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KING: A BETTER IMAGE OF A PASTOR

2012-01-16T06:41:00.000-05:00

Inspiring, admired pulpit orator or street-level change agent?

OUT OF THE PULPIT. Most images of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday the nation observes today, depict the pastor/civil rights leader behind a pulpit or before a great throng of adoring people. But I prefer the more rare pictures of this Christian minister being manhandled, hand-cuffed, or intimidated by local government authorities serving vested, bigoted white interests.

POWER IN THE STREETS. King's witness and power come as much from his stand in the streets with unnamed people with whom he identified and for whom he gave his life as from his pen and pulpit. My favorite photo of King was taken in 1958 in Montgomery, Alabama. In it, sheriffs are twisting the minister’s arm behind his back and forcing his head down onto a counter while his wife, Coretta, looks on. He was arrested for "loitering"; the charge was later changed to "failure to obey an officer."

PASTOR [GASP!] ARRESTED. This image of King and others like it were intended to scandalize him, to discredit him in the eyes of most people who do not think a pastor should stoop to disobeying governmental authorities. Instead, such photos called attention to unjust authority and corruption. Question: when was the last time we read of a Christian minister being arrested for any issue of peace and justice? Plenty of ministers have been arrested for fraud or other immoral behavior. But help me recall those who have so irked the powers that be regarding peace and justice that the fallen principality we call "government" has had the audacity to lay hands on them? I know of only one: Darren Cushman-Wood, a United Methodist Pastor in Indianapolis who works with the Jobs with Justice effort in downtown Indianapolis. I applaud his efforts. He has inspired me to lay aside my own reticence for the sake of justice for all.

STATE OF THE DREAM. King’s dream of a nation of races reconciled, diversity embraced, and poverty rolled back gets mixed reviews today, at best. True, Americans who voted in 2008 elected Barack Obama as President. Still, fear, hatred and "tolerable" levels of oppression fester beneath a relatively smoother social surface. Civil rights and equal opportunity still do not come voluntarily. They must be articulated, demonstrated, and enforced--particularly in the face of a conservative Supreme Court that continues to bleed away their power. Those who six years ago voted (again) for a President who promised to install judges to uphold “conservative moral values” unwittingly voted to install jurists who have proven records of rolling back civil rights and civil liberties for people of color. As if that is not a moral value?

VIETNAM AND IRAQ. Each MLK Day since George W. Bush attacked Iraq under false pretenses, the thought occurred to me that King would have not been silent about or acquiesced to the Iraq War. Based on his outspoken perspective on the Vietnam War (a perspective largely based on that war’s impact on poverty and economics), I doubt many would want to hear what Martin Luther King, Jr. would have had to say about the Iraq War. King’s stand against Vietnam was very unpopular. Some of his close associates felt he should not speak out against it. But his last speech on April 3, 1968 was a vow to stand solo, if need be, as a black civil rights leader against war. I know of only handful of pastors who have spoken against the Iraq War or any other. Fewer still who take it to the streets.

WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR? The image of a pastor--white, black, Latino, etc.--in American society is too closely associated with a suit in the pulpit. Let us not mistake our call to interpret and articulate prophesies with being prophetic. Let us not think we have delivered our soul when we have delivered our sermons. Let us not accept a generous paycheck from a congregation that buys clergy silence and keeps pastors on the sidelines of unjust and pressing local, national and world events. Let us put our words into action. Let our calling be expressed fully--in action, in solidarity, in the messiness of community conflict, in speaking truth to power (and not just from behind the pulpit). Jesus points the way. Martin contemporized Jesus' precedent. What are we waiting for?

A CHOICE IN LISTENING

2012-01-10T11:41:00.000-05:00

To live the possibilities of newness, we have to send the foxes packing

FROM HENRI NOUWEN The following writing by Henri J. M. Nouwen reflects great possibility along with the soul work necessary to live in newness throughout 2012. It is from Nouwen’s book Here and Now:

"I HAVE A GIFT FOR YOU!" “A new beginning! We must learn to live each day, each hour, yes, each minute as a new beginning, as a unique opportunity to make everything new. Imagine that we could live each moment as a moment pregnant with new life. Imagine that we could live each day full of promises. Imagine that we could walk through the new year always listening to a voice saying to us: ‘I have a gift for you and can’t wait for you to see it!’ Imagine.”

CONFRONT THE OLD “The problem is we allow our past, which becomes longer and longer each year, to say to us, ‘You know it all; you have seen it all; be realistic; the future will be just another repeat of the past. Try to survive it as best you can.’ There are many cunning foxes jumping on our shoulders and whispering in our ears the great lie: ‘There is nothing new under the sun…don’t let yourself be fooled.’”

