Denise, my beloved sweet wife and partner in life, love, and ministry is doing some studying as she prepares for the sermon she will preach next Sunday. During her studying she told me that she had found a poem written by Thomas Merton, titled “Paper Cranes.” I was not familiar with the poem and she chuckled and said that she was surprised that she found something that Merton had written that I wasn’t familiar with!
As she read the poem it struck me how it spoke to what is going on in the Middle East today. For 26 years as a USAF Chaplain, I watched metal warbirds take off around the world with their payloads of death and destruction.
A retired USAF B-52 pilot once told me that when he flew a mission he prayed that he would never have to drop the bombs. He knew that the nuclear payload in his B-52 would rain down death and destruction and that his family would be killed in a retaliatory strike.
Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD as it was known, would not leave any winners. It would only leave destruction on a regional if not global scale. I imagine Merton would often reflect on the bizarre fact that as he prayed for peace in his Hermitage, he would hear and often see the B-52’s as they flew over the Abbey on their nighttime training missions with their payloads of death and destruction. The irony could not have been lost on him.
I have been thinking about Merton a lot as the events unfold over in the Middle East and the rhetoric of the politicians escalates. He often said that the root of all war is fear. He felt as though this focus on war and destruction was destroying society and even the church. And now, here is the poem.
Paper Cranes: (The Hibakusha Come to Gethsemani)
How can we tell a paper bird
Is stronger than a hawk
When it has no metal for talons?
It needs no power to kill
Because it is not hungry.
Wilder and wiser than eagles
It ranges round the world
Without enemies
And free of cravings.
The child’s hand
Folding these wings
Wins no wars and ends them all.
Thoughts of a child’s heart
Without care, without weapons!
So the child’s eye
Gives life to what it loves
Kind as the innocent sun
And lovelier than all dragons!
In the Darkness Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas Merton, p. 119
In these difficult times, my prayer is that the Paper Bird of Peace will indeed fly and that minds focused on destruction and hatred will instead seek the path of peace. From our lips to God’s ear, may we pray…
Verse of the day
Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute.
– Proverbs 31:8
Voice of the day
I raise up my voice – not so I can shout, but so those without a voice can be heard…we cannot succeed when half of us are held back.
– Malala Yousafzai
Prayer of the day
Voice of Hope, your words resonate throughout generations. If our mouths should open, let them be declarations of affirmation that leave no one behind.
The first love says: “You are loved long before other people can love you or you can love others. You are accepted long before you can accept others or receive their acceptance. You are safe long before you can offer or receive safety.” Home is the place where that first love dwells and speaks gently to us. — Lifesigns: Intimacy, Fecundity, and Ecstasy in Christian Perspective
“The moon has much wisdom to offer us with her witness to the necessity of both waxing and waning, both brilliant fullness and utter darkness. At every turn it seems that nature calls us to embrace both the expansion and the contraction as necessary to the very way we were created.”
–Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, Sacred Time: Embracing an Intentional Way of Life — A Self-Study Online Retreat. Use code SACREDTIME20 to take 20% off through March 31st.
When have you felt the gifts of expansion? Of contraction?
A war is always—always!—the defeat of humanity, always. We, the educated, who work in education, are defeated by this war, because [it is] “elsewhere”; we are responsible. There is no such thing as a just war: they do not exist! — Against War: Building a Culture of Peace, p. 17
Verse of the day
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
– Colossians 2:6-7
Voice of the day
Radical simply means grasping things at the root.
– Angela Davis
Prayer of the day
God, imbue us with the radical impulse to truly walk alongside you.
Verse of the day
The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not regretfully or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
– 2 Corinthians 9:6-7
Voice of the day
Ever since I have been conscious of my part in life, I have felt consecrated to the saving of human life.
– Lillian D. Wald
Prayer of the day
Lord, we are grateful for the limitless potential of the bounty we can sow and the freedom you give us to make up our minds to do so. Instill in us a reverence and devotion to human life.
Verse of the day
If, then, there is any comfort in Christ, any consolation from love, any partnership in the Spirit, any tender affection and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.
– Philippians 2:1-2
Voice of the day
We all are Citizens of the World. What’s good for you, must be good for all. If you are lost, share a plate of food with a stranger…you will find who you are.
– José Andrés
Prayer of the day
God our nurturer, you bring us into fasting, but also to feast. Let there be no boundaries in our hearts as we seek to be in accordance with each other.
Verse of the day
A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”
– Isaiah 40:3
Voice of the day
To the uninitiated, the Judean wilderness can look lifeless, dead at certain times of year but then, when the rains fall and the waters rise and the flowers bloom it becomes a garden oasis of life. A masterwork lovingly painted by a divine hand.
– Wil Gafney
Prayer of the day
Creator God, you breathe life into all places, even in apparent wilderness. Whenever we wander through it, help us perceive your ways.
Verse of the day
For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
– Romans 11:29
Voice of the day
Let us return, then, as we do in times of grief, for the sake of pleasure but mostly for the need for relief, to art.
– Ling Ma, “Severance” (2018)
Prayer of the day
Divine Potter, you mold and meet us at the kiln. May encounters with art restore and lead us to fulfill the things you call us to.
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