January 4, 2026.
Dear Friends,
We will gather together remotely for our Badaliya and Peace Islands Institute faith sharing on Sunday, January 4 2025 from 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm. Please join us on Zoom, or in spirit, as we encourage Inter-faith relations and pray together that the New Year inspires the hearts and minds of those perpetrators of violence to be transformed from revenge-seekers into peace-seekers. Let us pray that the root causes of the many humanitarian crises in our world leading to so much trauma and human suffering be addressed. We are especially mindful of the dilemma of diminishing numbers of Christians due to the occupation, oppressive restrictions, and war and violence facing the "living stones", witnesses to 2000 years of Christian presence in Bethlehem and throughout the Holy Lands. May we turn our prayers into action as the increase of natural disasters due to human caused climate change all over the world is destroying too many lives, along with the earth we are privileged to share with them.
Christians around the world are coming to the final major feast days of the Christmas season. Today is the Feast of the Epiphany and next week-end we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord that heralds the beginning of the ministry of Jesus throughout the Galilee and the Jordan valley and Jerusalem. Today's feast tells the story found in the Gospel according to Matthew (2:1-12) of Astronomers from the East following a star that leads them to the sight of the birth of a holy child named Jesus, born in a manger, since in Bethlehem "there was no place in the Inn." Mary and Joseph had sought refuge in the lower part of the traditional Palestinian house at the time that protected the animals at night from the cold while the upper floor was the living space for the family. It is here, in a manger, that we are told that Mary gave birth to her son that we celebrate each year at Christmas.
Today, we are told of Astronomers, that the Gospel calls Magi, travelling an enormous distance guided by a star because they have had a vision of a special child being born into the Hebrew culture. This is a story of strangers, foreigners "from the East", arriving dressed as royalty and bearing gifts that foretell the future story of this newborn child, as yet not revealed. There is much to reflect on the potential meanings of this story in light of the state of our world today. This is a story in graphic terms that is telling us who God is and who we are. It is the very beginning of the all-inclusive nature of Divine Love that this child would one day model for the world. Our story today is of strangers, foreigners "from the East" arriving to worship this child. Everyone, from the lowliest shepherds to the most majestic are welcome in this story. There is no one excluded, no strangers seen as "alien" in this universal message of new life. When we recognize this experience of all-inclusiveness in our Christian story of the Magi, being led by a star to the birthplace of the human/divine child Jesus in Bethlehem, our sense of our feast of the Epiphany takes on a more authentic feeling of a true Revelation, the manifestation of the Divine born into our human life that will profoundly change the course of human history.
Although Muslims do not have a particular holy day called Epiphany, the life transforming experience of epiphany is very much a part of the tradition, especially in the spiritual experience of Sufism. Sufi mysticism, Tajalli, meaning manifestation or revelation, is defined by the spiritual seeker's sudden sense of Divine reality that has a life-altering effect on the person. For example, a profound sense of Divine beauty or truth felt deeply in one's heart. The most well-known example in Islam is found in Surah Al-Alaq that describes the first revelation of the Qur'anic verses to the Prophet Muhammad. Entering into an intentional contemplative spiritual practice can lead the spiritual seeker to experience a kind-of internal purification from the world's cultural and social demands, opening the mind and heart to receive a larger perspective of the Oneness of the Divine or the recognition of the Divine nature of all of creation. This practice is called Dikhr, or remembrance. It speaks to the universality of our human potential for spiritual enlightenment that can dramatically transform our lives. This openness to the Divine Spirit in our lives is what Louis Massignon described as a profound sense of hospitality.
Anyone who has travelled to the Middle East has surely had the experience of Middle Eastern hospitality. As a stranger being welcomed into a shop on the streets of Nazareth and served a steaming cup of hot tea and Palestinian pastry or invited into the home of a Muslim Turkish family in Istanbul and treated to a home cooked delicious Middle Eastern meal. That cultural norm of gracious hospitality became one of the foundations of Louis Massignon's spiritual experiences. The founder of the Badaliya spent many years immersed in the Islamic world discovering his own Catholic spiritual roots through his experience of the welcome and protection he received by his Muslim friends that became for him a sign of the nature of the Divine; unconditionally in love with all of humanity and creation in all of its diversity. This experience led him to envision hospitality as one of the central themes in his own spiritual journey. As we enter into a new year, it is a good time to return to the foundations of the Badaliya vision of interfaith engagement especially in light of the on-going divisions in our world.
Have we ever noticed that the scene set before us of three strangers appearing at a distance from the tent of Abraham in the Book of Genesis is set again for us in the Book of Matthew of the three Magi's arrival in Bethlehem? Massignon called these "correspondences", that enhance our spiritual experience. His vision of the Biblical figure of Abraham, the great Patriarch of all three monotheistic faith traditions, was based in part on the foundational story in the Book of Genesis of the excessive hospitality shown by Abraham to these three strangers, foreigners, who appeared in the desert. (Genesis 12:1-3)
These messengers of Divine promises were welcomed and treated to a great feast, an example of traditional Middle Eastern hospitality. They were then revealed as angels sent by the Divine as they too, like the Magi of our Gospel story today, came with a special gift for the future; a fulfilment of the Divine promise made to Abraham that he would be the father of descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, despite the reality that his wife Sarah was unable to conceive. To ensure that he would have a son to inherit his property, Sarah had given her maidservant Hagar to Abraham, and Ishmael was his first-born son. Now we find that Sarah too would give birth to Isaac. The end of these two stories of hospitality to strangers, is the Divine promise, the blessing of all people on earth through Abraham. The promise is fulfilled in two lines of a vast number of descendants through both Ishmael and Isaac. It is through Isaac's descendants that the birth of Jesus came about. Massignon's vision of all the children of Abraham as siblings, brothers and sisters belonging to these "three Abrahamic faith traditions", is the foundation of Massignon's Badaliya. The story always begins with hospitality. Our openness to receiving the Divine Word into our hearts and minds.
May we begin this New Year 2026, by embracing the image of Middle Eastern hospitality by a promise to welcome the strangers, the refugees and asylum seekers in our midst who are desperate for a safe home to raise their children. May we overcome our tribal need to demonize or denigrate others as a result of our exaggerated fears of other religions, races and national identities. And may our shared faith traditions guide us throughout the New Year and beyond.
Let us pray: "God of the nations, have mercy on our divided world. Countries burdened with age-old hatreds struggle to heal wounds that would destroy them. Bless the women and men who serve as mediators. Heal and encourage those who continue to suffer the ravages of war. Teach us all how to be instruments of your peace, radiating your love to the ends of the earth."
Peace to you and may you be blessed with good health in the New Year.
Dorothy
See www.dcbuck.com for all past letters to the Badaliya and Peace Islands