SELF-FULFILLING “When we listen to these foxes, they eventually prove themselves right: our new year, our new day, our new hour become flat, boring, dull, and without anything new.”

GOD WITH YOU “So, what are we to do? First, we must send the foxes back to where they belong: in their foxholes. And then we must open our minds and our hearts to the voice that resounds through the valleys and hills of our life saying: ‘Let me show you where I live among my people. My name is ‘God-with-you.’ I will wipe away all tears from your eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning, or sadness. The world of the past has gone (see Revelation 21:2-5).”

CHOOSE TO LISTEN “We must choose to listen to that voice, and every choice will open us a little more to discover the new life hidden in the moment, waiting eagerly to be born.”

EPIPHANY

2012-01-06T08:37:00.000-05:00

A reflection on the visit of Magi and other unorthodox strangers

THE LAST TO ARRIVE? It is likely that in most ofour households the nativity crèche and figurines of the first Christmas storyare by now stored away. But in some ancient Christian traditions, today is theday that the figures of three wise men, or Magi, are finally placed at thenativity scene. Their arrival, told in Matthew 2:1-12, completes the entourage of people who are drawnto the Christ child. In the fullness ofChristmastide and in the light of the star, the journey to adoration of theChrist child is nearly complete.

FROM BEYOND THE REALM. The arrival of these mystery people from some distant place signalssomething new that has forever broadened, opened, and heightened the trajectoryof grace. The trajectory of grace now emphatically includes Gentiles—allthose not heretofore considered a part of the story of salvation. The advent ofthe Messiah, spoken of in Old Testament prophecies (like Isaiah 60) and in theMagi being led by a star to Bethlehem, signals that something long hoped-forand anticipated has come to be: the promise of grace and the way of grace isopen and inclusive. From this day forward "whosoever will" may come.

UNLIKELY PEOPLE, UNUSUAL MEANS. Epiphanycelebrates that God’s light draws unlikely people to grace by circuitous means.Perhaps now more often than not, people may see light and respond to grace fromodd places and by unorthodox means. Praise God for people who have been rearedwithin orthodoxy, who have for generations been brought near to Biblical faith,who are faithful to the means of grace as they have been taught. Praise God,also, for the fact that grace is justas likely to shine its light in unlikely places, on unlikely people, and bringthem by unlikely paths to the foot of the Cross. Epiphanycelebrates such "appearings," such small and great invasions andin-breakings of grace as part and parcel of the Kingdom.

WELCOME OR THREAT? Epiphany also celebrates thefact that the child is, in fact, born King of kings. This is signaled not onlyin the Old Testament (like Psalm 72), but in the declaration of the Magi and inthe gift of gold they present. The prospect that a child has been born"king of the Jews" sends Herod’s regime into a search and seizuremode. The announcement that a new Kingis on the scene is simultaneously welcoming and threatening. For thoseliving off the spoils of the present reign, who have invested in and count onthe continuance of present power arrangements, the news of a new king isunsettling, threatening, undermining. For those who long for justice, formercy, for inclusion, for place, for peace, for dignity, for a tomorrow, forequitable economy, for fairness, for a second chance, or for just a chance, thenews of a new King is Good News, indeed.

IT WON'T BE COMPLETE WITHOUT YOU. I wrote earlierthat the journey to adoration of the Christ child is nearly complete. Nearly. It is as nearly complete as our own trekand arrival. Have you made the journeyin your heart? Place yourself among the unlikely figures who hear theGood News or who have been drawn by some light. You are no less out of placethan anyone else. I am no more worthy of being there than the next person. Buthave we been drawn? If so, then let us do the only thing one can do in thepresence of divinity, in the presence of unparalleled royalty—let us be silent,let us be grateful, let us bow inreverence, let us prepare ourselves to be forever changed. Let us be amazed atgrace. And let us turn it inside out in a lifetime of bearing grace to all whoare drawn to His light.

A BENEDICTION. May your journey ever lead you tothe wonder of the God’s gracious gifts. May God’s light ever draw you, guideyou, comfort you, challenge you, send you. May grace guide you from morning toevening, day by day, until, at last, either His Kingdom has come or you havecome into His Kingdom. Amen.

LAST TO ARRIVE

2012-01-05T07:47:00.002-05:00

Shall we take our place at the continuing gathering 'round the Babe of Bethlehem?

