Sabine Lichtenfels - in the Name of Grace
To all Peaceworkers,
yesterday was my 55th birthday. I thank all friends who take part in my spiritual and political path of healing and who have supported me to this day. This coming year I will deepen the question of what it means to regain fully the certainty of faith. The certainty of possible healing, the certainty of inner change which is capable of have a global healing effect.
We are a „light for the peoples“ Martin Buber wrote about the Jews in 1952. Not everyone is able to speak to this figure of light within ourselves, the figure of light of a person or a people? Is this not the deeper message of Jesus?
Those who beginn at this point will feel the radical change we are all challenged with if we want to create healing. There is no one else we can hold responsible for this. It is up to us. Buber goes far in his formulation: „Only an inner revolution can have the power to heal our people of its grueling illness of unfounded hatred. Inevitably it will cause our complete downfall. Only then, both young and old in our country will recognise how big their responsibility is for the misery (of the arab refugees).“ It concerns us all. We will all have to be ready to let something die within ourselves so that the „new“ can be truly born.
If we do want for something quite new to arise within ourselves, then something old within us has to die. During these Christmas days, Bethlehem with all our Palestinian friends, was very close to me, in fact, all of our global friends who lead their lives under much more difficult conditions than we do here were very close to me. I greet them all from afar and promise that I will continue to even more deeply dedicate my life to the question of how our contribution to the healing of the Earth has to look like.
I wish you all a blessed, pensive and active New Year. As a text of empowerrment I send you an excert from the book „GRACE – Pilgrimage for a future without War“ from the chapter „Visit to the Settlers“.
Text of Empowerment: An awakening to a greater kind of human being
From: Sabine Lichtenfels: „GRACE – Pilgrimage for a future without War“, Meiga Publishing, 2005
No one can hide it, each one of us breathes with relief that we have now left the West Bank. At the same time we are very conscious of the injustice since the inhabitants of the West Bank do not enjoy the same privileges as we do. They have to stay permanently there in the situation which we as guests shared with them only for ten days. What quickly became too much for us is their everyday life. How can we ever give them advice? No, we can only share, perceive and help where it is possilbe for us to do so. Help through self-change, help by addressing the sick part of the side from where we have come. The one side can only heal when the whole is healing. It is not a part that is ill. It is the whole that is ill. On the one side of the wall the illness has become obvious, on the other it is there wanting in its latency to enter consciousness in order to heal.
A feeling bests us so as if we had to leave a loved-one. This time the loved-one is not a person but a whole country with its customs, its living habits, with its beauty and its urgent call for help. It leaves behind a feeling of sadness but also of determination to do something for all those whom we have to leave behind on the other side. We want to tell the world what we have seen We want to talk about the humanity and the beauty we have seen. We want to talk about humanity and the the beatuy which we have experienced inthe West Bank but also about the infinite sadness, of the anger and about being neglected and left alone. How many people in the Western world are afraid of being left alone? Could not then many of them be healed if they were to decide to no longer leave alone those who need us so urgently? True love does not run away when things are getting difficult. It is precisely here that love abides it presence and healing power loking for the channels of self-realisation.“
Sentence of Empowerment: True love does not run away when things are getting difficult.
With best wishes
Sabine Lichtenfels