bysantinsk julhymn på arabiska

"Mellanösterns kristna är en av regionens sårbaraste och hårdast ansatta minoriteter. Pålitlig statistik finns inte, men en allt stridare ström rapporter talar om präster som mördas, kyrkobesökare som misshandlas, kristna kvinnor som trakasseras och våldtas för att de gått felklädda eller i fel kvarter, kyrkor och skolor som utsätts för attentat."

- Anders Strindberg, i en debattartikel i SVD.

Misa Criolla - Kyrie (Ariel Ramírez)

The River (on a street in Copenhagen)

eld II

(bild: Peter Petrelli i Heroes försöker kontrollera sina övermänskliga krafter)

Abba Lot kom till Abba Josef och sade till honom: "Jag utför min lilla tidebön, min lilla fasta, bönen, meditationen och stillheten så gott jag kan. Jag renar mina tankar. Vad mer kan jag göra?" Abban reste sig, räckte ut händerna mot himlen, och hans fingrar blev som tio brinnande lampor. "Om du vill", sade han, "kan du bli helt och hållet som eld."

från Ökenfädernas tänkespråk (Joesf av Panefo 7)

english:
Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, ‘Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?’

Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, ‘If you will, you can become all flame.’

eld

The World

A man from the town of Neguá, on the coast of Colombia,
could climb into the sky.

On his return, he described his trip.
He told how he had contemplated human life from on high.
He said we are a sea of tiny flames.

The world, he revealed,
is a heap of people, a sea of tiny flames.

Each person shines with his or her own light.
No two flames are alike.
There are big flames and little flames,
flames of every color.
Some people’s flames are so still
they don’t even flicker in the wind,
while others have wild flames that fill the air with sparks.
Some foolish flames neither burn nor shed light,
but others blaze with life so fiercely
that you can’t look at them without blinking
and if you approach, you shine in fire.

-Eduardo Galeano

avstånd

brusten avbild

"Prisons of finitude! Like every other being, man is born in many prisons. Soul, body, thought, intuition, endeavour: everything about him has a limit, is itself tangible limitation; everything is a This and a That, different from other things and shunned by them. From the grilled windows of the senses each person looks out to the alien things which he will never be... How far it is from one being to its closest neighbor! And even if they love each other and wave to one another from island to island, even if they attempt to exchange solitudes and pretend they have unity, how much more painfully does disappointment then fall upon them when they touch the invisible bars - the cold glass pane against which they hurl themselves like captive birds. No one can tear down his own dungeon; no one can know who inhabits the next cell... Beings are alien to one another, even if they do stand beautifully by one another and complement one another like colors, like water and stone, like sun and fog: even if they do communally perfect the resounding harmony of the universe... The limpid mirror has been shattered, infinite image has been shattered over the face of the world, the world has become a heap of fragments. But every single splinter remains precious, and from each fragment there flashes a ray of the mystery of its origin."

- Hans Urs von Balthasar (Heart of the World, s. 19-20)