Jeg ble kjent med misjonsorganisasjonen Frontiers på en misjonskonferanse i Tyskland for en del år siden. Nå har denne pionerorganisasjonen etablert seg i Norge, med min gode venn, Roar Haldorsen Strat som daglig leder. Frontiers, som ble etabert i 1982 har sitt fokus på å plante menigheter i den muslimske verden. De har over 150 team som arbeider i mer enn 40 land.
Utfordringen ble med å nå den muslimske verden med evangeliet er stor. En femtedel av verdens befolkning, eller omtrent 1,3 milliarder mennesker er muslimer. Veldig få av dem har hørt evangeliet. Av verdens 211 største unådde folkeslag er 123 musilmske. Fersk statistikk viser at mindre enn to prosent av det som gis til misjon fra Vesten er rettet mot muslimer. I århundrer har muslimer blitt ignorert og forsømt av de fleste kristne over hele verden.
Derfor ble Frontiers grunnlagt. Denne misjonsorganisasjonen arbeider kun blant muslimer. Den konsentrerer seg fullt og helt om å plante menigheter. De som arbeider i denne misjonsorganisasjonen arbeider alltid i team, og de som arbeider her kommer fra forskjellige kirkesamfunn. Beslutningen tas i teamene, på misjonsfeltet, og ikke på et fjernt hovedkontor.
Er du interessert i å være med på å be for arbeidet, eller få mer informasjon, kan du henvende deg direkte: http://www.frontiers.no/ eller info@frontiers.no
Deir Mar Musa, a Monastic Community Devoted to Inter-religious Communion
SvarSlettIt was during a period of suffering in this region when, in 1982, a young jesuit student of Arabic travelled to the ruins of Deir Mar Musa. Here in the mountains east of Nebek, Fr. Paolo remained for a ten day spiritual retreat. During this time, through contemplation, he discovered three priorities, and one horizon.
In 1984, he was ordained a priest in the Syrian rite. On the basis of his three tenets, summer camps of work and prayer were established at the monastery. On the same basis he, together with deacon Jacques Mourad, initiated a monastic community in 1991.
The first of his three priorities is the rediscovery of spiritual life as an absolute. Prayer and contemplation are not instruments or a means to an end, but are an end in themselves in full gratuity. From this point of view the ruined Syrian monastery offered a strong witness to the value of spiritual life in this region together with the risk of losing this value. It must be emphasised that the ancient oriental monastic life is an essential element of both the christian local soul, and of the cultural, symbolic, and mystical world of Islam. Therefore the community of Deir Mar Musa must first and foremost create an ambience of silence and prayer for both the personal and social life of its monks and nuns. The second priority is that of evangelical simplicity, a way of living in harmony and full responsibility with Creation and the society around us. To accomplish this it is necessary to rediscover the value of manual work together with that of the body and of material things in an aesthetic of justice and gratuity.
The third priority is that of hospitality. Abrahamitic hospitality was always considered by the ancient monks to be a sacred activity based on a virtue always considered divine in this region. So the monastery must be understood as a place of meeting in which specific identities are deepened and not forgotten. We are not seeking to closet ourselves in cultural ghettoes but on the contrary we seek to give up a culture of separation in order to build gradually a culture of communion. This means also that the christian community of Deir Mar Musa wishes to underline the ecumenical inter-christian dimension, without losing the significance of the Syrian identity of the monastery and of its catholic links.
The perspective, then, is that of building a positive christian-islamic relationship. This relationship has not always been easy in the past and is often still difficult in many places, therefore it constitutes an essential aspect of the spiritual vocation of all monks and nuns at Deir Mar Musa. The choice of the Arabic language for the social and liturgical life of the monastic community is deeply tied to this vocation.
This perspective of deepening intercultural and inter-religious collaboration has received the help of the European Commission, the Orseri Foundation of Rome, the Solidarité-Orient of Brussels and others. A growing library has been established at the monastery, featuring not only classical texts on Christianity and Islam, but also works of psychology, sociology, philosophy and anthropology in order to deepen our understanding of an inter-religious human context. A special section is dedicated to Louis Massignon, a major scholar in oriental studies whose meditation and exemplary life continue to provide inspiration to our monastic community. The monastery is also engaged in organising workshops and seminars, which will facilitate the exchange of experiences and ideas. By the same token the monks and nuns of Deir Mar Musa have recently assumed responsibility for the monastery of Mar Elian in Qaryatein, 50km north-east of here. Their hopes and dreams are far-reaching and open lines of communion to numerous parts of the Islamic world. A virtual monastery is being built in cyberspace.
It soon became apparent that we did not have sufficient space in the monastery. It has been necessary to build some rooms in a traditional manner to house both monks and male guests. These have been built north of the monastery utilising a number of ancient caves.
An important new building is being constructed with old, recycled materials, south of the monastery in order to have more space for cultural activities, spiritual retreats and more rooms for nuns and female guests. This will leave the old monastery for communal life and to welcome tourists.
The presence of the Other as other in front of me has been perceived through centuries as an insoluble and stainless fact and a source of anguish, tensions and wars. To overcome this as believers we want to scrutinise attentively the mystery of “otherness”. This is in order to prime and develop processes able to create a shared culture based on values such as peace, deep respect and both inter-personal and inter-community interaction. This will facilitate the diffusion and strengthening of important conquests of contemporary global civil society. We mean for example the significance of the dignity of individual conscience, the enormous impact of the emancipation of women on both anthropological and social levels, the inviolability of human rights as individuals and groups and finally the fertility of cultural pluralism in itself.
A monastery in the desert is also all this.
https://www.deirmarmusa.org/index1.html