At the end of the Christmas season and on the eve of Epiphany (January 6, which marks the visit of the Magi and God's light to all people),I think about the continuing, unusual draw of unlikely people to an unlikelyplace in the heart—Bethlehem—and I offer the following poem:

First, census-responding throngs

swell the local populace,

burgeoning homes and hostels

with not-so-welcome guests.

Then, a man and pregnant young woman

arrive, seeking vainly for a room.

Bedding down in a stable,

their boy is born among livestock.

Later in the night, gnarled shepherds

traipse in, finding their way

to the mangerednewborn,

just as an angel had told them.

How much later we do not know, Magi

come with gracious gifts,

following a star that draws them

from beyond any traceable map.

And later still, from the four corners

of earth and time, we make our trek.

Are we the last to arrive

at the gathering in Bethlehem?

Years from now, until the end of ages,

more will be drawn and find the One

whose birth angels once proclaimed

and so shall forevermore.

CAN I BE INTERRUPTED?

2012-01-03T10:26:00.000-05:00

Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls us to consider the place of interruptions in our life

“We must be ready to allow ourselves
to be interrupted by God. God will be
constantly crossing our paths and
canceling our plans by sending us
people with claims and petitions.
We may pass them by, preoccupied
with our more important tasks…
When we do that we pass by the
visible sign of the Cross raised
across our path to show us that,
not our way, but God’s way must
be done. We must not assume that
our schedule is our own to manage,
but allow it to be arranged by God.”
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together

TEN LORDS A LEAPING

2012-01-03T07:05:00.001-05:00

On the Tenth Day of Christmas...

FOR THE PERSON WHO HAS EVERYTHING. Ever give or receive one of those "for the person who has everything" gifts? What about a gift for a person who has nothing? Or for a recently-appointed leader? Or for a couple just beginning their life journey together? Or for a community just plotting its course or a nation begin birthed? Today’s gifts are perfect for these occasions. Opening them, we hark back to something familiarly old and are invited to embrace something promising enough to dramatically reshape our future.

CENTERING COVENANT. According to tradition that this old English song is part of a clandestine catechism, the "Ten Lords a Leaping" are the Ten Commandments. They did more than anything else to form the Hebrew people into a distinctive and cohesive people. The Decalogue gave them unique identity. It truly made them peculiar among neighboring nations. And when nothing else seemed able to hold them together, the Ten Commandments did. The Ten Commandments formed the core of their covenant with the unseen Yahweh, the exclusive relationship about whom is the first of the Commandments. Through the Ten Commandments, they became principled in their actions, successful in their dealings, and enduring in their posterity.

LOOK FOR THE PRINCIPLES. How we approach the Ten Commandments makes all the difference in how or if we incorporate them into our lives. I learned them mostly as prohibitions and this is how most people think of them. A bunch of "Thou shalt nots" is the lingering and negative impression. Another approach is to explore the provision of each commandment. What does each commandment affirm about life? What does it uphold as valuable? What does it preserve and promote? Look for the covenant principles behind the "Thou shalt nots."

WHO BREAKS WHAT? E. Stanley Jones talked about the fact that we do not break the Ten Commandments, or any other God-given precepts. Instead, we break ourselves upon them. The commandment holds; we yield. Richard Foster puts forth the image of a life-giving river with boundaries. When the boundaries are observed the river provides for many aspects of life. When the banks are flooded and breached, it becomes a rampaging torrent leaving chaos in its path. So it is when we go beyond the Commandments. The boundaries are not set because we cannot be trusted; it is that covenant life simply cannot survive beyond them.

THE LETTER VS THE SPIRIT. What happens with the Ten Commandments in the New Testament? The encounter with the rich young man in Mark 10 is indicative of the way Jesus interpreted the Ten Commandments and the Law. Keeping them minimally or self-righteously may well miss the mark. There is something beyond the letter of the law that is life-giving; there is a spirit of the Commandment that invites us to an authentic and growing relationship to self, others, and God. It is this life in the Spirit, with its hallmark of love, that brings the Ten Commandments into the realm of provision and affirmation of all that is life-giving.

READ & REFLECT. Journaling/prayer possibilities: Open the Ten Commandments and read them separately and thoughtfully. What likely principles or life-affirmations can you discern behind each one? How are you incorporating the Ten Commandments into your life? Which of the Commandments have implications for you in relationship to the larger community? Offer thanks for the Commandments and for the Spirit who brings them to life within us and within our communities.

MERCIFUL DESIGN. Charles Wesley wrote the following lyrics in reflection of the Law of God:

Father, Thy merciful design
We see and joyfully approve;
Thou kindly dost Thy laws enjoin
To make us happy in Thy love.

