Sault Ste. Marie native and Christian PeaceMaker Team - Iraq hostage James Loney faced a hoard of reporters today as he arrived in Toronto. Standing before a bank of microphones the media was respectfully silent as he delivered a statement in a quiet voice, looking tired, joyful and overwhelmed. Family and friends stood with dignity beside him.
CTV has a video of his statement, text is not yet online. It is a muted counterpoint to government statements, and the derision and mockery the Christian PeaceMaker Teams organization has faced the past week.
He used very emotional words.
“…imagined, despaired of ever seeing it, always I ached for it, and so here we are.”
“For 118 days I disappeared in to a black hole, and somehow by God’s grace I was spit out again.”
…headswirling, “hardly believe it’s true,” “reassure myself that this was all really happening.”
“It was a terrifying, profound, powerful, transformative, and excruciatingly boring experience”
“Since my release and my rescue from captivity I have been in a constant state of wonder, bewilderment and surprise as I slowly discover the magnitude of the effort to secure our lives and freedom; Tom Fox, Norman Kember, Harmeet Sooden and myself.”
“A great hand of solidarity reached out for us, a hand that included the hands of Palestinian children holding pictures of us, and the hands of the British soldier who cut our chains with a bolt cutter. That great hand was able to deliver three of us from the shadow of death.”
“I am grateful in a way that can never be adequately expressed in words.”
Loney spoke for other captives of all kinds.
“There are so many people that need this hand of solidarity right now, today, and I am thinking specifically of prisoners held all over the world - people who have disappeared into an abyss of detention without charge, due process, hope of release, some victims of psychical and psychological torture, people unknown and forgotten.”
“It is my deepest wish that every forsaken human being should have a hand of solidarity reaching out to them.”
He remembered his fellow team member killed earlier this month using musical analogy. Fox had been a in a Marine band. Loney he broke off his text, the silence filled the room at Pearson International airport and he whispered condolences the Fox family.
He said he needs time to love and be loved, dishes to wash, no media.
“After this I’m to disappear for a little while into a different kind of abyss, an abyss of love. I need some time to get reacquainted with my partner Dan, my family, my community and freedom itself.”
“For the British soldiers who risked their lives to rescue for us, and for the Government of Canada who sent a team to Baghdad to help secure our release, for all those who thought about us, prayed for us, for all those spoke for us when we had no voice, I am forever and truly grateful.”
Norman Kember speaks
Harmeet Sooden
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What a wonderful story and truly a blessing for James Loney to make it home to his friends and family. And god bless the soldiers who risked their lives to save James. This is a terrific example of keeping faith in God to deliver his blessings. I also read the blog at on line blessings for truly inspirational stories of blessings that happen around the world everyday. James Loney is a truly an example of a blessing from the hand of God to the British soldiers who executed the plan to bring him to freedom. I wish Mr. Loney the best and hope he keeps the faith in God despite having to crawl out of such an awful abyss.
Jim Loney must be just reeling with the events of the past few months, but there are already critics gunning for him over his statement, saying he deliberately didn’t mention the U.S. contribution to his rescue because of the Peacemakers’ general disdain for anything American. My guess is that Loney doesn’t yet know about the U.S. involvement, any more than he is aware that there was covert assistance given by the Canadian military and RCMP personnel on the ground.
Jim is a friend of mine. We met during my first trip to Iraq in Dec 2000-Jan 2003. We were in the same automobile coming back from Basra when it overturned, killing another of our group - George Weber. Jim was responsible for helping lift me up into the back of another vehicle so they could rush me to the hospital (I suffered two broken vertebrae) while he remained with George’s body and would eventually accompany it back to Canada.
Here are just a few word that Jim wrote just before he was kidnapped last November:
(from in Defence of the Sacred Heart)
…”And, reaching across Jesus’ waist, a partly-finished arm, the flesh at its shoulder seemingly stripped down to bone. I imagined a starving prisoner kneeling in front of Jesus, face pressed tight to his chest and holding on for dear life. Tears filled my eyes. Even here, in this godforsaken place, and everywhere, in every dungeon of despair, the Sacred Heart beats. There was no suffering in which the Sacred Heart did not dwell. I knelt down too.
I fell in love with the Sacred Heart that day. I see it now as a profound meditation on human freedom, on the disarming power of the disarmed life. When we know who we are, a no-matter-what loved child of God, then we cannot but love in that same no-matter-what way, without condition or limit or fear. When we lay down our weapons (whatever they be-the desire to punish or an inter-continental nuclear missile) and open wide our hearts, we become truly free, a Sacred Heart ready to embrace anyone, do anything, go anywhere.
Perhaps old Leo XIII was on to something after all when he “solemnly consecrated” all humankind to the Sacred Heart on June 11, 1899. He called it “the great act” of his pontificate. Perhaps history would be a little different if we all took the Sacred Heart to heart.”
Peace and welcome Jim home.