Being There

The teenager sits before me, her pain overwhelming, of loss, of fear. Her father is terminally ill. I have nothing to offer, nothing but compassion, presence, God. Inside I kneel before the burning bush. A soft flame ignites gently, spreads through me to the youth, unstoppable, irresistible, comforting to both of us. We pray.

It’s like that some days, this sense of God, of the divine, organic and real, like water, fire, and wind.

And then there are the other days.

Most interestingly, the days when God feels most present are not necessarily the easiest. The tearing of the veil of heaven can happen so unexpectedly, confronted by the pain of another, the reality that there is nothing to do but reach out for God with the one who suffers, and just be.

On the mountain, God burned for us, exposed, vulnerable, unconsumed. God always burns for us, and in us, if we allow it. And sends us out like Moses to care for the poor, free the slaves, confront the Pharaoh and simply be there for each other.

It’s difficult, this business of being with God. Not because God makes it so. We do. We crowd our days with things, goals, aspirations and fears. But what is most needful sometimes is just to let go. Be there. Be still. Be.

In the weeks and months ahead, the teenager’s father will enter into his passion, what Ronald Rolheiser calls the passivity before death that Jesus endured, that all of us must endure. Even as we live, we die. Even as we die, we live. The father will have to let go of his life and his child. And his child will have to let go of him.

But in that letting go, in that enforced passivity, in that passion of love and of being there that this family will journey through, God will be present, burning for all of them through the moment of death and ever after. And I hope, in some small way, that God will help me be present for them too.

Puzzle Piece to Puzzle Peace

In the summer months, and sometimes over holidays or weekends, I like to keep a puzzle going under the tablecloth on the kitchen table. I’ll wander in during an idle moment and try to fit a few pieces in here and there. When friends drop by, the puzzle is there for them to whittle away at as we chat. I don’t know why I enjoy it, but I do. I’ve got one on the go right now.

But ever try to complete a puzzle only to find the last piece is missing? It’s a frustrating experience, like missing out on the last page of a book or the last five minutes of a movie.

And yet, if you pick up a random puzzle piece, you’ll notice how innocuous it is, just a jumble of colour, without much shape or obvious purpose. It’s difficult to tell where it belongs when superficially so many other puzzle pieces look similar.

This, of course, is us. It can be difficult sometimes, with people we encounter, to always sense their worth. Admit it, honestly. Some people seem incompetent and ineffectual. Some are just mean. Some use us and abuse us. Some want more than their fair share of the puzzle table, squeezing out the smaller pieces. Some are just plain aggravating.

But the lesson of the puzzle is that everyone belongs. A missing piece is a travesty and a disaster. Without every single one of us, the whole picture can never appear.

This is something that Christ recognized. All life is necessary. All creation is good. Each person is unique, a gift from God, an essential part of the whole. This is why we cannot kill. This is why we cannot injure. When we strive to create a world of justice and peace, a picture that would conform to the Kingdom of God, we are forced to remember that this can never be a solitary pursuit.

As I prepare for tomorrow, I remind myself to try to recognize the unique and essential in the people I meet. Every person is necessary. Every person belongs. Every person can help us to see better a tiny corner of God’s all-embracing love.

Happy Birthday Martin Luther King Jr.: Reflection on Justice

Ninety-three years ago today the world received into its arms a child whose life would teach us what it means to live faith and justice to the core. Martin Luther King Jr. learned from a Hindu (Gandhi), worked with a gay man (Bayard Rustin), and prayed and protested with people of every color, gender and religious affiliation.
There is much to learn from King, but two things hit me especially today as I reflected on what he brought to this world.

The first is the importance of struggling with our faith in order to promote justice and peace in the world. From the time he was a teenager, King found he could not accept unquestioningly the teachings of his Church. Charity and worship simply were not enough if Jesus really was who He said He was. Charity and worship are essential, but they are also the easy, self-fulfilling parts of Christianity. Justice is much, much harder.

To King, Christian faith required wrestling with the challenging biblical call to work for the kingdom now, a place where human dignity does not depend on a handout. As he said, “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar…it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring” (Beyond Vietnam).

Christians by and large are comfortable with charity. Justice, on the other hand, is awkward. On a communal and global level, justice calls us to root out poverty and exclusion. It requires us to criticize systems that keep the poor in poverty and the rich in wealth. On a personal level, justice requires admitting that, just as Christ taught us, we don’t get to judge others no matter how tightly we hold our own beliefs. It involves accepting others for who they are. Justice asks us to seek out the oppressed and downtrodden and act in solidarity with them.

King believed that church had to be more than just a closed place where those who follow the rules belong, and those who don’t, or who belong to other faiths, wait outside, unheard and unwelcome. That was where blacks waited for most things in the USA of the 1950s, and King knew how wrong exclusion was. The Hindu, the Jew, the Catholic, all of these and more were not subjects for conversion for King. They were partners in dialogue in learning about God and pursuing peace on earth.

The second important lesson King offers me today is the reminder that the people in power in his day did not thank him for his trouble. He was imprisoned and eventually shot for pursuing social justice and civil rights, and speaking truth to power. He got in trouble with Church leadership for his friendship with Rustin, and his phone line was wiretapped by the US government (because then as in now if you speak about social equality and justice you must be a communist).

King teaches that true faith compels us to promote justice. This may mean becoming involved in non-violent public activism, even though we know from King’s example (not to mention Jesus’) that it will cost us. We will certainly get ridiculed. We could lose our jobs. We might even be jailed. We will lose some friends. But justice laced with faith, hope and love, as lived by Martin Luther King Jr., is no less than what Jesus calls us toward.

