PAKISTAN BLOG: Pentecost in Pakistan
junio 4th, 2009
in:
CPTnet
4 June 2009
PAKISTAN BLOG: Pentecost in Pakistan
by Gene Stoltzfus
[Note: The following reflection by CPT Director Emeritus Gene Stoltzfus has been edited for length and clarity. People wishing to see the original piece will find it at http://peaceprobe.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/pentecost-in-pakistan-minorities-and-majorities/]
This past week I attended a gathering here in Islamabad called Minorities Solidarity Convention, an event that recalls deeply rooted threads of unity in the diversity of this region. Christians here are now in the season of Pentecost, when they remember how the diversity of their ethnicities at the very outset melted into unity. Â
This year my walk in Pakistan during Pentecost Sunday brings together threads of the ancient and modern world. At Pentecost, as described in the Book Of Acts, the divine was integrated into one place among people of many languages and whose memories of ancient conflicts were rife. That Pentecost gathering 2000 years ago was an event that united the people from throughout an empire around the mysteries that make for unity. The outpouring of the Spirit happened at their gathering in Jerusalem—a tinderbox city of fanaticism, oppression, gossip, armed forces, secret weapons, and calls for insurgency. There was great potential for division, and violence. Instead, unity broke out in the midst of all the potential for stupidity. At the Pentecost gathering, people understood each other despite the boundaries created by long held suspicions and ethnicity.
Today the peoples of this region hold tightly to their separate visions and boundaries, many of which were fashioned in an earlier age of empire. The incomplete business of unity is revealed everywhere in violence, terror, and insurgency. I really need to remember Pentecost this year in Pakistan where the friction of divisive convictions, some devoid of a single thread of compromise, threaten neighbourhoods, villages, cities, and nations. I am in a place where local military forces and a big imperial army with faceless weapons and intelligence operatives are poised to make things come out right.
But I am also in a place where people seeking fairness, unity, justice, and peace are finding ways to listen, act, report, organize, and live out the better vision. Creating space for minorities is a sign of this vision. There are hints of resolution in the mysterious Spirit that nudges toward truth, if the battalions marching through this place, which has been the site of so many invasions, can be sent away. There are brave people here. Some days they are tired. Some may die because of their words and actions. So on this Pentecost I pray that the decimated villages of Swat and the car bombs of Lahore are not punctuation marks along the way to destruction of this once glorious Indus Valley. I pray that these are the last days of reckoning before a new unity in which people who hardly talk now, will soon sing a new song together.
4 June 2009
PAKISTAN BLOG: Pentecost in Pakistan
by Gene Stoltzfus
[Note: The following reflection by CPT Director Emeritus Gene Stoltzfus has been edited for length and clarity. People wishing to see the original piece will find it at http://peaceprobe.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/pentecost-in-pakistan-minorities-and-majorities/]
This past week I attended a gathering here in Islamabad called Minorities Solidarity Convention, an event that recalls deeply rooted threads of unity in the diversity of this region. Christians here are now in the season of Pentecost, when they remember how the diversity of their ethnicities at the very outset melted into unity. Â
This year my walk in Pakistan during Pentecost Sunday brings together threads of the ancient and modern world. At Pentecost, as described in the Book Of Acts, the divine was integrated into one place among people of many languages and whose memories of ancient conflicts were rife. That Pentecost gathering 2000 years ago was an event that united the people from throughout an empire around the mysteries that make for unity. The outpouring of the Spirit happened at their gathering in Jerusalem—a tinderbox city of fanaticism, oppression, gossip, armed forces, secret weapons, and calls for insurgency. There was great potential for division, and violence. Instead, unity broke out in the midst of all the potential for stupidity. At the Pentecost gathering, people understood each other despite the boundaries created by long held suspicions and ethnicity.
Today the peoples of this region hold tightly to their separate visions and boundaries, many of which were fashioned in an earlier age of empire. The incomplete business of unity is revealed everywhere in violence, terror, and insurgency. I really need to remember Pentecost this year in Pakistan where the friction of divisive convictions, some devoid of a single thread of compromise, threaten neighbourhoods, villages, cities, and nations. I am in a place where local military forces and a big imperial army with faceless weapons and intelligence operatives are poised to make things come out right.
But I am also in a place where people seeking fairness, unity, justice, and peace are finding ways to listen, act, report, organize, and live out the better vision. Creating space for minorities is a sign of this vision. There are hints of resolution in the mysterious Spirit that nudges toward truth, if the battalions marching through this place, which has been the site of so many invasions, can be sent away. There are brave people here. Some days they are tired. Some may die because of their words and actions. So on this Pentecost I pray that the decimated villages of Swat and the car bombs of Lahore are not punctuation marks along the way to destruction of this once glorious Indus Valley. I pray that these are the last days of reckoning before a new unity in which people who hardly talk now, will soon sing a new song together.
