re:bott:le

I hate to say this, but in many ways I’m glad I’m not responsible for worship leadership this coming Sunday morning. I’ve been watching colleagues – both in The United Church of Canada and in a variety of other denominations – struggle with what to do on this 10th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Centre’s twin towers and on the Pentagon in the United States, and the deaths that arose from those attacks.

I’m glad I’m not leading worship, because I know that there are people who want to commemorate that day.

I struggle because, as terrible as it was, and as horrendous the deaths of all those children, women and men and the grief that their families and friends live is… it is one drop in the ocean of death caused by humankind’s ability to hate those who are Other.

In my lifetime (1968 to now):
Between 1.5 and 3 million people were killed in the Cambodian Genocide.
Between 500,000 and 1 million people were killed in the Rwandan Genocide.
Between 176,000 and 400,000 people were killed in the Darfur conflict.
Massacres of Hutus by Tutsis and Tutsis by Hutus (approximately 150,000) in Burundi.
Between 26,000 and 3 million people in East Pakistan/Bangladesh.
Between 20,000 and 80,000 people in Equatorial Guinea.
Between 18,000 and 183,000 people in East Timor.
Between 9,000 and 30,000 people in Argentina.
Between 7,500 and 8,000 people in Srebrenica.
Between 2,000 and 70,000 people of the Falun Gong in China.

And how about the actual, declared wars, during my lifetime:
Second Congo War – between 3.8 and 5.4 million people killed.
Vietnam War – between 2.6 and 6.0 million people killed.
Second Sudanese Civil War – between 1 and 2 million people killed.
Iran-Iraq War – between 500,000 and 2 million people killed.

And let’s not forget…
the Iraq War – between 98,000 and 654,000 people killed;
the War in Afghanistan – approximately 25,000 people killed.

And, yeah, I know that getting numbers from Wikipedia doesn’t always work, but if the numbers are even one-tenth of what they show, they would boggle the mind.

This, of course, doesn’t include deaths caused by famine, by economic policies, by climate change.

Or by crime.

Will I remember take a moment a lift up a prayer for the children, the men and the women who died on 9/11/2001? Of course, I will.

But I’ll do it in it’s context of all death that is caused by our human inability to live with, to love, and to lift up our neighbour.