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Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Farewell dear Friend! Alistair Cooke went home to God today, from his home in New York. For years, I for one, listened, every week, Alistair reading his 15 minutes long "Letter from America". 
I enjoyed his british accent, almost "Kings' English", gently ironical, loving, intelligent, wise, as he commented, (as if a little out of breath especially of late) the realities of America and the world, enmeshed in each other for better and for worse. In our Apartheid ghettoe years, in our South African situation, Alistair enlightened us, albeit indirectly, about the meaning of our own struggle for liberation in our beloved country, about the pitfalls to avoid, the risks to take and the inevitable victory in the end! Go to BBC site and you'll find much about Alistair Cooke's life and work. I just wanted to add my grateful voice to thank him for inspiring, enlightening me, and others, year in and year out. Farewell, Friend! How close you are to Yeshua! Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Oscar Romero This Good News rooted Man of God, this Spirit of Freedom driven Good Shepherd, was shot dead, on March 24th 1980. The Salvadoran people are Romero's own prophecy about his death now fulfilled -- "If they kill me, I will rise again in the Salvadoran people." This had been Good News to the poor of El Salvador -- to hear someone pronounce their reality, to name the causes of their suffering, to denounce the injustice, to speak to their hopes and help them believe that it was right and good to believe that these hopes should be realized in this world -- that indeed this was at the heart of the meaning of the incarnation of Jesus Christ. 
Yet the powers that be were, as they are today, deaf to Jesus Good News. They felt, as they feel today, threatened! Tolle! Like Jesus, Romero was to die! The years following his death, Oscar Romero became truly incarnated in the lives, the sufferings and the hopes of the believing poor of El Salvador. His spirit guides them, strengthens them, encourages them, comforts them. He is their "Monseñor" in every facet of their lives -- in the streets and villages, in the countryside and in the fields, as they face the bombing and repression during the war, as they now try to keep their communities together or build them anew, as they reflect on the gospel, as they give birth to their children and as they bury their dead. 
Twenty four years later, the Salvadoran people know and believe, as we do in Switzerland and anywhere else in the world of the "little people", that the Spirit of their beloved Romero, one with Jesus life giving Spirit, is at work, simply because the struggle for a more just society goes on and on and on! Resurrection is a doing word! The bread is truly rising! Monday, March 15, 2004
And Yeshua in all this? Thursday 11th March 2004 : a massive, coordinated terror strike on Madrid's commuter train. To this day more than 200 dead and many more wounded. To-morrow another strike elsewhere... another war elsewhere... A wind of fear sweeps the northern hemisphere. More security urgently needed, more locks, more chains and more walls… to protect "who against who"? That is the question. Yeshua, God made Man in the Middle East region, so a "native Middle Eastern person… rather amber coloured skin, who spoke aramaic words of freedom and love". His prophetic life span and message "arise from the same earth as have the traditions of Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters". If we, fear-filled so called Christian Westerners, would accept this fact, we "could overcome centuries of mistrust and tragedies". Muslims and Christians standing together, sharing the space our tiny planet allows us. To be. Even today. We so need to build "bridges of meaning" to meet one another in the open. All security measures being then superfluous… So help us God "made Man in Yeshua and in each one of us". 
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