The logo of the CD cover is developed by the Christian Palestinian Organizations in Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Written music:

After Rain

True Love

A Tear Divine

Surrender

Wounded Hands

The Only One

Your Heart

We are like those who sail on a calm sea,
and seculars are like those on a rough sea.
We always set our course by the sun of justice,
but it can often happen that the secular is saved
in tempest and darkness,
for he keeps watch as he ought,
while we go to the bottom through negligence,
although we are on a calm sea,
because we have let go of the guidance of justice.

Amma Syncletica

Background:

In all simplicity the IKT CD Wounded Hands is in existence with the aim to highlight the 40 years of illegal occupation of Palestinian ground and as an act of solidarity towards the Palestinian and Israeli peace workers struggling for a just peace through non violence methods. The CD is made in Bethlehem in cooperation with the International Center of Bethlehem

The title track Wounded Hands has its origin in Jerusalem and contains the wordings of bishop Dr Munib Younan, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land. It has become an eucharistic prayer. The rest of the peace songs have sprung forth on celtic ground through Ignatian spirituality. They have been used during silent Ignatian 30 and 8 day retreats at the retreat ward of the maximum security prison for men in Sweden. At the very moment of the day which carry most anguish, the lock in just before 8 o’clock p.m., songs have accompanied the sound of metall doors and the rattling of keys.

Content:

For the person who has entirely lost trust in humans, including oneself, an anthropomorph image of God can be completely deterrent and not to be approached and thus hardly to be identified with. In contrast can a tenderness towards animals often be found. Therefor the Trinity Mass is filled with songs with three different birds giving form to father, son and holy spirit. Also in a non Christian or atheist context can the three birds inclusively open up for three aspects of love. The songs are fruits from entering biblical texts through so called Ignatian spirituality - with one exception: The first track, After Rain, is instead based upon a spiritual exercice with the quran.

Between the two tracks containing parts of a Story of the Passion is silence to be found – two minutes of it. This silent track enfolds the possibility to meditate on the reality of death and the possibilities of life in a world without justice.

The mass A Miniature Rainbow Within is made of encounters between biblical women and their rescuer. It is my experience that we need to approach and identify with what is good in our images of both women and men (as well as we need to integrate what is evil) to be whole as human beings. When the heterosexual male that is used to have his identity in being big, strong and stuck-up and who in his spiritual exercices starts to open a dialogue and identify with good biblical women - miracles may happen!

Likewise it may be of uttermost importance for a negatively self denying woman to come close to and communicate with good biblical men in order to gain inner and outer strenght. In order to be able to do so entirely it might also be necessary to have women to identify with. In a patriarchal church and society without inclusivity in words, symbols and life, are not only women hindered from identifing with women but at the same time men are stopped from becoming whole. And consequently: If, in a Christian context, half of the inhabitants (women) are excluded from identifying hundered per cent with Jesus, the church sure has a deeply grounded problem. What can you and I do today in order to break this negative pattern? It is not strange that Julian of Norwich, in the fourteenth century, as a mystic in her visions had the experience and the need to call Jesus – ”Mother Jesus” – who ”nourishes us with herself” and ”leads us to her breast through the wound in her side.”

Not only prison inmates are locked up: Bishop Dr Munib Younan, who has written the book (Witnessing for Peace – in Jerusalem and the World) which the lyrics of the title track Wounded Hands is quoted from, has lived a big part of his life under, according to the UN, illegal occupation. Will he be forced to live the rest of his life likewise?

Rev. Susanne Grimheden

Katja Lundquist, age 18, singer of the song Wounded Hands – including the title track. She also sings together with her mother Anna Alebo (the pilgrim priest in the diocese of Lund, Church of Sweden) who is the guitar player on the CD.

Rev. Frida Danielsson, sings the Christmas Carol A Tear Divine, Your Heart, and Can Love Be Destroyed.