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.

Occupy Everywhere: Building the Kingdom Now

The Occupy movement has exploded in cities and towns across North America. ‘Enough’, people cry. Enough of the greed. Enough of the fraud. Enough of the inequality.

Thousands of people have left their homes to call for justice before the economic rulers of our time. They’ve presented their faces, their whole selves, to those who control the money and make the rules. They’ve called for accountability and appealed for fairness. And the backlash has begun.

The CEOs have hunkered down to wait out the protesters. The police have girded themselves for the fight. And big media has ridiculed the Occupy movement from the start. Why? Because big news outlets are big business. The Occupy movement with its grassroots communication is as much a threat to news outlets as it is to corporations and the political elite. So they’ve ignored as much as possible the real issues of the protests in favor of side stories and fillers.

How safe then is our freedom of speech in North America? How safe is our right to gather? Are we any different here than in the despotic regimes of the world? Who are the police here to protect? Who are the news outlets reporting to?

The Occupy movement happened because people couldn’t make their voices heard by conventional means. The media wasn’t listening. Neither was government. It happened because people realized that soon they would have nothing to lose (if they weren’t there already). It happened because it had to happen.

If we really believe in our right to gather and our right to speak our minds with sincerity and without prejudice, then we should be standing up for the Occupy movement no matter what we believe about each individual issue. (Still don’t know what the issues are? Try unemployment, disparity of wealth between the top 1% and bottom 99%, corporate bail-outs, and corporate taxation, just to start).



We are at a crossroads as a society. Either we protect the right of citizens to gather and voice their discontent, or we descend into the swamp of intentional, planned, and accepted systemic injustice. Up until now we may have been able to convince ourselves that systemic injustice was unintentional, and that our courts would lead us to justice in the end. That mythical bubble is bursting.

As Christians we need to ask ourselves, are we disciples or are we Romans? Will we stand with the poor and voiceless? Or will we look away from the fight, or worse, side with the people in power? Will we allow the crucifixion to happen?

Because it’s a slippery slope. As we accept the slow erosion of justice, the tiny increments of loss of freedom, the perhaps unnoticeable growth of the wage gap, we also accept a society that will require more tyranny, and more control to keep it from falling apart. We accept, in short, our own oppression.


But we can stop this. Let your friends know you support the Occupiers. Go to the Occupy sites if you can. If you can’t, occupy the internet and the opinion page of your newspaper. Write to government. Keep the conversation going.

It’s time now to speak up against the forces that would end the Occupy movement. It’s time to stand up for freedom of speech and the right to gather. It’s time to call for accountability and justice. It’s time to recognize that we need to create a more just world.

Not tomorrow. Today.

In Our Vulnerability, We Find our God

November leaves turn crisp and musical, carpeting the roads and sidewalks, calling to be kicked. The cold of winter descends in the north, and we turn our hearts to the coming of the dark days of winter.

Our lives pass in seasons, both in our bodies and in our souls. Humans are born vulnerable. We are exposed at the moment of our birth, and we never quite manage to cover up completely. This is good. In our vulnerability and need we meet each other. In our transparency, we meet the Spirit of God.

When we empty ourselves of all our immediate coverings, our things and our worries, we open ourselves most powerfully to God. When there is nothing to hold on to and eternity lies ahead, when pain rips open the scars we’ve built for ourselves, when nothing at all stands between us and our fears, we paradoxically find ourselves most present to God. And once touched, we carry that knowledge with us everywhere.

When I reflect on the people I know who are most willing to ignore the condemnation of society and the ridicule of critics to embrace the poor and the marginalized, I find it no surprise that they are always people with a strong sense of the divine. These are our peacemakers and hope givers, our servants and our lights. They have made their vulnerability a strength and found a way to see past their own present to a future where all belong and all are embraced by God. Let those who have eyes to see, see…

People like Chris Hedges, Liz Berrigan, Bob Holmes, John Dear, Art Laffin, Sr. Ardeth Platte, Sr. Carol Gilbert, Dorothy Day, Oscar Romero, Roy Bourgeois, Dwyer Sullivan, and so many, many others are not saints or magical people, simply those who have, in their vulnerability, seen something bigger, greater, and more wonderful: love. This is a tangible love, a defenseless one that builds community, friendship, humor, peace, and inevitably, faith. By its very existence, despite setbacks and failures, it builds the Kingdom of God.