With joy we own the gracious end
For which Thy laws were all bestowed;
Thou dost each command intend
Our present and eternal good.

A BENEDICTION. May you find God’s commands gracious in intent, directive in decision-making, and sweet in fulfillment. May the open to you a freedom not found elsewhere or before. Amen.

My 2011 Top Ten

2011-12-29T16:12:00.003-05:00

Everybody seems to be doing a year-end Top Ten. Okay, I'll chime in.

These are persons or events that most captured my attention and imagination during 2011.

1. Anna Hazare. This 21-century Gandhi-esque man led a nonviolent protest against government corruption in the autumn that engaged millions of Indians. His fast and savvy actions led to a major breakthrough on anti-corruption laws in the world's largest democracy. Best low-profile story of the year.

2. Tahrir Square. Nothing captured my imagination like the freedom movement in Egypt this past spring and summer. The drama and dynamics of this peaceful movement brought about the downfall of US-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak and brought hope for an authentic democracy.

3. Libyan liberation. It started nonviolent, but turned bloody quickly and ultimately relied on limited air support from NATO allies. The initial impact is that the dictator Gaddafi is gone and there is hope for an emerging democracy in Libya. Most importantly, Libya's future is in the people's hands. I think President Obama's handling of this was stellar.

4. Greece in protest. Partly because Becky and I waded through the middle of one day of the protests in Athens (our eyes burning from tear gas haze), and partly because what happens in Greece impacts much of the rest of the Eurozone. All of Greece is in angst amid austerity measures and a terrible economy. The heart of the birthplace of democracy is aching.

5. Occupy Wall Street. At the beginning of the year, no one could have imagined it: a group of mostly young people decided that since Wall Street influence occupied our government leaders they would occupy Wall Street for the sake of the 99% of Americans. Their extended and ameobic protest would spark a world-wide movement. I participated in the initial Occupy Indianapolis day and spent time with Occupy London protesters in October.

6. Gabby Giffords. I was on a fundraising bicycle ride in Vietnam when Gabby Giffords and her entourage was attacked with deadly violence--a violence derived directly from politician- and news media-fomented venom. Condemnation was swift and widespread. For a while, at least, the tone of public discourse changed. I think this episode marks the beginning of the end of the Tea Party's ascendance and credibility.

7. Inept Congress. House Speaker John Boehner and the conservative bloc of the House of Representatives have demonstrated and symbolized all that is broken in American political process at the moment. But they aren't alone. Time for a radical change in Congressional process.

8. Last Shuttle flight. American space flight has captured and fueled my imagination since I was a young child. The last shuttle flight in late summer signaled the end of an era for America and for me. What's next?

9. Penn State sex scandal. This tragic ordeal reveals so many layers of cover-up, complicity and unreported sexual abuse that are more usual than we want to believe across the nation. May healing come to the boys (now young men) who were abused. May justice and, after that, mercy come to all who perpetrated or failed act to end these abuses.

10. Out of Iraq. Over 4,000 American lives, over 100,000 Iraqi lives and over a trillion American taxpayer dollars late. President Obama kept an important promise by getting US troops out of Iraq. But the fact that none of the politicians who led America into this fiasco have been held accountable is a travesty. That, too, is a legacy of President Obama. But many of us shall not forget who insisted on this greatest and most costly foreign policy blunder in US history.

Four Calling Birds

2011-12-28T07:26:00.003-05:00

A Reflection for the Fourth Day of Christmas

[This is from a book I self-published a few years ago. Twelve Days: A Spiritual Journey offers daily readings and reflections from Christmas to Epiphany using the traditional carol as a framework. This is the reading for the December 28th, the fourth day of Christmas.]

"On the fourth day of Christmas my true love gave to me… four calling birds."

Four Calling Birds = the Four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which convey the Good News of God reconciling the world in Jesus.

Read: Isaiah 61:1-2; Luke 7:21-23; John 20:30-31

PUTTING AWAY CHRISTMAS ALREADY? Still celebrating Christmas? Still basking in the afterglow of the Word (logos) become flesh? As we start to put away Christmas decorations, and as the gifts we have received merge into our wardrobe or take their place in the household to become part of the fabric of living, keep the candle of Christmas glowing. We have received greater gifts. And we are yet to receive more!

GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD. Open the gifts for the fourth day of Christmas: the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Calling birds, indeed! Good News like no other. It is a story told from four different perspectives that is above all other stories. It is a story--a meta-narrative--in which we can find ourselves and through which we can live our own stories authentically.

