2015.07.12 Peacemaking Made Simple/Papal

Pope Francis right now is traveling for peace—just saying hello, shaking hands, listening and meeting folks and their leaders.




Here are his four elements of peacemaking:

1. Time is bigger than space: if you protect your own space or area you get war, but if you allow time enough to explore the space of others, you have a chance at peace

2. Unity prevails over conflict: eventually we tire of feuding.

3. Reality is more important than ideas: we can argue ideas forever, which allows the fighting to continue. A STORY transforms. Fighting must stop so we can listen deeply to the stories of ourselves, each other, and our scriptures.

4. The whole is bigger than the sum of its parts: Each part fits into the whole but each one has a different shape and place. There must be a place for every part in the whole.

I find these to be true. These basics could go on the fridge. Maybe if we keep peace in our faces, and keep it simple..............     It gets difficult when we think too big. 

My formula: War = fighting about what we love the most
                      Peace = praying, or talking, about what we love the most

We’re not the Pope or, for the most part, anyone special, but we do have the capacity for peace if we pay attention to it in our daily lives. Peacemaking isn’t always some big fat political deal, or ordeal. Maybe it’s friendship, being friends.

Ponder this simple question: How do you make friends?  How did you as a kid? Multiple ways I’m sure, but for me it was, and usually still is, “Hi.”

Just look at that photo again. Amazing how the gesture of a blessing and a friendly wave "hello" are nearly indistinguishable.

Hi. 

2012.03.11 Either vs. Or—or Both

In our nation, and perhaps in the world and in our churches, we are trying to move from rigid positions of EITHER/OR to supple positions of BOTH/AND.

I think of piano playing. You can’t play music that soothes souls with rigid fingers. You also can’t make peace with inflexible minds and hard hearts.

The process of getting to BOTH/AND is painful, like any enormous world view change. It’s a time when EITHER and OR fight more vociferously, even viciously. Both are afraid.

I remember when my children would fight over who had more favor or love. They never put it that way, but if they got anxious about parental attention, which happened more than a few times (some of it through parental fault and flaw) they competed for the love they all already had in full and equal measure. Today I'm proud about how they have grown up and into each other.

On a larger scale we get war and more war in our politics, on our streets, among our religious perspectives, in our homes, and in our families—not just with foreign lands. These latter only become convenient scapegoats for looking deeply and honestly at ourselves.

The temptation is to hop on one side or the other and stay there believing yourself loyal and devoted when really you’re only a loyal-ist. Peace is a higher value than victory.

Now we hear radio talk show celebrity,chauvinist of conservative patriarchy, Rush Limbaugh curse a female college student for testifying to Congress about wanting her health care insurance to cover contraception. By Limbaugh’s rhetoric she can be EITHER a “slut/prostitute” OR a “pregnant madonna.”

The fight is on and the battle ground is a woman’s body. Once again.

Women, especially Roman Catholic women, don’t want to call this a women’s liberation issue, a feminist platform. It is politics they say. It is about health care they say. It is about religious freedom and the economy. Yes it is all that, AND......

I ask: on whose body is legislation about birth control coverage visited? Do men take contraception pills? Do men get pregnant? Not yet. So is this an EITHER/ OR fight disguised by new language? Is it a gender justice issue in essence? Certainly it’s a patriarchal power issue.

I don’t agree with some religious traditions that disallow blood transfusions for the sake of purity of creation. I also think practitioners of such faiths should have their choice even if it means their choice leads to their death. That doesn’t mean insurance companies would stop covering blood transfusions, or that you and I would stop donating our healthy blood, does it?

When will we enjoy a society and a church that is BOTH/AND, women and men together for the common good? God AND humanity cooperating for the good of all creation? Heaven-in-earth and earth-in-heaven?

In this BOTH/AND vision, Church and state institutions BOTH take their lumbering free time to make changes for justice AND individual people are free to make their own moral choices.

I guess any vision begins with one, or a few.

Wise, brave U.S. Senator, Olympia Snowe, moderate Republican of Maine fits that bill for me. Fed up with partisan politics and gridlock (EITHER/OR impasse,) Snowe walked away. She will not seek a fourth term, believing she said that she can do more good outside the halls of power, traditional change agents.

Brava Olympia Snowe. And thanks.

2011.09.11 9/11

Do what you are able and for God’s sake be kind to yourself and all creation. But above all pray, for that is how you will be in touch with your internal arbiter, the soul voice that, at its most naked, conjoins with the transcendent to bring forth goodness and peace.

There is no accounting for tragedy—no need to quantify it, no need to compare it as if every tragedy weren't exactly the same to the human hearts involved, and no need to get even for we can't. There is just a need to name our heart's truth and grieve together.

To share on this day of remembrance I quote from Leo Tolstoi who in 1854 was at the front in the Crimean war. On leave he witnessed a public beheading in Paris that changed his spiritual life forever and brought forth his lasting work War and Peace.

Tolstoi wrote: "During my stay in Paris, the sight of an execution revealed to me the instability of my superstitious belief in progress. When I saw the head part from the body and how they thumped separately into the box, I understood, not with my mind but with my whole being, that no theory of the reasonableness of our present progress could justify this deed; and that though everybody from the creation of the world had held it to be necessary, on whatever theory, I knew it to be unnecessary and bad; and therefore the arbiter of what is good and evil is not what people say and do, nor is it progress, but it is my heart and I."

Judith Shulevitz writing about the sabbath remembrance in her book Sabbath World ends her fine book with wise and simple words: “We have to remember to stop because we have to stop to remember.”

To pray is to stop, remember, and allow Other to transform your heart’s soul. A sabbath community reminds us to stop, pray and remember to strengthen our collective hearts.