2017.10.08 Clarity of Voice and Action

When news of extreme violence such as the recent massacre in Las Vegas goes viral we all cringe and crouch and feel horrified—and if we’re religious we pray. 

Christians try to do what we see in the life of Jesus the Christ as remembered by the writers of scripture. There is a time to let go and move on, to wipe the dust from our feet, a time to grieve, as in Gethsemane, a time for strong action like asserting God’s agenda in the Temple, and a time for prayer—all the time without ceasing.

What response is called for at this time?

May we suggest that now is not the time to flee or fear or freak, or even to let go and let God. There is reason to fear but no reason to hide. This is no time to indulge the greatest temptation of all: to huddle together inside the precincts of our own prized safety and wrap up in the warmth of community. Parish churches are often guilty of this behavior. Even the disciples ran for cover when their leader was violently executed, their world collapsed, and they were frightened. Such a response to violence is understandable, and for them it was in their “back yard”.

And today? Spiritual responsiveness knows no geography. We pray for all these things. Do we have the right to pray for what we are not willing to work for?

The Church too regularly falls into the sin of self-idolatry. It is hubris in this age to ignore global reality and needs. It is irrational to believe that all we have to do for God is be warm and friendly and take care of the gifts God has given us with responsible stewardship. In a word, there is imbalance between community outreach and community in-reach.

Are we called to correct this imbalance?

In-reach is spiritual consolation and nurture, yes. Outreach is noisy and unsettling.  It involves clarity of voice and action like Jesus took in the Temple, which had abdicated its role as a house of prayer, a place revealing the justice and compassion of God. Jesus acted on behalf of God and the people exploited by unjust social, political, economic, and religious practices. Such practices do as much violence to the will of God as does a hurricane or a deranged individual with an assault weapon he owned by right.  

We are a House of Prayer just like the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. What action do we create?

What about a Revolution of Compassion for the sake of God and our common humanity exercised by our clarity of voice?

A few suggestions:
    - Write and call your Senators and members of Congress, beseeching them to relinquish their own “warfare” and miserable inaction for God’s sake if not for our common humanity.
    - Lobby for legislation toward regulating gun violence.
    - Give money or volunteer for any cause that works to end political, economic, and social inequality. It’s the gospel! 
    - Educate yourself as a way to eliminate the pervasive ignorance about mental illness, addictions, and other causal factors behind eruptions of violence.
    - Remove the cliché “thoughts and prayers” from your vocabulary. It has become empty of meaning—a justification for inaction. Members of Congress Seth Moulton and the recently injured Steve Scalise criticized the traditional  “moments of silence”.
    - Exaggerate kindness and smiling, even to strangers on the street. Such energy raises hope and it spreads.
    - Give money to beggars. You don’t know why they are out there, so make no assumptions or judgments and risk generosity with a smile. You notice they usually bless you. Bless them back.Today we gave away $20 in fives just in Harvard Square. It is passive violence not to help when you can and where there is need.
    - Pray out loud in church. We offer Prayers of the People every Sunday and everyone is silent, lost in a sea of words. God hears your silent prayers, but the community does not. Speak up. You don’t have to shout. A prayer is not an announcement. Here’s one way to practice clarity of voice.
    - Love the earth. Never throw anything away that can be recycled.
    - Get to know your personal image of God. A religious sister recently said: “We are killing God faster than we are killing each other.” Think about it.
    - Disturb the peace peacefully.
    - Pray daily for your personal needs and equally for the world beyond yourself.
    - Vote for a candidate not a party.

From Sister Stanislaus Kennedy of the Irish Sisters of Charity in her book of daily meditations Gardening the Soul:

“Many of us are taught about God rather than encouraged to know God. We are like children who have been separated from their parents at a very young age and whose only knowledge of them has come from photo albums and stories. Our alienation from God is a deeply felt deprivation, but often it is a misunderstood deprivation—deprived people do not know what they are deprived of, because they have never known or been helped to know God, who is the Divine in them.”   (October 3rd entry)

Dear friends in Christ, Jesus asked and prayed for the people of his day to help him spread the Embodiment of Love he called God, the Divine in us all. The Risen Christ asks and prays the same for us today. We too pray and ask the same.  May we be the prayers we pray.