JUBILEE BEGUN. Pay close attention to the Scripture readings today. Isaiah 61 describes the year of Jubilee, a comprehensive and radical personal and social reordering of life according to God’s reign. Jesus proclaimed Jubilee fulfilled in his coming. Luke 7:21-23 offers confirmation to the followers of John the Baptist that, in fact, Jesus is the Good News for which generations of people had longed. John 20:30-31 makes clear that the Gospel writers did not--could not--capture it all. It also makes clear the intent of the Gospel writing itself: that we may believe and have life through Jesus Christ.

WIDENING THE IMPACT. What Christmas implies and promises, the Gospels write large by walking us through the life of Jesus with heart-opening lucidity. The Gospels document and detail evidence that the hopes and fears of all the years were, indeed, met in Jesus Christ. The birth narratives in Matthew and Luke conspicuously hint at the broad, troubling, and grace-bearing impact Jesus would have. And John’s eloquent introduction sets the stage for a story in which "as many as received him, to those who believed on his name, he gave the right to become the children of God."

FOUR DISTINCT PERSPECTIVES. The four Gospels make no attempt to reconcile differences in details or to paint a seamless, air-brushed picture of Jesus. Each is written from a different perspective for a different audience at a different time and from a different place. The fact that they are individually so raw and make no pretense at orchestrating events so as to present a united front seems to argue for their authenticity and believability. Though incredibly diverse, the common threads and penetrating message of the Gospels witnesses to something that has forever changed the world.

AWAKENING TO WHAT I KNEW. I grew up saturated with stories from the Gospels. It was a gift unappreciated and taken for granted. I didn’t awaken to the radical nature of the Gospel message and its claims upon my life and the community of faith until I was well into my twenties. I am still waking up to this gift, still being converted by the challenging invitation, still being apprehended by the call. I am still realizing this is, indeed, Good News for all humanity, for every person, even for me.

THEIR TERMS, NOT MINE. The Gospels are Good News on their own terms, not mine. Only as I let go of my flimsy excuses, shallow attachments, grandiose notions, self-serving interpretations, and less-thancertain certitudes, the Gospel finds me and I find my home in the Gospel. Our own stories are significant when they find their place in the Story. Every person takes his or her place in the Gospels; we must to decide, however, how the Gospels tell our stories.

Tomorrow: "Five Gold Rings" - The five books of Torah (the Pentateuch): Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.

The Work of Christmas

2011-12-27T16:01:00.004-05:00

Howard Thurman suggests "next steps" after Christmas

"When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart."

from The Moods of Christmas

Christmas is for Adults

2011-12-25T07:02:00.003-05:00

My poem reminds the adults amongst us tolet the season change us

I wrote the following poem just a few years ago, when our house was full of kiddos--they're now young adults. I was thinking about thepossibility of Christmas making a spiritual change in the hearts of adults, notjust children.

It is not enough to say
"Christmas is for children."
So it is, and ever so.
But it is especially for adults,
those routinous creatures
with furrowed brows wrapped
in self-absorbing pursuits.

These lamentable beings need
Christmas if they are ever
to be whole again.
They are so forgetful of
things that matter
and so clamorous for
things that don't.

Christmas, if it can pierce
their thick facade and
deflate their oversized egos,
may touch a forgotten place--
an abandoned but still
life-giving place--
in adult souls.

Christmas invites children
and adults alike to a place
where room is made for
a Child and that Child
is adored and honored
as a gift, a hope--even salvation--
for one and all.

Chesterton's Take on Christmas

2011-12-24T20:27:00.000-05:00

The rotund English Catholic and prolific journalist pumped up Christmas like few have before or since

"It is in the old Christmas carols, hymns, and traditions--those which date from the Middle Ages--that we find not only what makes Christmas poetic and soothing and stately, but first and foremost what makes Christmas exciting. The exciting quality of Christmas rests on an ancient and admitted paradox. It rests upon the paradox that the power and center of the whole universe may be found in some seemingly small matter, that the stars in their courses may move like a moving wheel around the neglected outhouse of an inn.” — G. K. Chesterton

Settling for a Little Togetherness at Christmas

2011-12-20T16:02:00.001-05:00

I've backed off of most of my holiday insistences in favor of something more profound.

What more can be said of Christmas that hasnot already been said, written, sung, drawn, or dramatized? Nothing, really.And yet I keep trying simply because it inspires and possesses me so. As I see it, therewill always be rich angles and new perspectives and cultural combinations thatsomehow bring the ancient stories and traditions into intriguing if not newlight. This is why I keep writing of Advent and Christmas.

Year by year, I try to pay attention to the way I anticipate Christmas and experience itstraditions. I note that my observance of Advent and Christmas and my perspective on them keeps evolving, even if subtly and slowly.

