The Khmer Rouge soldier (or whoever you want) has routed the enemy and sits smoking.

There were some photographs in a newspaper – the images were of soldiers in South East Asia – Cambodia. They were troops from Pol Pot’s regime. Their eyes struck me especially. Eyes seem to  convey the meaning of the soul and these eyes have seen torture and execution........ they do not tell us of peace. They seem sated and brutalised by the killing and violence they have seen......there is no “shalom” peace – the peace that builds up and unites us. Soon there will be more bloodshed and fighting, more skulls.

Humans cause suffering to others. We, too, can be complicit in moral evil by our economic and political policies and priorities.

Can we really boast of our innocence in this world? Are we not in some sense all implicated in evil like this soldier?

And I tried to bring in the hint of wood; a cross… a tree of life that is given to us to rescue and redeem. The skull can also point to new life. Perhaps this soldier is the soldier sitting at the foot of the cross. The words of the Good Friday service remind us of the wood of the crucifixion “Behold the wood of the cross on which our saviour hangs. O come let us adore”