Saturday, February 18, 2006
Decade to Overcome Violence
Today's plenary session at the World Council of Churches focused on the WCC initiative the Decade to Overcome Violence, lasting from 2001-2010. There were many workshops and events today on peacemaking and nonviolence, and it has been a powerful discussion, a very different one when you are sitting face to face with people who live every day in the midst of war.
There is also a another powerful display set up here in the hallways of one of the buildings where meetings are held. It is a room set up like a typical Western-style home, but throughout it there is information about another violence, domestic violence. There you learn that worldwide, women between the ages of 16 and 45 are more likely to be injured or killed by their own partner or a close relative, than through war or terrorism.
Again and again here, we are renewed in our faith, and we are called to remember that our faith means nothing if we do not live out the meaning behind the words. Faith is meant to be lived, and practiced, and renewed. Faith is meant to respond to the violence of the world and overcome it, to transform our lives and the lives of our neighbors.
There is also a another powerful display set up here in the hallways of one of the buildings where meetings are held. It is a room set up like a typical Western-style home, but throughout it there is information about another violence, domestic violence. There you learn that worldwide, women between the ages of 16 and 45 are more likely to be injured or killed by their own partner or a close relative, than through war or terrorism.
Again and again here, we are renewed in our faith, and we are called to remember that our faith means nothing if we do not live out the meaning behind the words. Faith is meant to be lived, and practiced, and renewed. Faith is meant to respond to the violence of the world and overcome it, to transform our lives and the lives of our neighbors.
# posted by Petra : 3:51 PM