Some things about the holiday that I once heldpassionately—even self-righteously—have faded in importance to me. For instance, I'm not as much a stickler for trying to convert people to observe Advent. Once convincedthat if folks only knew about the tradition--its rich roots and spiritual promise--and hadpractical tools with which to observe it, they would. I was wrong. For whatever reason, most churches I know and most people I know--including my own family—don’t really care much for the practice of Advent, even if they dutifully observe it. Though I grieve this a bit, I am slowly letting it go.

Most people I know, more or less just join in the predominant anticipations andpreparations for Christmas that are typical of mainstream American culture. For better or worse, American Christmas seems to defy anyspecific tradition or order. What I sometimes call kulture krismas is a diverse, eclectic, inconsistent, and conflicting mix of themes and practices andmeanings that more or less get at the heart of Christmas in one way oranother. However it is approached orpracticed, most of us usually “get it” sometime between the 1^st and 31^stof December.

While I still think “we’re missing so much” and “we’re watering down meanings” and “this is toosecular,” these days my level of Christmas holiday satisfaction seems to bedetermined less by “appropriateness” and more by “togetherness.” So we miss lots of opportunities to expressand experience the depth of this season; what matters more right now, at least to me, is being together—belonging, beingpresent to and with and for one another.

While I'm not sure either of these family traditions will continue, there are a couple of activities our clan seems to be engaging in repeatedly for now. One is attending thehomeless memorial service on the first day of winter each year. At least partof our immediate and extended family go to Christ Church Cathedral on MonumentCircle at 11 am on Winter Solstice to join with homeless advocates tomemorialize all who died in Indianapolis due to their homelessness during the year. It’ssomber, but also clarifying and challenging. I suppose this practice as much asanything else brings Christmas into focus for us individually and together. Whatever elsehappens afterward, that is something of a conscience marker.

We’ve also gotten into the habit of goingto a movie together on Christmas night. After all the gatherings are over andthe presents are unwrapped, we pick out a movie to see together and take it in. Sometimes the movies are poor, but we share the experience and have fun talkingabout it afterwards--sometimes for years. None of us willever forget seeing the movie “Meet the Fockers” one year. Bad movie. Stupid movie. Raunchy movie. But we have the most fun laughing about that experience every year now.

Don't get me wrong, our family has layers of family traditions. But I think we've turned a corner from keeping tradition for tradition's sake. I'm learning that when insistent traditions unravel or lose their meaning, go for togetherness. Just maybe out of the richness of a valued and intentional presence to one another, something new and wonderful--even inspiring--might begin.

ADVENT - WAKE UP CALL

2011-12-19T13:29:00.001-05:00

Nazi resistor Alfred Delp saw in Advent a call for radical awakening from self-sabotage

WAKE UP, O SLEEPER. Father Alfred Delp was condemned as a traitor for his resistance to the regime of Adolf Hitler and hanged in a Nazi prison in 1945. Shortly before his execution, the Jesuit priest wrote a piece now titled "The Shaking Reality of Advent" (in Watch for the Light). To one who was going through such fire, Advent was no serene welcoming. It was a radical shaking to awake out of a self-sabotaging, illusory sleep. At the same time, Delp points out that awakened ones should not now act anxiously or rashly. Instead, live and act in anticipation of the next Advent and the surpassing value and new order it brings. Here are a few excerpts:

TIME TO GO TO WORK. "If we want to transform life again, if Advent is truly to come again -- the Advent of home and of hearts, the Advent of the people and the nations, a coming of the Lord in all this -- then the great Advent question for us is whether we come out of these convulsions with this determination: yes, arise! It is time to awaken from sleep. It is time for the waking up to begin somewhere. It is time to put things back where God the Lord put them. It is time for each of us to go to work, with the same unshakable sureness that the Lord will come, to set our life in God's order wherever we can. Where God's word is heard, he will not cheat our life of the message; where our life rebels before our own eyes he will reprimand it."

THOSE WHO LOOK TO THE LORD. "The world today needs people who have been shaken by ultimate calamities and emerged from them with the knowledge and awareness that those who look to the Lord will still be preserved by him, even if they are hounded from the earth."

A TIME FOR RENUNCIATION. "Advent is a time when we ought to be shaken and brought to a realization of ourselves. The necessary condition for the fulfillment of Advent is the renunciation of presumptuous attitudes and alluring dreams in which and by means of which we always build ourselves imaginary worlds. In this way we force reality to take us to itself by force -- by force, in much pain and suffering."

