17/06/2016
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg.
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Script
Good Morning and Ramadan Karim,<?xml:namespace prefix = "o" ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
I like to feel safe when I wake up, through my familiar routines. They’re just little things, finding my clothes, feeding the dog, taking my wife her tea.
They’re so small one takes them for granted, and takes it for granted that others can take them for granted too.
I was in Calais and Greece, where I met people who said they’d fled from violence so vicious that most of us cannot imagine what it must have been like to endure. I asked one man about his family: he raised an imaginary rifle and shot in every direction. He saw them murdered, and fled.
In Greece I watched exhausted refugees enter the camp where they were registered, prior to continuing a journey they hoped would lead them to the possibility of a future. All around were olive groves, making a disturbing contrast between the ancient, deeply-rooted trees and the uprooted exiles in their midst.
I went to the cemetery where the drowned lay buried. ‘Baby, no name,’ ‘Girl; no name’ read the small markers.
Yet, if my home was bombed week after week, I too would seek a better life for my children.
Can we bring peace to their countries so that they have homes once again? Can we create new, safe lives for such people, a chance to work, places at school, somewhere you have the little things which make you feel human?
It’s a challenge to our basic humanity and we urgently have to answer.
God, help us make the world a true home for all people.
Broadcast
- Fri 17 Jun 2016 05:43´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4