As I struggle to remove the blinders from my own eyes and the muzzle from my lips, I look to their example. I wonder how to follow the call of God. I wonder how to accept my failures. I strive, weakly, to set my fears aside.

And there, in weakness, in vulnerability, in trepidation, I find it all – the keys to the kingdom: faith, hope and love. I pray my eyes will always be open to them.

I'm Coming Out of the Closet: Will You Join Me?

Last week yet another Canadian teenager committed suicide, this time in Ottawa. He had come out of the closet, and let his friends, family and school community know he was gay. But the unbearable homophobia, bullying and sheer hate he suffered as a result overwhelmed him.

He escaped. Permanently. Tragically.

It’s time we stopped this. It’s time we declared this kind of bullying and discrimination off limits. It’s time we said no.

Rick Mercer, Canadian comedian extraordinaire, recently called on prominent LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered and Queer) entertainers and politicians to come out of the closet to become role models and supporters for our teens.

But we can do even better than that.

We can each come out of the closet of our silence to our family and friends and declare homophobia unacceptable. We can stand up for our LGBTQ coworkers, teenagers and community members.

To our teenagers, it doesn’t matter that it gets better when you get older. It doesn’t matter that high school doesn’t last forever. What matters for a teenager is the here and now, the present, today. We need to be there for these young men and women. We need to walk out of the closet with them.

The time has passed for those of us who accept sexual difference to simply stand by. The time has passed for silence. Not one more teen must die for this. Not one.

How do we come out of the closet? We stop using the word ‘gay’ as an insult. We stop making fun of other people’s sexuality. We start accepting that each of us is unique, and that different isn’t just another word for wrong.

For those who hold up their Christianity as a barrier to acceptance I say, remember what Jesus said about sexuality. Can’t think of it? That’s because he said exactly nothing. Not once in any gospel does he bring it up as he eats, travels and hangs out with the so-called sexual and societal deviants of his time.

Jesus leads us with an example of acceptance and integration. He comes out of the closet against hate and discrimination. He strides out into the world proudly with the marginalized and bullied.

I think it’s time we followed. Will you join me?

Stranger than Fiction 2: A Cry for Freedom and Justice

Why bother with the bible?

After all, some biblical fundamentalists seem to use it as their primary tool to put down those who are the wrong gender, wrong color, wrong nationality or wrong sexuality. So why not leave it to them?

Because that narrow-minded approach risks stealing the bible’s real unparalleled message of freedom and justice. It’s a dangerous book, subversive even, driving its readers not to create division, but to escape all systems of oppression, greed and hate.

The bible connects us to our past and points us to our future. It’s really a book of hopes and dreams, of God and humanity. It’s a book that calls to us, and compels us to speak out, not just about what we believe about God, but what we believe about ourselves.

The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas reminds us that at the heart of Scripture, be it the Hebrew texts or the New Testament, lies a call to respond to God with, ‘Here I am.’ It’s Moses before the burning bush, Mary before Gabriel, and Jesus on the cross. It’s every prophet, every ancestor, and every poor forgotten suffering person who encountered the Divine.

The bible teaches us that the story is not in what God can do for us, but what God calls us to do for each other. ‘Here I am’ we must say to each other. ‘Here I am’ we call out to God.

This is truth beyond fact. This is wisdom beyond rules. This is the hope of all futures. If we can commit ourselves to love and care for each other we will have committed ourselves, finally, at long last to our God. The self-emptying of Jesus on the cross is a model of love for all of us.

Give yourselves, God cries. Care for my children. Love my people, all my people, but especially the downtrodden, marginalized, suffering, oppressed, and yes, the enemy. “Do onto others as you would have others do onto you. For this is the Law and the Prophets,” Jesus commands, reminding us of the heart of Scripture.

This theme echoes through the bible from the opening where God hovers above what will be our world and our future, through the call to freedom of Exodus, the cry of the poor in Deuteronomy, the appeal to justice of every prophet and finally on through the story and example of love of Jesus the Christ.

Our sometimes misused and maligned Book throws us a challenge that we dare not refuse. Love each other, no matter the obstacles, no matter the pain. This and only this will lead to God.