The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free — Wendell Berry

Love Your Enemies?

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay," says the Lord. "But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. - Romans 12:17-21

I have intentionally remained silent on the news of Osama bin Laden's death. I think regardless of one's religion we each of us have a great sense of and desire for justice. This man's choices and influence led not only to the deaths of the victems of 9/11 but also to innumerable child suicde-bombers and various other muslims across the world, all in the name of God. So when I heard the news of his death, I could not help but be thankful. In a world with some many wounds, perhaps this man's demise might mean a few less. But in the midst of witnessing countless celebrations and online responses such as 'burn in hell Osama" I felt that same sense of justice flare up. 

I cannot escape the teachings of Jesus in his sermon on the mount, that our love MUST extend to even our enemies, the very ones who wish us dead. Some may consider this as idealism, but in a sense all of Jesus' teachings are idealistic but also deeply rooted in life and in truth. These are not just provocative words but the essence of how Jesus lived his own life. In the face of occupying non-believers who unfairly taxed, enslaved, and even killed his people, Jesus came not as the liberating king the Jews desired him to be. Instead he laid down his power and took all the world's punishment to the point of death and beyond, all the while praying for the ones mocking him. And the funny thing is that it worked, he not only liberated his people but all of us. In his act of nonviolence, of submitting to death, he won us all life. This act which to all, even his closet friends, seemed ludicrous has endured two thousand years and changed the lives of all humanity. Throughout this history others have taken to heart what Jesus said and did, people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi. Both tasted the same martyr death and both also tasted the fruits of their love: reconciliation and freedom. 

Some would say that we cannot be doormats or pushovers and this is true. All of these men, especially Jesus, were strong men who made strong stand and in the doing they overcame evil with good. Someone has to break the cycle of violence; the idea that killing bin Laden and making him a martyr for his radical followers is going to save lives is hard to prove at best and completely erroneous at worst. The response will be vengeance and we will seek to retaliate and the cycle of violence will progress. We only have to look at the middle east to learn the lesson of this deadly cycle, there is only "peace" when one side is stronger than the other, able to keep uprisings at bay. Hatred permeates the religious and ethnic struggles. All sides feel their cause just and even of God and that certitude leads further and further from any form of reconciliation or peace. Someone has to say, "enough already" and begin to love their neighbor even if costs them their own life, only then can the cycle be broken, only in sacrifice can we buy our freedom.

Jesus was that someone and he has dared to ask us to join him in the loving and leave the judging and vengeance to the only one capable of doing so. And maybe just maybe, in the process we might just change the world. 

I wonder what you think. Am I being naive? Does my faith blind me or enlighten my perspective on this? What about your faith? How has this incident effected your sense of compassion and/or justice?  

The Heavens Declare His Glory, a prayer

Abba,

The heavens declare Your glory.

But what am I?

Do You even think of me?

Why are You mindful of us at all?

And yet You say we matter. I look into the sky and see endless stars, its a joke to even try to count them and I'm reminded in the laughter that they represent your blessings. This sounds nice but even when my life seems so small in comparison with the heavens, my problems and the problems of those I love seem colossal. Why does this distortion of perspective thrive in our hearts?

Maybe, just maybe, it is no distortion. Maybe our fears and pain are as big as creation in Your eyes too. They shouldn't be but I am beginning to believe they are. You have said that Your thoughts and ways are higher than the heavens are from the earth, intrinsically different from all my expectations. And when I pull myself away from the isolated religious speak that says everything will be alright, I find a God big enough to handle my anger. A God so big and yet so intimate. 

Tonight, I have no clue how to pray. I just can't ask for this and that and go on my way, I need to know You care, that You are as close and as strong as You've promised to be. 

Do I dare be noble now?

I remember when all seemed lost not long ago, when every door slammed in my face except for the love I found in the Pierce women, my family. And in their love, their stories, their prayers, their cooking, I found a home and peace. Now life has led me away from that home and I am afraid that I will never again taste the sweetness of those days. And the truth is I never will, that is why it is so special and why it hurts to even consider losing any of it. But maybe You have another door waiting for me, and this time I know it will be more painful but it will lead me home.

So, lead me, lead us home. 

