December 7, 2025.
Dear Friends,
We will gather together remotely for our Badaliya and Peace Islands Institute faith sharing on Sunday, December 7, 2025 from 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm. Please join us on Zoom, or in spirit, as we encourage Inter-faith relations and pray together that the fragile ceasefire in Gaza leads to an end to two years of destruction, displacement, killing, maiming and starvation of Palestinians and finally addresses the Israeli occupation in the Palestinian territories that is the root cause of so much human suffering. Our hearts continue to be broken by the images of children dying of starvation in Gaza, the Sudan and Afghanistan and the many humanitarian crises in our world. May there be an end to all International complicity to war in the Middle East, an end to war in the Ukraine and the civil war in the Sudan where an earthquake has also caused devastating loss of homes and lives. We wait with hope for a peaceful transition to democracy in Syria as they negotiate with the diverse factions throughout the country after a long civil war. Our prayers are on-going for all the victims of human-created violence and for the many courageous first responders and humanitarian aid workers who seek to help them. May the hearts and minds of those perpetrators of violence be transformed from revenge-seeking to peace-seeking. May we turn our prayers into action as the increase of natural disasters due to human caused climate change all over the world is destroying too many lives, along with the earth we are privileged to share with them.
Christians have begun the four week season of Advent. It is meant to be a time of quiet preparation and waiting with patience as we take the time to reflect more deeply on our own experience of what the coming commemoration of Christmas actually means. We are waiting for a child to be born into our world who will change the course of human history and continues to challenge a world that seems intent on succumbing to destructive radical ideologies that we once thought were long overcome by a more rational and humane human consciousness. The readings in the liturgy today invite Christians to ask themselves. "What did the people go out into the desert to see? A reed blowing in the wind? Or did they hear a great prophetic voice calling them there with a Divine message that they needed to hear?"
"John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus, appeared in the desert crying out to the Israelite people "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand!" ... I am baptizing you with water for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire." ( Matthew 3: 1-12)
The stories in Christian scriptures and the Qur'an about John the Baptist known as Yahya in Islam, are very similar, linking Yahya to his cousin Jesus (Issa). The Prophet Yahya is mentioned five times in the Qur'an and his miraculous birth, in answer to the prayers of his aging father Zachariah, seen as a gift from God along with the exceptional wisdom he received even as a child. The Qur'an declares that the prophet Yahya was blest with peace on the day of his birth, the day he died and rose again. The Prophet Muhammad is given a vision of the afterlife on his miraculous Night Journey known as al Isra' wal-Mi'raj. (Isra' means to make someone walk, to travel at night and Mi'raj means ascending, like a ladder. On this miraculous night journey the Prophet Muhammad is said to have met previous Prophets including the prophet Yahya. He is revered as being sent to guide the children of Israel who were seen to have lost their way. Thus both of our communities of faith are called to respond to the call to repentance in the Gospel along with our modern day Israeli friends.
In light of the on-going suffering that continues to traumatize innocent lives all over the world and the ever-widening economic gap between a minority of politically powerful billionaires and the injustices that create more and more poverty in the world such as the war sin Gaza and the Ukraine, we are reminded of a history that is long forgotten. Avrum Burg wrote:
"But this is not only an Israeli story. The 1990s appeared to herald a new age of optimism, a true end to the horrors of the twentieth century and the dawn of a new historical era. Walls fell, agreements were signed, and the West believed that history was aligning with a single, rational political and economic model, its own. Francis Fukuyama captured the spirit of the time when he wrote of the “end of history.” It seemed that the ideological struggle was over, that liberal democracy was the ultimate expression of human reason ..... It was an illusion. The West read the collapse of communism as a victory for rationality and individual freedom, ignoring the many heads of the hydra still lurking in the dark. Fundamentalism, fanaticism, separatism, ignorance, and populism were waiting for their hour." (Avrum Burg's substack November 1, 2025.)
During these silent weeks of Advent our readings paint a different, more hopeful picture that heralds the possibility that this year the cries of the newborn Divine child will give birth to that new historical era devoid of "fundamentalism, fanaticism, separatism, ignorance, and populism". Listen to the Prophet Isaiah:
"On that day a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom. The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and strength.... Then the wolf shall be the guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion shall browse together with a little child to guide them. ...There shall be no harm or ruin on my holy mountain for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the Lord, as water covers the sea." (Book of the Prophet Isaiah 11: 1-10)
And should the earth be filled with the "knowledge of the Lord" would that not mean that the Divine Word has the power to transform our fragile human weaknesses from revenge and power seekers into seekers of dignity, equity and justice for all people on this planet? Would it not mean that we do have the ability to fulfill those promises of the 1990's? And even more, to address the threat to life on earth of human created climate change with the great gifts of human ingenuity and modern technology that we have been given, rather than continuing to increase the military industrial complex that inevitably will lead to the destruction of the Divine gift of all life on earth?
This season of Advent calls us to reflect on these realities confronting us in our world, to remember that the "Lord hears the cry of the poor" and that we are mandated to respond with all the Love of Divine compassion and mercy that we can offer.
Peace to you and a blessed Christmas Season,
Dorothy
See www.dcbuck.com for all past letters to the Badaliya and Peace Islands