Advent Reflections
Each day in Advent, you will receive an email from St. Barnabas with words and images to invite your engagement with the season’s themes of longing and hope, preparation and expectation, listening and silence. Many of the images will not be traditional “religious” art. Advent calls us to notice the signs of God in unexpected places.
 
We invite you to prayerfully contemplate the images and absorb the words. Consider returning to them at various times during the day, letting them speak into the moment. Perhaps you will hear a word meant just for you.  

December 4th, 2019
Banksy, graffiti on the Palestinian side of the Barrier Wall in Bethlehem, 2005.
Bansky, trompe-l’oeil on the Palestinian side of the Barrier Wall, 2005.
The Scriptures for Advent are full of images of great reversals––parched lands gush with water, deserts become flowery meadows, the blind see, the lame dance, the prisoners go free and the mourners laugh. The seeming inevitabilities of the fallen world are no match for divine surprise. Just so, the artists who turned the separation wall between Israel and Palestine into a billboard of hope would make Isaiah’s heart sing.

And then all that has divided us will merge
And then compassion will be wedded to power
And then softness will come to a world that is harsh and unkind
And then both men and women will be gentle
And then both women and men will be strong
And then no person will be subject to another's will
And then all will be rich and free and varied
And then the greed of some will give way to the needs of many
And then all will share equally in the Earth's abundance
And then all will care for the sick and the weak and the old
And then all will nourish the young
And then all will cherish life's creatures
And then all will live in harmony with each other and the Earth
And then everywhere will be called Eden once again.

                                                           –– Judy Chicago
JR, Face2Face , 2007. 
The French artist photographed Israelis and Palestinians who live on either side of the separation barrier in Bethlehem, and displayed their images on both sides. These people would normally be neighbors, and many found it hard to tell who were Palestinian and who were Israeli.