culture’s needs are? I think more often than we like to admit. I am find­ing that lan­guage learn­ing forces me to let go of all agen­das other than the fierce deter­mi­na­tion to inhale teach­ing as fast as it comes to me. And even that agenda is often thwarted as I real­ize that fierce deter­mi­na­tion does not keep me from hit­ting a men­tal wall.

Lan­guage is like an onion in that you dis­cover new lay­ers with even more fla­vor even when you think you’ve cut into the meat of it. It reminds me of read­ing the Bible con­tex­tu­ally and in a way true to the cul­ture of the day. The Old Tes­ta­ment is rich with lay­ers of mean­ing hid­den in the Hebrew text. How much we miss when we are lim­ited to read­ing the pas­sages in Eng­lish! At the same time how­ever we are assured that the truth of Scrip­tures tran­scends the lim­its of language.

As I plow my way slowly through this intrigu­ing lan­guage, I pray that God gives me the patience and humil­ity nec­es­sary to be a learner. And may we all have the same humil­ity and patience as we approach God’s Word dis­cov­er­ing its many layers.

Language of division

Published on February 11, 2009 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , .

Think­ing about lan­guage lately. Par­tic­u­larly with a class called “Lan­guage and Cul­ture,” I’ve been reflect­ing on people’s use of lan­guage and how that con­nects to our cul­tures. The fol­low­ing is an excerpt of what I wrote after read­ing a case study about a raid on ille­gal work­ers in the U.S. (If you search ‘Postville + immi­gra­tion raid’ you’ll find the full story). This type of lan­guage, though is not lim­ited to the United States. I hear this in Canada, in Korea, and I’m sure it exists in other coun­tries as well. War lan­guage even seeps into the church.

In times of fear, eco­nomic dif­fi­culty, and other hard­ships, I feel a ten­dency to turn inwards, look­ing out for one­self and pro­tect­ing a strong sense of ‘us.’ When I sense this inward-turning, I must pay atten­tion to how I use the word ‘us’ and who is included in ‘our’ and ‘we.’

“The cus­toms and val­ues of the cul­ture of war comes up fre­quently, whether sub­tly through com­pe­ti­tion in schools and work­places, or overtly in lan­guage and bud­gets. The rhetoric of ‘war on ter­ror’ and ‘war on immi­gra­tion’ leaves no space for argu­ment. The lan­guage of war is win or lose, good vs. evil, ‘us’ or ‘them.’ A cul­ture of war breeds divi­sion and vio­lence, and invites every­one to par­tic­i­pate in this pain…

Lan­guage both reflects and shapes cul­ture. Con­sci­en­tious objec­tors to the war on immi­gra­tion… refuse to use the lan­guage of war and draw lines of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ and expand ‘us’ to embrace all mem­bers of the com­mu­nity as neigh­bours. What if class­rooms, offices, places of wor­ship, homes, and com­mu­nity halls became places to actively look out for all of this ‘us?’ Per­haps see­ing ‘us’ in a new way might also cause a shift in lan­guage — from lan­guage that vil­i­fies and excludes, to lan­guage that human­izes and welcomes. ”

The Elusive No and the Critical Sermon

Published on February 10, 2009 by David Driedger. Closed Tags: , .

You can tell my wife that I am learn­ing to say no though I am not sure she would believe you.  I am just com­ing off two week­ends of youth retreats that I helped plan and speak at for Men­non­ite Church East­ern Canada.  Next week I am help­ing with Con­rad Grebel’s School for Min­is­ters where I will be offer­ing work­shop that I have yet to start.

The last two week­ends were won­der­ful and reward­ing.  I also look for­ward to what­ever I might come up with for this work­shop next week­end.  But after that I am look­ing for­ward to a long litany of nos.

In next week’s work­shop I offered to talk about crit­i­cal think­ing and cre­ative preach­ing.  The rea­son I said I would offer this is  because I believe that preach­ing can too eas­ily get soft or redun­dant.  I can remem­ber in my sem­i­nary homilet­ics class an under­grad­u­ate stu­dent who had to preach on Isa­iah 6 (I can’t remem­ber whether he had a choice or not).  All I can remem­ber from his ser­mon was the repeated use of the phrase “just awe­some”.  Each time he said the phrase he put feel­ing into awe­some.  I see now that he sim­ply did not have any tools to engage that pas­sage.  Now I need to be very clear in say­ing that I do not think preach­ers need to have any tools.  I think the very best ser­mons can come from sim­ple, patient, and reflec­tive read­ing of scrip­ture.  How­ever, most of us in the trade already have some tools and so why not learn some more.  In sem­i­nary we are taught bib­li­cal lan­guages and his­tor­i­cal con­texts.  Per­haps if we are lucky we get some insight­ful expo­sure to hermeneu­tics.  What I sus­pect most pas­tors in train­ing do NOT get is an under­stand­ing of how and why we think the way we do.