© 2017 The Rev’d Lyn G. Brakeman and the Rev’d Richard J. Simeone
Priest Associates, St. John’s Episcopal Church, Charlestown, Massachusetts

2015.12.13 Guns and Hope—Unlikely Peace Duo?

I had a stunning thought just two days ago: I wonder if we should get a gun? I scared myself. My very next thought was something like: But if someone armed and with intent to kill harm or terrorize into submission broke into my house, how likely would it be that I’d be sitting there with a handgun in my pocket, or next to me on my computer desk, or on my bedside table— ready and loaded? Really! Or maybe my husband should wear a holster like a cowboy? Okay, I was humoring my fear, but honestly being armed seemed a little silly. It was the very thought of it, however, that alarmed me to chills. No, I don’t want a gun in my house. EVER!

In the 1970s, my dad bought a gun. He’d never had one before. After the Truman Capote book, In Cold Blood, came out Dad immediately went out and bought a huge shotgun. The idea that strangers could break into one’s sacred home and brutally murder all its occupants was beyond my father’s capacity to imagine, even though he knew this story to be true. His fear got the better of him. He kept the gun under his bed, at the ready. But who knew if he took instructions to operate it?

  

Dad was a city-bred “Mad man” just retired. I suppose the move to a semi-rural country setting with lots of land and no urban or suburban surroundings, like people and buildings, made him feel naked. I was a young mother of four living close by. But my sister was living with my parents at the time, and she was afraid of the gun. One night she wanted to go into my parents’ bathroom to get a Tylenol, or some such, and was terrified to do so for fear of being shot. My dad’s gun made us more afraid of him than of any stray killers, the likes of Leopold and Loeb. That gun changed the tenor of the house just by its presence.

I nevertheless remember that, as a child and true girl, I had a brief pre-estrogen phase of fascination with guns. My favorite show (yes, on the radio!) was the Lone Ranger. I was in love with all the cowboy heroes, like Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. I wanted to be one of them, not one of their girlfriends.  I had a horse on a stick I used to mount and gallop around our NYC apartment with my cap gun, shouting Hi Ho Silver away!! I loved the loud bang of my weapon and the smoke and the smell that came from the fired pistol. Honestly, I felt very powerful and fierce.

But a gun? Now? Cowboys aside, and despite the current cultural idolatry of guns and the security they represent to so many people, having a gun would not make me feel safe. I do not believe that having a gun would protect me from anything or anyone; nor do I think it is my civil right to purchase a gun. Having a gun in my home would symbolize everything I despise—yes, even organized military or religious violence. It would signal an abandonment of my spirituality, my trust in Godde, whose divinity, I believe, is implanted within all human flesh as the healing and saving power of Compassion and Hope and Peace. These were Jesus’s “weapons" and they’re good enough for me.

I want our government, specifically our paralyzed Congress, to get its act together, cross the aisles, establish a bipartisan approach again, have clear-headed conversations, and draft some reasonable legislation to regulate guns and who gets to purchase them. I don’t care if the time-bound second amendment is either radically amended or eliminated. 

Sometimes when I hope and pray for peace, odd, ironic ideas slip into my mind—ideas that confuse me, amuse me—and help me practice what I preach.

Heck, I thought, Congress, and religions, have been “shooting” smoking cap guns across aisles for years. And now they argue over the control of real guns with real bullets? But what if guns can force the issues of peace onto the table, make us disarm, verbally and literally? God knows they're loud enough! 

Bang bang! You’re dead?
       OR
Bang, bang! Let’s go!