Amen

Help, I Need Somebody

I have been a little under the weather recently and have succumbed to the woe-is-me regiment of sleeping all day, taking drugs, and whining.  I, like most men, revert to a two-year old any time my temperature even flirts with triple digits.  More than anything, what I desire the most is for someone to take care of me.  Michala does an excellent job of this, rubbing my forehead, bringing me blankets, and always offering them with a smile. Sometimes I wonder if I have a secret longing to be sick just so she can fly to the rescue. Even though I feel as if I just got out of the ring with Mike Tyson, everything is OK. Perhaps I am not alone in this longing to be cared for, I can see this desire manifest itself in other places than merely my sickbed. When the responsibilities of being a grown-up pile up and I  feel as if I could be destroyed under the pressure of it all, I merely want someone to share my load, to hold me tight and tell me it will be alright. Maybe I am just weak or maybe just honest. Yet it is in the moments where I admit my desperate need for help that I fell the greatest peace, the most acute sense of hope, and a faith that I can make it.

I think that our DNA is wired in such a way that we operate best when we operate together. This game called life is a team sport. Yet we often live in a way that does not showcase this fact, in fact we often live in away that shouts "It is all about me!" We want to be the strongest, the bravest, the smartest and we want to do it alone. But as someone once said, "Its lonely at the top." What if we redefined our ideas of what it means to be fulfilled, successful, or even happy. What if intrinsic to all these was a sense of connectedness, that we need one another.  I think we would find ourselves more fulfilled, more successful, and even happier. But beyond this we may just find ourselves.

One of my favorite area of theology is how Orthodox Christianity portrays God, as the three-in-one. Instead of a simple monotheism, we instead have this difficult idea that God is one but also three. I will not risk the cramping of my brain in trying to articulate how all this works, but I will bask in the glory of a God beyond comprehension but also in a God so very accessible. In the beginning, God made everything and it was good, everything except for one thing.  Man was alone. I find this to be haunting that God looks around at all He has made is left scratching His head by this one thing. But in His head-scratching, He is teaching us. God made us in His image, in His image of togetherness, in His image of wholeness found only in community. God wrote His unique love in our hearts: we are only complete, only human when we have and love one another. We are most alive when we depend on each other. Jesus would later affirm this idea by stating that the sole purpose of our existence is to love God and man, in no particular order. His friend John would later write that in fact our love of God was so deeply rooted in how we loved one another that we could not claim one love without the other.

This season of Lent, we seek to grow closer to Christ, to share in his sufferings so that we may share in His victory. When we look at the cross, we see how deep Jesus believed in sharing with us the fullness of being alive. He so desperately wanted us to be alive that He died. With one of his final cries he felt the pain of our isolation, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" If we are to share in Christ's sufferings then we must be honest with our isolation; we must admit that we think more highly of ourselves than we ought, that we think we can do this on our own. In this admission, may we begin to share in his victory too. May we find a new life in the death of ourself, a life of togetherness, a life that not only finds peace in another's helping hand, but also finds the courage to give our hands back. May we be a people, plain and simple, truly a people, one although many. And perhaps we will find life there, a life unlike anything we have ever seen or known before.

St. Francis’ Peace Prayer

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love. For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life. Amen. 

Goodbye 2010

All this week I have been dwelling on the good of 2010.  What this seems to imply is an ignorance of the bad, but that is not the case.  There is this ancient story about a group of brothers who sell their brother into slavery and tell their father he is dead.  While captive in a far off land, this enslaved brother rises to become one of the most important leaders in the Kingdom, saving the people from famine.  Unknowing he was even still alive, his family comes to his land in search of food.  The brother seeks out his brothers and is eventually able to forgive them.  He sums up the years in between their betrayal and their reconciliation in these words: "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good..."  Ours is a redemptive God able to take our broken lives and not just fix them but use that very brokenness for good.  So with this in mind I say goodbye to 2010 and pray for the courage to see the bad of this past year as the means to something altogether better.

May the God of Joseph, the God of Jacob, the God of us all grant us the courage to hope for redemption, to hope for something better and to trust that He will take each failure, each pain, and every tear and make something beautiful.  Peace be with you in 2011.