“As we seek this healing, let us do so with the knowledge that oneness is not sameness. It is the transcendence of our differences and the weaving of our diverse expressions into a tapestry that is harmonized and aligned with common purpose.”—Sherri Mitchell, Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change
“When you forgive somebody, when you are generous, when you withhold judgment, when you love and when you stand up to injustice, you are, in that moment, bringing heaven to earth.”—Rob Bell
“At its core, war is impoverishment. War’s genesis and ultimate end is in the poverty of our hearts. If we can realize that the world’s liberation begins within those troubled hearts, then we may yet find peace…What good has ever come from the slaughter of the innocents?”—Kathy Kelly
Today is the International Day of Peace. Denise and I put together and led services at Presbyterian Community Church of the Rockies in Estes Park, Colorado each September. They were a reminder to our congregation and to us that peace is life-giving and essential to the future of this world. I have been thinking a lot about Thomas Merton, Martin Luther King Jr, Dorothy Day, Daniel, Philip Berrigan, Jim Forest, and so many others who raised their voices for peace in the midst of the insanity that was the war in Vietnam and the Nuclear arms race.
As I hear Vladimir Putin threaten Ukraine and the world with tactical nuclear weapons my heart hurts deeply. I have watched the rise of christian (yes, the lower case is intentional) nationalism and white supremacy, my heart breaks. Have we learned nothing from history? The history of Hitler, Mussolini, and their followers who touted the marriage of christianity and state? Have we learned nothing from so many other examples throughout the world?
With these thoughts in mind, I thought a portion of Thomas Merton’s “Prayer for Peace” which can be found in the book, Passion for Peace (pp. 166-169). Merton’s prayer was read in the House of Representatives the Wednesday of Holy Week in 1962 by Congressman Frank Kowalski (D-Conn.).
Help us to be masters of the weapons that threaten to master us.
Help us to use our science for peace and plenty, not for war and
destruction. Save us from the compulsion to follow our adversaries
in all that we most hate, confirming them in their hatred and
suspicion of us. Resolve our inner contradictions, which now
grow beyond belief and beyond bearing. They are at once a torment
and a blessing: for if you had not left us the light of conscience,
we would not have to endure them. Teach us to wait and trust.
Grant light, grant strength and patience to all who work for peace.
But grant us above all to see that our ways are not necessarily
your ways, that we cannot fully penetrate the mystery of your
designs and that the very storm of power now raging on this earth
reveals your hidden will and your inscrutable decision.
Grant us to see your face in the lightning of this cosmic storm,
O God of holiness, merciful to men. Grant us to seek peace where
it is truly found. In your will, O God, is our peace.
As we used to sing at our midweek Season of Peace, “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.”
“The divine is infused into all of creation so that we need look no further than ourselves to discover the sacred in our bodies, in our flesh and blood being.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, Creative Flourishing with St Hildegard of Bingen: A Self-Study Online Retreat
What difference might it make to the way you see yourself if you started to envision your body as sacred being?
If I die with much anger and bitterness, I will leave my family and friends behind in confusion, guilt, shame, or weakness. When I felt my death approaching, I suddenly realized how much I could influence the hearts of those whom I would leave behind. If I could truly say that I was grateful for what I had lived, eager to forgive and be forgiven, full of hope that those who loved me would continue their lives of joy and peace, and confident that Jesus who calls me would guide all who somehow belonged to my life—if I could do that—I would, in the hour of my death, reveal more true spiritual freedom than I had been able to reveal during all the years of my life. I realize on a very deep level that dying is the most important act of living. It involves a choice to bind others with guilt or to set them free with gratitude.
“Peace means far more than the opposite of war. Peace, like love or like hope, is an action one can take, something that can be done, not just something that might arrive.”—Fred Rogers
“Lament releases the layers of grief we are holding and makes room within us for the Spirit to break through in new ways.”
— Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, Earth, Our Original Monastery: Cultivating Wonder and Gratitude through Intimacy with Nature
What can you do to begin to acknowledge the reality of disorientation and grief in the world we all live in?
This morning I was midway through my sermon at the 8am worship service when I began to feel lightheaded and needed to sit down. Thankfully two members of our safety team helped me to a chair in the fellowship hall while Denise got the car. After being checked out at the ER we were relieved to find out that the anemia which I have as a result of long-COVID was the culprit (along with my blood pressure).
I had been preaching on the difficult and challenging parable of Jesus about the dishonest manager in Luke 16:1-10. The message that came to my heart was about idols that get in the way of serving God with all that we are. No one can serve two masters… you can’t serve God and wealth is the closing verse in the passage. So imagine my surprise when I read today’s reading from the book A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals! This particular passage is found in Run to the Mountain: The Story of a Vocation (Journal 1).
The measure of our identity, of our being (the two are the same), is the amount of our love for God. The more we love earthly things, reputation, importance, pleasures, ease, and success, the less we love God. Our identity is dissipated among things that have no value, and we are drowned and die in trying to live in the material things we would like to possess, or in the projects we would like to complete to objectify the work of our own wills…. My life is measured by my love of God, and that, in turn, is measured by my love for the least of His children. And that love is not an abstract benevolence: it must mean sharing their tribulation. — September 3, 1941
Love is really the bottom line when it comes to life as a Christ-Follower. I was reminded of that today through the care and support of the congregation, our safety team, and the medical staff at South Baldwin Regional Medical Center. Denise and I both experienced that love and are so thankful for the gifts of love given to us by so many.
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