How many ser­mons have explored the cul­tural con­struc­tion of gen­der as par­tic­u­lar cat­e­gory for under­stand­ing humans?  How many ser­mons address the rea­son for the shift from object ori­ented truth to rela­tional truth?  How many ser­mons engage texts based on a lit­er­ary approach?  And more than this how many pas­tors take the time to read the texts that shaped our cul­tural per­spec­tives?  What I am really inter­ested in is show­ing the value in read­ing dif­fi­cult texts and that in doing so in con­ver­sa­tion with the Bible will yield increas­ingly nuanced and com­plex read­ings.  Per­haps this begins to go against what we often take as the ‘sim­plic­ity’ of the Gospel or of its ‘fool­ish­ness’ as the title of next week’s School for Min­is­ters implies.  I am how­ever not con­vinced that we need to aban­don com­plex­ity in order to embrace simplicity.

It is wad­ing through dense and dif­fi­cult texts that Fran­cis Landy moves past the ‘awe­some­ness’ of Isa­iah 6.  In an arti­cle he wrote that became impor­tant for my own work on Isa­iah Landy explores the lit­er­ary tech­niques employed in this chap­ter.  He demon­strates its extreme nature, the way it moves from the full­ness of God to the empti­ness of the world and how this tran­si­tion is con­nected by the para­dox of the cen­tral mes­sage of Isaiah,

9 [God] said, “Go and tell this peo­ple:
” ‘Be ever hear­ing, but never under­stand­ing;
be ever see­ing, but never perceiving.’

10 Make the heart of this peo­ple cal­loused;
make their ears dull
and close their eyes.
Oth­er­wise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
under­stand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”

From this read­ing Landy explains that cru­cial to God’s mes­sage espe­cially in the prophets and in the para­bles is the role of para­dox.  God’s word draws the audi­ence in places of uncer­tainty where mean­ing is only pos­si­ble in faith or in a pos­ture of recep­tion and can­not be con­trolled or con­fined.  In these places the word of God grows.  I see par­tic­u­lar streams of crit­i­cal the­ory as help­ing to open up the immen­sity of real­ity and this way demand­ing a type of simpil­icty and fool­ish­ness that is the nec­es­sary response of see­ing the com­plex and dense nature of life.

The Immigrant Preconception

Published on February 7, 2009 by Will Loewen. 5 Comments

My wife and I almost simul­ta­ne­ously got an inspi­ra­tion to begin writ­ing projects.  I had a spe­cific book idea but didn’t think I could actu­ally do it, while she had a sud­den burst of con­fi­dence that it was pos­si­ble but had no idea what to write about.  To help both of us along, we read a book about writ­ing books.

In Bird by Bird, by Anne Lam­otte, we found a num­ber of ideas that were help­ful to both of us.  For exam­ple, she says we should always expect our first drafts to suck.  She also writes that if you’re going to slan­der some­one, make it so crazy that they’ll never admit to rec­og­niz­ing them­selves in your fic­tional char­ac­ters.  There was one idea how­ever that was inspir­ing to my wife, but I could not bring myself to agree with.

She says that when you are writ­ing with fic­tional char­ac­ters, don’t set them up for your pre­con­ceived events.  Prac­ti­cally this makes sense because the flow of the story and all con­ver­sa­tions then becomes a lit­tle pre­dictable and insin­cere, but the idea of just writ­ing and see­ing where it goes sounds a lit­tle airy-fairy to me.  Also, if I couldn’t use my pre­con­ceived sto­ry­line and end­ing, I saw no point in writ­ing at all.

As a pas­tor, that’s all I did.  I would set up the story with the hope that some­one lis­ten­ing would see them­selves in one of the char­ac­ters and then be able to take some­thing out of it.  I got just enough com­pli­ments that I thought it was sorta working.

This past week­end I had to do the children’s story.  Now, kids get bored more eas­ily, so you have to ask ques­tions every now and then, even if it’s just yes or no ques­tions.  I thought I had put together a nice lit­tle story.  As an immi­grant here, I thought I could use myself as an illus­tra­tion and then close with a verse from 1 Peter about how as Chris­tians we’re all immi­grants and need to under­stand our iden­tity accord­ingly, etc., etc.  I even had some funny immi­grant sto­ries to show that some­times it isn’t all that bad, to tran­si­tion from my sto­ries of when it was really rough.  Before that I would ask them some opin­ion ques­tions about immi­grants and to start the whole thing off I’d ask some trivia ques­tions to intro­duce the idea.

