When we got to Austin on Monday, our first stop was to find some flowers for my mom’s grave. Winter is finally over and hopefully they will last for a little while at least. She always loved having flowers in hanging baskets, pots, and in the flower beds when she and dad lived in the house that I grew up in.
As we stood there, I remembered past visits and listening to the sounds of the birds in the trees. This spot is always so peaceful and there is almost always some sort of activity between the bunnies, squirrels, birds, and even deer come to visit. We are taking dad to his cardiology appointment this morning before heading back home.
As I reflect on this visit and our journey with dad through the valley of the shadows, I happened upon today’s reading from A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals
The first chirps of the waking birds: le point vierge—the virgin point—of the dawn, a moment of awe and inexpressible innocence, when the Father in silence opens their eyes and they speak to Him, wondering if it is time to “be”? And He tells them, “Yes.” Then they one by one wake and begin to sing. First the catbirds and cardinals and some others I do not recognize. Later, song sparrows, wrens, etc. Last of all doves, crows… O paradise of simplicity, self-awareness—and self-forgetfulness—liberty, peace. (June 5, 1960)
O paradise of simplicity, self-awareness, and self-forgetfulness… isn’t that the call of Christ that I seek to follow? Food for thought on this day and this season filled with unknowns.
Verse of the day
But you, O Lord, know me; You see me and test me—my heart is with you.
– Jeremiah 12:3
Voice of the day
What does it do to the human spirit to be invisible? What does it mean to be invisible? What do we lose as a society when we erase a group of people?
– Grace Ji-Sun Kim, “When Church Fosters Both Belonging and Bigotry”
Prayer of the day
Lord, often your church is known by who it erases rather than who it accepts. Transform your people to be ones known by our radical love and inclusion.
Dear God,
Speak gently in my silence.
When the loud outer noises of my surroundings
and the loud inner noises of my fears
keep pulling me away from you,
help me to trust that you are still there
even when I am unable to hear you.
Give me ears to listen to your small, soft voice saying:
“Come to me, you who are overburdened, and I will give you rest . . .
for I am gentle and humble of heart.” Let that loving voice be my guide.
Amen.
“When I choose to see the good side of things, I’m not being naïve. It is strategic and necessary. It’s how I’ve learned to survive through everything. I know you see yourself as a fighter. Well, I see myself as one too. This is how I fight. . . . The only thing I do know is that we have to be kind. Please, be kind. Especially when we don’t know what’s going on.”—Waymond Wang in the film Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
“We humans know how to start wars, and we know how to end them—eventually if we don’t think we’re ‘winning.’ It seems the thing we still don’t know is how to avoid them.”—Michael Nagler
Verse of the day
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”
– Matthew 5:9
Voice of the day
We must pray that God give us grace and healing when we ourselves fall short, until Christ shall come again to gather us together within a world that shall never require of any human being that they sacrifice their life to our divisions.
– Benedict Varnum, “Observing Memorial Day, Down by the Riverside”
Prayer of the day
Lord, we remember those who lost their lives because of war. We pray that the world would be transformed to a place where no one has to sacrifice their lives due to a nations’ divisions.
Memorial Day has always been a complicated “holiday” for me. It has become even more complicated the further I get from wearing the uniform of a USAF Chaplain, Lt Col. (This blog isn’t about me and my rank or my military service… as Veterans for Peace, an organization that I belong to says, “if you want to thank me for my service, work for peace.”)
This blog is a combination of looking back, looking to today, and looking to tomorrow. When I first put on the uniform in 1985, I had no idea what I was getting into. The last few years of my service the number of military members I either knew and buried, or knew and mourned increased dramatically. I guess the older I get and the more that I experience, the more the reality of life and death became more real.
It wasn’t the Hollywood War movies, rather it was the ugly reality of war and death. A friend of mine and fellow chaplain emailed me from the Baghdad Airport Casualty Collection Point in the opening days of the invasion of Iraq and said, “Mike, this shit is real and they are trying to kill us!” However, we were doing the same thing to the people of Iraq.
This weekend I have been reading the works of Thomas Merton, Daniel Berrigan, and Martin Luther King, Jr. These prophets from the 1960’s and in the case of Fr Berrigan up until his death in 2016, speak to me of a world that was mad and continues to me mad. As Dr King said in his sermon at New York’s Riverside Church in 1967:
When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence
I was a part of the military industrial complex. I am not proud of that. However, I was able to speak to a different way of viewing life and the value of people’s lives while I was in uniform. I spoke to the fact that people are more important than implements of war. As Thomas Merton said in No Man Is an Island, The God of peace is never glorified by human violence.
Something happened today on our drive to the Pensacola Airport today. The traffic was pretty heavy and rough. However, it was when someone behind us began laying on their horn while traffic was at a standstill that things changed. When he jumped out of his truck to yell at a driver in front of us, I went into full-on military defensive driving mode.
We made our way through that ugly situation but it took a while for our blood pressure to drop. Seriously? On a weekend that is supposed to honor and remember those who died as a result of our nations wars, someone is going ballistic? Dr King’s words speak to me once again of the futility of this situation. We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation… And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace.
Tomorrow I will remember those who died… who died in the wars of this nation. I will also strive to be a voice for peace. In 1968, Daniel Berrigan prayed as the Cantonsville Nine burned draft records to protest the war in Vietnam. May God make it possible through this action for others to live. May he make it more difficult for them to kill one another. We make our prayer in the name of that God whose name is peace and decency and unity and love. Celebrant’s Flame: Daniel Berrigan in Memory and Reflection (p. 46)
His words speak volumes today as a this nation and world continue to see violence as the only answer. My prayer is that we will make a way through this world of hatred, fear, and violence. In the words of St Francis of Assisi, Lord make us an instrument of your peace.
“if there is cosmic beauty
then your face holds it
if there is human understanding
then your soul is capable of it
if a mind ever thought of freedom
yours has flown to where freedom
lives and has drifted back . . .
i can see it . . . you must know that one
day we will all be
FREE.”
Prayer and action can never be seen as contradictory or mutually exclusive. Prayer without action grows into powerless pietism, and action without prayer degenerates into questionable manipulation. If prayer leads us into deeper unity with the compassionate Christ, it will always give rise to concrete acts of service. And if concrete acts of service do indeed lead us to a deeper solidarity with the poor, the hungry, the sick, the dying, and the oppressed, they will always give rise to prayer. In prayer we meet Christ, and in him all human suffering. In service we meet people, and in them the suffering Christ. . . .
Action with and for those who suffer is the concrete expression of a compassionate life and the final criterion of being a Christian. Such acts do not stand beside the moments of prayer and worship but are themselves such moments. Why? Because Jesus Christ, who did not cling to his divinity, but became as we are, can be found where there are hungry, thirsty, alienated, naked, sick, and imprisoned people. Precisely when we live in an ongoing conversation with Christ and allow the Spirit to guide our lives, we will recognize Christ in the poor, the oppressed, and the downtrodden and will hear his cry and respond to it wherever he is revealed.
“We are one, after all, you and I;
together we suffer,
together exist,
and forever will recreate each other.”
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
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