Peter’s painful struggle to accept “the strangeness of the other” is very much our struggle today.1 These last two weeks following the war between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia and the reports of atrocities, I have been torn inside by conflicting loyalties and overwhelmed by sadness, indignation, powerlessness, and guilt. This is just one hot spot on our planet were people who share the same piece of land resort to bloodshed and violence because they cannot reconcile and accept “the strangeness of the other.”
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://spectrummagazine.org/article/sabbath-school/2008/08/27/peter%25e2%2580%2599s-new-universe-cross-self-and-other