King lived the beatitudes. He pursued Matthew 25. He called for transformation and commitment from his companions, to create a world of peace, justice and acceptance. He called on Christianity to be more than a loosy-goosy, feel good, personal salvation, rule-following, unthinking, here’s-a- handout, support-group-social-club for the in-crowd. He called it to be what Jesus meant it to be. And that is a birthday well worth celebrating.

Happy New Year

We pass through Christmas into the hard reality of January, the warmth of the stable left behind. The path before us stretches unknown, fraught with difficulty and unexpected obstacles. Herod pursues us, and the angels voices are silent, gone.

But wait. The soft sound of a camel’s hoof approaches. The wise men appear, silent as a desert night. They come from a far off land, traveling together on hope, dodging enemies, avoiding pitfalls. They arrive days after the birth, their epiphany not the result of angels singing, or knowledge of a virgin birth, but of their own desire to seek, to find the truth wherever it may lie.

The wise men guide us into the New Year. They remind us to accept the challenges of today, to live now, and not wait for graduation, for vacation, for retirement. There will be obstacles. There will be enemies. But together it is always possible to find another way home.

Happy New Year!

Four Candles

One candle for everyone who reaches out to a neighbor or stranger during this Advent season, to make their burden light and their Christmas bright. For the givers and the seekers who notice the lost, forgotten and poor, who visit the prisons, feed the hungry, and befriend the lonely, that their compassion may be returned a hundredfold.

One candle for the forlorn and forgotten, whom no one will visit this Christmas, that they may know they are loved by God. For the sick, the grieving, the fearful, the suffering and the dying, that they may feel held in the arms of God, and remembered by the world.

One candle for the peacemakers and justice seekers who speak up for all of us in parks and squares around the world, in newspapers and on cardboard posters, on Facebook and in the streets, in letters and in conversations, in Churches, mosques and synagogues, in rallies and vigils, who persist and hold on, even when harassed, ridiculed, beaten, imprisoned, or ignored. That they may keep the vision of God’s peace forever in their hearts and know their voices matter.

One last candle for the dictators and thieves, the Herods and Pilates, the CEOs and presidents, the Generals and politicians, the oppressors and powerbrokers, who work without conscience, who send others to war, who kill at arm’s length, who pursue greed at any cost, because business is business and a dollar is a dollar. That their eyes and ears may be opened and their hearts turned so that they may see and hear and serve their brothers and sisters who hold a different candle.

Four candles for justice, hope, faith, and love, all lit from the fire of a star that burned across the universe two thousand years ago, illuminating the lowly manger, reflecting the infant’s first breath, and calling us to keep the flames alive.

Note: My Christmas story, Elizabeth's Hope: A Meditation can be found at www.weavings.upperroom.org

Advent Struggle

Waiting usually involves quiet expectation, a period of idleness even, a time to gather thoughts and energy for an important event. But Advent, that time set side to wait and prepare for the celebration of the birth of Jesus, contains little of those qualities any more.

I love Advent, but I struggle this year to find the peace it offers. I feel as if I’m standing on a platform while an express train hurtles past, warning me to hustle, hurry, get things done. I try to find the stillness inside, but the world calls out that nothing interior matters, except reflection on the gifts I should want, the food I must prepare, the decorations I must hang. Buy it now. Eat it now. Do it now.

I read of the failure of the Kyoto protocol on the environment, the struggles of the Occupy movement, and the imposition of ever more draconian security legislation, and I feel as if we have lost sight of all vision and all hope for the future. But that is exactly what Advent is about.

Advent calls me to reflect on the future, on what is to come, as Mary did, as Joseph did. It tells me to take risks for peace, for love and for all those who are to come. It reminds me that life isn’t easy but with our eyes turned toward the divine and our ears tuned toward the angels we might have a chance. And where do we find this divine? With the meekest, the poorest, and the most vulnerable, into whose arms the messiah was born.

I don’t do enough in my life for God or my neighbor, but Advent allows me to begin again, to try harder, maybe to reach higher this time. I force myself to find time for reflection and prayer in this busy season. It fills me then, this spirit of hope. It fills me and reminds me that Mary and Joseph struggled too, that their path was hard and their world imperfect. But they answered the angel anyway. They said yes. Maybe we can too.

SOA Watch 2011

What do we do with this world that turns a blind eye to torture, that permits state sanctioned murder all in the name of greed, all in the name of consumerism?

I spent last weekend in Georgia at the annual SOA Watch, a huge vigil outside the gates of Fort Benning, home of the infamous School of the Americas (renamed WHINSEC in an effort to hide its evil reputation). The school trains Latin American and South American soldiers for the specific purpose of oppressing their own people. Why? To ease access to land and resources for American and Canadian corporations.

Graduates of this school have a nasty history. They are responsible for murders in their thousands. Their victims include Oscar Romero, Rutilio Grande, and the entire village of El Mozote in El Salvador. Their dead include infants only a few hours old, elders over 100 years old, and every age in between. They have killed women, men, missionaries, politicians, children, the educated, the illiterate and anyone, absolutely anyone who stands in the way of the corporate machine.

The weekend brings together torture survivors and peacemakers from all over the Americas. It includes workshops and prayer services, reminding us of the intimate link between faith and justice. It is a weekend of remembrance of the victims, and hope for the future.

The slow memorial procession on the last day testifies to the spirits of the victims who live on in the hearts of those who see something better than consumerism, something higher than greed, something more meaningful than war. As the name of each victim is read, the thousands who have come call out ‘Presente’ for they will always be present to us. And then slowly, one by one, a cross is placed in their name on the gates of the School. Once the gate is covered with crosses, it transforms from a place of hate to a place of hope.

For every name there is a cross. For every cross there is a resurrection. I am reminded that this is not the end. It is only the beginning.