Publisher's Synopsis
In "The Rood Awakening" many very different people face the challenges of being immured within a genocidal conflict and the evidential brokenness surrounding them: First we meet Dr. Sharon Houston, a former therapist, turned radio-talk show host, turned vengeful sniper and tank-killer: Secondly there is twelve-year-old aspiring doctor and orphan Mateo Podvardo, or the"medic," gofer and back pack carrier for Dr. Houston. Then there is American expatriate and evangelartist Evan Jonarcson who conducts interactive, art creation exhibits for the youth of the war devastated city. Finally there are the youth of the city for whom Evan develops five murals or runicons combining shattered building materials pressed into squares of concrete. Each runicon signifies a different set of guidelines for determining and choosing a means for restoration. Together they learn what it means to "bear one another's burden" in the late 1990's city of Sarajevo, the "womb of war." Excerpt: Evan Jonarcson lifts out of its stand what he calls his evangelartist's rood staff, a wooden pole with a serpent's figure carved within and around its bark. Into the top of this he has secured an ancient, Irish brass Rood or Cross. He ponders its meaning as he intends it, namely that "Each of us must awaken to the value and purpose of one's Cross, or rood, and to embrace and not shrink from it; for it is a means for good; a blessing, and the opportunity which Jesus said to 'take up daily'. This must be done in acts motivisioned by faith, hope and charity for our neighbor, denying one's selfish ways and the all too often violent misstewardship of creation. "If such a Rood awakening does not occur on both an individual and global scale we will be continually 'RUDELY' woken by much harsher realities and even heavier burdens caused by the moral chaos of many more humanity-fragmenting calamities. God has said that these things are inevitable when we forget Him and His words as our criterial means for bearing up the Crosses of one another; means which comprise the abundances of resources with which we have been blessed NOT for licentious, malicious or self indulgent purposes but for serving the eternally common good of all: By such Criteria as His Word provides we are called to go to the crossroads of the world to gather up the fragmented people we find there, employing our resources toward feeding, clothing, housing, evangelizing, educating, training, employing and enabling them in accord with their needs and talents."