A TIME OF PROMISE. "At the same time, there is much more that belongs to Advent. Advent is blessed with God's promises, which constitute the hidden happiness of this time. These promises kindle the inner light in our hearts. Being shattered, being awakened -- only with these is life made capable of Advent. In the bitterness of awakening...the golden threads that pass between heaven and earth in these times reach us."

WE HAVE RECEIVED A MESSAGE. Delp describes three promises we receive in Advent: (1) the angels annunciation, "speaking their message of blessing into the midst of anguish, scattering their seed of blessing that will one day spring up amid the night, call us to hope... Advent is a time of inner security because it has received a message." Delp challenges each of us to be such an angel of annunciation wherever possible.

DO WE HAVE A READY HEART? The second promise of Advent is (2) the blessed woman: "Advent's holiest consolation is that the angel's annunciation met with a ready heart. The Word became flesh in a motherly heart and grew out far beyond itself into the world of God-humanity." Delp compares Mary's readiness and bearing of a great truth, a great liberation, to our own lives: "We must remember today with courage that Mary foreshadows the light in our midst. Deeper down in our being, our days and our destinies, too, bear the blessing and mystery of God. The blessed woman waits, and we must wait too until her hour has come."

WE HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY. The third promise of Advent is found (3) in the voice and message of John the Baptist: "These John the Baptist characters...cry for blessing and salvation. They summon us to our last chance, while already they feel the ground quaking and the rafters creaking and see the firmest of mountains tottering inwardly...They summon us to the opportunity of warding off, by the greater power of the converted heart, the shifting desert that will pounce upon us and bury us."

JUST BEYOND THE HORIZON. "Space is still filled with the noise of destruction and annihilation, the shouts of self-assurance and arrogance, the weeping of despair and helplessness. But just beyond the horizon the eternal realities stand silent in their age-old longing. There shines on us the first mild light of the radiant fulfillment to come... It is all far off still, and only just announced and foretold. But it is happening..."

BROKEN ANY CHAINS LATELY?

2011-12-12T16:16:00.002-05:00

If chains shall be broken, we will have a hand in breaking them. Enough hand-wringing. Let's do what we know is right and just.

Luke shares words attributed to a pregnant Mary: "He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty." Luke 1:53

How does that happen?

Has it happened?

Is it yet to occur?

How are we to receive, understand, interpret and apply this and the other radical liberation statements in Mary's Song (Magnificat)? I reject the notion that this is merely literary flourish, that it is not to be taken literally. Too much of Old Testament prophecy and the words and actions of Jesus echo it (or it echoes them).

And, while we're at it, how do we get from who Jesus was and what he did to what Jesus makes possible for us and calls us now to be and do?

"Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother," we sing in the stirring Christmas anthem "O Holy Night," "and in his name all oppression shall oppression shall cease." Amen!

But, tell me, if Jesus has done this, or made this possible or started the process, what part do you and I have in it? Is it just hope-so someday? Is it an eventuality? Is it "stand back and wait for God to do something?" I don't think so and most serious Bible scholars don't think so. But the vast majority of the church has played a some-day, hand-wringing game for two millennia. Too often the church has invested more of its energies in church empire than in "Thy kingdom come," leaving people victimized by dominating people, institutions and systems to fend for themselves or hope for something better in the world to come.

If chains shall be broken, we shall have a hand in breaking them. If oppression shall cease, it begins with us to stop oppressing and pretending like we aren't implicated and complicit in oppression on a global scale. If the hungry are to be filled with good things, it should be through those of us who follow Jesus, who say we take him seriously, who will lay aside our over-the-top wealth and act now to fill the hungry with good things.

Today, there are more people enslaved in our world than ever before. Millions of people--many of them under age 14--labor in virtual slavery, are trafficked in the sex industry, or are used as pawns in paying off someone else's debts. Learn about 21st-century slavery and the new abolitionist movement at www.notforsalecampaign.org. Get involved.

Enough games-playing. Enough excusing. Enough hand-wringing. Enough hope-so. Enough obfuscation. Enough putting off. It's way past time to do what Jesus did and instructed his followers to do. Do that; that's all that's required.

Let's break some chains.

ADVENT, EMPIRE & SEEING ANGELS

2011-12-11T08:06:00.001-05:00

Context is everything. Without it, a basic grasp of Nativity--then and now--is lost. But what happens when we locate the story among undocumented aliens surviving at the margins of empire?

Dorothee Soelle, in Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent & Christmas (Plough Publishing, 2001) writes:

"How and under what conditions had people lived then in Galilee? Political oppression, legal degradation, economic plunder, and religious neutrality in the scope of the religio lictia ('permitted religion') were realities that the writer Luke kept in view in his story, which is so sublime and yet so focused on the center of all conceivable power."

