Peace Prayers

The Week Before Christmas

Sunday, December 18th: Stay up till 4am writing a paper at Butler Library on campus for my class "Theories of Peace."

Monday, December 19th: First day of the NYC Transit Union Strike. Stay home all day writing the paper for my class. 7pm - There's a fire in my apartment building. My sister, her dog and I run out of the building knocking on doors to get people out. When the firemen come they can't get the fire hydrant to work. I think I'm going to lose everything. But thankfully, some guys upstairs form a water line and pass buckets to the burning apartment and put it out. The fire was started by a drug addict, high on weed, who flicked his doobie into a trash can and started the fire ... Ironically, my sister and brother and law saw him later that night. His feet, hands and face were still smudged black from all the soot in his apartment when he came out into the hall with an unlit joint in his mouth and asked them, "Got a match?" Dumbstruck, they both said, "No, we don't smoke." I continue working on paper till ...

Tuesday, December 20th: Day 2 of the NYC Transit Union Strike. 5am - I send my paper "A Theory of Balkan Peace," to my professor. 8am - I hear from one of my contacts in Serbia that they would rather be quoted anonymously in my paper. So, I work on it and resend the paper to my professor. Along with my professor, I send the paper to a few friends and another person I quoted in the paper, Jim Forest (Secretary, Orthodox Peace Fellowship). 4pm - Jim Forest writes back to let me know he read the paper and immediately contacted the General Secretary of the European Council of Churches to recommend that they resume their role of pressing for inter-religious dialog in the Balkans (one of the strategies for peace proposed in my paper). He then asked if he could send a copy of the paper to the General Secretary guy! I was totally overwhelmed. I responded, "Well, ... yeah." -- only a little more formal -- "I'm honored by your request. Yes, you have my permission to send him the paper. 7pm - Start second big final paper for my class, "History and Reconciliation".

Wednesday, December 21st: Day 3 of the NYC Transit Union Strike. 10amish - A gathering of all the NYC Unions holds a news conference informing the NYC public that they stand with the TUW. The reason the workers went on strike is the MTA tried to pull an illegal move by putting the issue of pensions on the table when dealing with an individual union. By traditional law, when the city makes deals like that they must deal with all the unions - not just one. 3pm - I continue to work on my paper, in between a bunch of emails from good friends ;p. 12:08am - I finish the paper, "Balkan Historical Commissions: The Role of Religion in Reparations Politics," and send it to my professor, Elazar Barkan.

Thursday, December 22nd: TUW announces the end of the Transit Strike! The Subway will be up and running tomorrow! Yay! I can leave Washington Heights and go Christmas Shopping! 12pmish - Work on lesson plan write up of curriculum for "Encounter Point," (a documentary about Palestinian and Israeli Peacemakers in Israel). 2am - finish and send it in to the Curriculum team leader.

Friday, December 23rd: Ride the 1 line, go shopping, go to Starbucks ;p, go to campus and take pictures, listen to the general sounds of New York, like a guy talking to a car going by saying "Hey, I got your parking spot right here! It's just 30 million dollars! 6pm - Write sketches for InterVarsity Christian Fellowships' Atlanta '05 Conference. 11pm - get picked up by family, drive down to Absecon for Christmas holidays.

Christmas is the celebration of the day GOD BROKE THROUGH SPACE AND TIME TO reverse the curse of the Fall. Christmas is about God taking a world spinning out of control and saying "Peace, be still and know that I am God."

Saturday, December 24th (Christmas Eve): I'm sitting in my parent's family room, surrounded by family. My nephew-in-law is home from two tours of duty in Iraq and we're so happy to be together. I look back on my life... on the last year and I'm so grateful for God's redemption. He is good... very good.

May you Jesus give you a strong sense of his presence, his goodness, his works of redemption in your life and in our world this Christmas.
Peace & Joy This Christmas,
Lisa

(pictured: Sister Renee' and Brother-in-law Andy, their daughter Allanah, My dad, me and my mom. More family came later in the evening.)

Allanah close up. I couldn't resist ;p.

posted by Lisa Sharon Harper @ 11:23 PM