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“My first glimpse of a barrier as a child was the sight of little fish moving back and forth in a fish tank. It was the only home they knew, and if I reached out a hand, they would flee in fear,” remarked Rondy Said, a pastor in Ramallah and responsible for youth work with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL) during a September 1 workshop on Christian Jewish dialogue in the Israeli-Palestinian context.

On a glorious Friday morning, the prayer tent at the World Council of Churches (WCC) 11^th Assembly in Karlsruhe burst with enthusiastic singing of hymns, liturgical responses and praise songs in German, English, Spanish, Arabic, Maohi, Estonian, and Xhosa.

“If you’re for climate justice, say ‘AMEN!’” was the chant as young people led a protest marching through the Brunnen exhibition zone at the 11^th Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Karlsruhe, Germany on September 2, 2022.

In Harare it was called Padare —a public procession celebrating a special day or event; In Porto Alegre, Mutirao —celebrating and reflecting together; In Busan, it was Madang —the traditional courtyard, a space for deliberation, celebration, and fellowship. And now in Karlsruhe, it is Brunnen —a well in the marketplace.

The Waterfall Tapestry of Solidarity and Resistance has now been assembled and is on display at the WCC’s 11^th Assembly, in Karlsruhe, Germany.

As the bells of Karlsruhe, Germany rang out across the city, thousands of Christians gathered on Wednesday, 31 August in the prayer tent at the heart of the 11th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC). Representatives from each of the eight geographical regions in which the WCC is active brought gifts and concerns reflecting their own cultural and historical contexts. The international congregation prayed in thanksgiving to God, adding their expectation for the coming nine days of the Assembly, “We share the hope of meeting each other in the warm embrace of Christ’s love that moves us to reconciliation and unity.”

Karlsruhe, a city built over 300 hundred years ago without walls, open to friends and guests —at a time where other cities still hid behind their fortifications —welcomed people from all over the world to four pre-assemblies that are bringing forward powerful calls to the 11^th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC).

As participants in the First Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) gathered at Amsterdam during August 1948, the Netherlands bore witness to the violence of the Second World War. The port of Rotterdam was rising from near destruction. Many other cities, towns and villages across Europe were struggling to recover. To the east, Germany and Austria were divided into zones of occupation administered by the Allied Powers. Two months earlier, tensions between the Soviet Union and the Western occupiers of the former German capital led to the start of the Berlin Airlift. Since 1945, publications had been increasing their use of the term “Cold War”.

During the recent solidarity visit to Ukraine, a World Council of Churches (WCC) delegation was welcomed at the Banchen monastery in the Chernivtsi region of Ukraine, witnessing its active involvement supporting and sheltering victims of Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine.

Sharing the concerns of World Council of Churches (WCC) Lutheran member churches around the world, a Lutheran confessional meeting took place during the recent central committee meeting at the Ecumenical Center in Geneva.