If we could read the secret history
of our enemies, we would find sorrow and
suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

George Bush visited our town this week. He spoke to more than 9,000 people, crowded into the local rodeo grounds. They waved flags and sang patriotic songs, shouted slogans and laughed in all the right places. They gave the President more than 14 standing ovations.

Please don’t misunderstand. These are not naïve people. They’re just hopeful.

Many have seen their sons and daughters and husbands and wives leave home for extended tours of duty in a far-away and dangerous place. They need to know that their loved ones will come home safe. They want to believe that this war in Iraq is serving a purpose. They’re invested.

Just like our president.

It’s too late to go back and start over. People are dying every single day, trying to clean up a disaster that’s of our own doing. Not just “our people” either. Plenty of innocents have been lost, and most of them probably weren’t Americans.

I only hope our nation is learning the truth that “violence as a way of achieving justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.

“It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue.

“Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.”

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sundays Are Too Full

Words that do not carry
the light of Christ only increase the darkness.

Sunday morning services serve as space-less places. We fill them up with songs and sermons and passings of the offering plate (with background music, of course). What we really need is silence — space to listen. Why are we afraid?

Maybe it is because the openness of unprogrammed worship — in paring away the outside noise — leaves us no choice but to face the noise within: hypocrisy, phoniness, the false self we project (a fragile image).

Maybe it is because such silence seems a waste of time. We cannot exploit the silence: use it to turn a profit, make a product or persuade.

Maybe it is because we are a shallow people. It is harder to be in silence than to not be in noise. Frantic streams of words cover our spiritual nakedness. Music soothes, puts to sleep the beasts of doubt and discouragement.

“It is necessary that we find God, and he cannot be found in noise and unpeace. The more we receive through quiet prayer, the more we can give in the activity of our daily lives. In essence, it is not what we say, but what God says to us and through us. All our words are useless if they do not come from within. Words that do not carry the light of Christ only increase the darkness.”

- Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Still out of town. Back on August 13.

Out of town. Back on June 26.

Quenching desire with
material gain is like seeking to extinguish
a burning fire with butter.

Lightening our load of possessions brings a lightness of spirit, even freedom.

A friend of mine left for California on an early morning this spring. He’s working there for the summer. He was supposed to have everything packed up and ready to go by
6:30 that morning. Of course, he put it off until the last minute. Of course, his
alarm clock didn’t go off. And he wasn’t able to finish his laundry. And he didn’t have room for even half the stuff he wanted to take.

I noticed something interesting as he rushed around, trying to get out the door. His priorities had changed (or finally come to light). Many of his prized possessions — television, computer, books, new clothes — had to be sacrificed because they wouldn’t fit (and the journey was of primary importance). He couldn’t afford to take anything that would hold him back.

Maybe this is how we should view our own lives in the world: as a journey. What are we spending time on — career, possessions, responsibilities, relationships — that we don’t have time for? What people, things or activities are holding us back from fully experiencing this journey to which God has called us? And of all the things that we desire, how many of them do we actually need? Are they good for us?

A Hindu master once said, “Quenching our desires with material gain is like seeking to extinguish a burning fire with butter.”

I hope to travel a different road.

Metaphors for Church

...the sheer vulgarity, reducing the raison d’etre of church to a glib commercial slogan...

A small group I’m part of has been working to redefine what it means to be Church. The process has been challenging, particularly our recent conversation on the metaphors that American believers are living out in worship (often unconsciously). Here are a few examples:

School — a place to learn, where attendance is generally compulsory;

Restaurant — where you go when you’re hungry or want to impress someone like a business associate or a date;

Gas station — an opportunity to get fuel, purchase a quick snack and hit the restrooms before getting back on the road;

Family — related people, who gather for special occasions and sometimes live together;

Competition — show off your holiness (and don’t forget the registration fee);

Hospital — complete with comfortable rooms, a competent staff of medical professionals and lots of needy patients;

Judicial system — interpreting the law of the land and recommending consequences for rule-breakers.

But a large part of our conversation centered on the metaphor of business or corporation. And today, I stumbled across this quotation from James Cochrane in Between You and I — A Little Book of Bad English (thanks to Chris Erdman for the reference):

“No public body these days, it seems, feels it has done its duty until it has produced what it will probably call a ‘mission statement’ in the form of a participial phrase: ‘Providing jobs and services’ (typical town council), ‘Working to make London safer’ (the Metropolitan Police), and so forth. Two noticed recently are: ‘Making knowledge work’ (the University of Bradford) and ‘Connecting people with God’ (St. Mary’s Church of England, Islington, London.)

“What is it about these phrases that is so irritating? In the case of St. Mary’s, Islington, perhaps it is the sheer vulgarity of reducing the raison d’etre of the church to a glib commercial slogan, no doubt in the name of ‘accessibility,’ ‘relevance,’ or ‘youth appeal.’ More generally it may be a sense of the essential dishonesty of ‘statements’ which, like the verbless sentences of Prime Minister Tony Blair, are not really statements at all but merely vague aspirations for which no one can properly be held to account.”

I hope some of you, who are reading, will join in the discussion as well. I’m interested to see where it will lead.

Humble giants seem to
slumber on the outskirts of town,
form a soft-humped backdrop for the night-starred sky.

In winter, they disappear
beneath snowy-white blankets.

Summer finds them
flickering in and out of sight,
floating in a dirty, particulate sea —
the accumulated exhalations
of factories and forest fires.

Only the rain,
sliding down the sky,
can wash away falsehood
and bring the giants

back to life.

There was a
tree,
wind-twisted,
bearing the sun’s
harsh glare,
tempted in the desert.
And then there was
rain.

Casting words,
I hooked a nerve,
and now I see
the storm clouds —
blood red —
brewing
behind her eyebrows.
Rain drops cling
precariously
to the corners
of her eyes.

Pond’s corrugated surface
reflects
windswept waves of grass,
sideways leaves,
ripples in the cool gray sky —
storm’s portent.
Seedy tufts jump ship
from slender dandelion stems,
drift away
in the wind.
They won’t get far.
The rain is near.