I had essen­tially writ­ten this children’s story like I would often write ser­mons, that is, back­wards.  It’s as though I could con­struct a home run by run­ning back­wards around the bases.  Of course I wouldn’t be telling this if I hadn’t got­ten tripped up some­where.  I was going to ask what kind of lives immi­grants had and they were going to say ‘bad’.  Then a few kids who had trav­elled over­seas were going to tell about their dif­fi­cult times as ‘immi­grants’.  But they didn’t.  Then I asked another friend about when he was an immi­grant in Canada.  His sto­ries were all pos­i­tive.  That was strike three.  (Okay, no more base­ball metaphors.)  This left me stut­ter­ing as I tried to rebuild the flow of my story, and there was already some stut­ter­ing hap­pen­ing as this story was not being told in my first language.

In the end it didn’t mat­ter because the adults were pay­ing closer atten­tion than the kids, and they under­stood what I was talk­ing about.  The kids also liked my magic trick.  But I learned a les­son I thought I already knew, don’t ask kids ques­tions if you’ll only allow one answer.

Consumerism takes over

Published on February 6, 2009 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , .

There’s no get­ting away. How has such a beau­ti­ful thing as a cel­e­bra­tion of mar­riage become such a dis­gust­ing dis­play of money-making, com­mer­cial­ism, pride and greed? What hap­pened to the joy­ful covenant­ing of two peo­ple in com­mu­nity, rejoic­ing together and com­mit­ting to sup­port and nur­ture for each per­son present? How did that turn into a “wed­ding industry”?

I sup­pose it starts with not hav­ing a com­mu­nity. Peo­ple who don’t know each other, who come from all dif­fer­ent back­grounds, might feel uncom­fort­able, sud­denly gath­ered together. All they have in com­mon is some con­nec­tion to the bride or groom. With­out com­mu­nity, it becomes impor­tant to enter­tain the guests, make sure they feel com­fort­able, well-fed, and that the money they’ve spent on the bride and groom has been equally returned or more so.

I feel sad that the church has also often bought into this con­sumerist view of wed­dings. Try­ing to make the next one even big­ger and showier, spend­ing more and more on what is not impor­tant. The sta­tus quo has been rein­forced for so long, stuck in the same mind­set and expectations.

It was easy enough to crit­i­cize as a sin­gle per­son with no plans for a wed­ding in the near future. Now that I’m here, though, I strug­gle with the ques­tion of integrity. What does it look like to fol­low Jesus while plan­ning a wedding?

Spadina Rd

Published on February 6, 2009 by Dick Benner. Closed

Two things made me sad today. That seems like an awfully defin­i­tive way of clas­si­fy­ing my feel­ings, but I can say that two things made me sad on the very same block.

My day was really quite ordi­nary. I got up, orga­nized my day, went to school, taught some peo­ple Span­ish, went to the library, then went to the gym. In these few morn­ing hours I accom­plished more than I accom­plished on a daily basis in Man­agua, but I digress. As I was leav­ing the gym and walk­ing towards the sub­way sta­tion, I saw a man who broke my heart. This man was beg­ging for money. Nor­mally, I try and pre­tend that home­less peo­ple don’t exist, and on my bet­ter, more human, days, I give home­less peo­ple a smile and say good day to them. Once, when I had cook­ies I gave a home­less per­son some. I think that was more to do with the fact that I didn’t want the cook­ies in my house than the actual desire to help, but once again I digress. There was some­thing so beau­ti­ful and bro­ken about this man’s face that I almost started crying.

Then, a mere three feet away I saw a sign. Area under 24 hour sur­veil­lance. In our world today we are often under sur­veil­lance, so I was not actu­ally sur­prised or annoyed. But, this sign, com­bined with secu­rity guards and the fact that you have to sign in to enter the Jew­ish Com­mu­nity Cen­tre, made me sad. If I were any orga­ni­za­tion down­town, I would prob­a­bly have all these mea­sures in place, but the fact that a Jew­ish orga­ni­za­tion had them made me dou­bly sad. They prob­a­bly had real rea­son to want them. The prej­u­dice that they face/d is also reflected in the prac­ti­cally invis­i­ble nature of a cou­ple of syn­a­gogues I’ve seen, that just blend in with the houses around them in quiet res­i­den­tial areas.

I think that these feel­ings of sad­ness point to the fact that I am a sen­ti­men­tal per­son, capa­ble of feel­ing empa­thy with oth­ers. Some­times this empa­thy is good and some­times it makes life a lit­tle bit hard. And, if these thoughts merely stay in my head they can­not change me or oth­ers. So some­times, the feel­ing just isn’t enough.