Pete Tobias

In maelstrom of war and destruction, inhumanity and suffering our world no doubt see in coming week, let us seek peace in ourselves. 8/4/24

In this time of hatred and brutality I think we need a story to remind us human kindness. This is ancient tale who's origin attributed to variety of cultures, Egyptian, Arabic, Roman, Jewish... It doesn't really matter. The uncertainty of its root shows its universality of its message.

Can this really be happening? Are we really in the verge of another war in Europe? The war to end all wars ended just over a 100 years ago, and yet was followed by another, just 2 decades later. Once again it would seems the sky above the continent is about to fill with latest weaponry. Humanities creativity focused on ever more ingenuous way of wrecking destruction and death on other human beings.

One Day, that’s the theme of this year’s holocaust memorial day observed from January 27th every year. One day probably in the not too distant future, there will be no one left to tell the first hands their harrowing story, of how they survived horrors of Nazi death camps. One day it would be left to us and future generations to imaging scenes that are impossible to imagine, the unthinkable cruelty and brutality of humanity in its most inhumane.

Today is twelfth day of Christmas, known in many Christian tradition as Epiphany. It’s the time when many children in Scotland returning to school. And that reminded an occasion almost 30 years ago, when I was working in the school when there was astonishing mixture of backgrounds and cultures, marinate our assembly every Tuesday morning. So 27 years ago Tuesday 6th January, the Rabi got up to explain the significance of Epiphany to 200 non-christian children. I probably said something about the 3 wisemen completing their journey, bringing their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Last week thanks for the organised festival by the Lunar calendar, it was festival of Hanukkah, it usually falls close parallel to Xmas, but this year it started at November. Like for many winter festivals Hanukkah is a festival of lights. For lights grow longer and darkness along with the chill seeps into diminishing daylight hours, life always seems a little gloomier and somehow more daunting.

One of the guest at prayer vigil in Glasgow St George Square at start of COP26 was a Ginkgo tree carried out there all the way on foot, from Southwest England. Introduced to the present as belonging to a species that could be trace back 290 million years. Its ancestors predating human beings on this planet, at time when no footprint on earth, be they dinosaur, human, or carbon.