"At last I saw the imperium from the perspective of those dominated by it. I recognized torturers and informers behind the coercive measure, 'All went…to be registered' (v. 3). Finally I comprehended the peace of the angels 'on earth' and not only in the souls of individual people. I understood for the first time the propaganda terms of the Roman writers who spoke of pax and jus when they really meant grain prices and militarization of the earth known at that time (all this can be confirmed by research today)."

"Of course my rereading was politically colored. I too was surrounded by propaganda ('freedom and democracy'). While in the narrative I heard the boot of the empire crush everything in its way from Bethlehem to Golgotha, I saw the carpet bombings in the poor districts of San Salvador right behind the glittering displays on Fifth Avenue in New York..."

"In Paul the causes of misery are called the reign of sin. Without understanding this imperium ('reign') in its economic and ecological power of death, we also cannot see the light of Christmas shine. Living in the pretended social market economy, we do not even seem to need this light!"

"Whoever wants to proclaim something about this light has to free the stifled longing of people. An interpretation of the Bible that takes seriously concrete, everyday human cares and does not make light of the dying of children from hunger and neglect is helpful in this regard. By showing up the incomparable power of violence in our world today, it deepens our yearning for true peace."

"Luke refers to the praxis of transmission and proclamation. The frightened shepherds become God’s messengers. They organize, make haste, find others, and speak with them. Do we not all want to become shepherds and catch sight of the angel? I think so."

"But without the perspective of the poor, we see nothing, not even an angel. Yet, when we approach the poor, our values and goals change. The child appears in many other children. Mary also seeks sanctuary among us. Because the angels sing, the shepherds rise, leave their fears behind, and set out for Bethlehem, wherever it is situated these days."

Risk of Birth

2011-12-06T13:27:00.001-05:00

An Advent poem by Madeleine L’Engle

This is no time for a child to be born,

With the earth betrayed by war and hate

And a comet slashing the sky to warn

That time runs out and the sun burns late

That was no time for a child to be born,

In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;

Honor and truth were trampled by scorn –

Yet here did the Saviour make his home.

When is the time for love to be born?

The inn is full on planet earth,

And by a comet the sky is torn –

Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.

from Watch for the Light, an excellent collection of Advent and Christmas essays and poems by Plough Publishing

Seeing the Signs

2011-12-04T07:34:00.001-05:00

After it wakes us up, Advent calls for us to see and discern critically

“At every turn in the Christmas story there appears an absurd mismatch: a woman and a dragon, a babe and the kings of this world, a messiah of utter folly and the power of death. But that is precisely the method that God has chosen in the Incarnation. God risks everything on the power of powerlessness.”

“The topic of Christmas is whether we have the eyes to see it. And the heart to follow. Many did not recognize God’s coming to them in Jesus. But some did. Christmas has to do with seeing the signs, with recognition, with discerning God’s presence in the world.”

“As William Stringfellow said, ‘Discerning signs does not seek spectacular proofs or await the miraculous, but, rather, it means sensitivity to the Word of God indwelling in all Creation and transfiguring common history, while remaining radically realistic about death’s vitality in all that happens.’ Lord, for such a comprehension in this season and all, grant us the heart!”

— Bill Wylie Kellerman in Seasons of Faith and Conscience

For contemplation:

What do we see?

How do we see?

At how many levels and from which different angles dare we perceive?

I am struck by the widely varied responses to the Occupy movement. Our reactions or responses reveal what we are able or willing to see in our society and ourselves, it seems to me.

God, help me see more fully--both what is sabotaging community and the grace that is reweaving it--and not forget or neglect to act here and now in anticipation of what is possible and shall surely be for all who long for your appearing.

God's Slow Work

2011-12-01T13:26:00.001-05:00

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin challenges my anxiousness and encourages me to embrace the murky middle

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
to something unknown,
something new.
Yet it is the law that all progress that is made
by passing through some stages of instability
and that may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually. Let them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undue haste.
Do not try to force them on as though
you could be today what time
— that is to say, grace–
and circumstances
acting on your own good will
will make you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new Spirit
gradually forming in you will be.

Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God,
our loving vine-dresser.
Amen.
-- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. 1881-1955

Sleepwalking Advent

2011-11-27T08:47:00.000-05:00

Shifting gears into Advent may take some time...but, please, don't lallygag too long!

Advent begins
In a fog of unreadiness.
As if by dull surprise
Or in a twilight zone,
We groggily hang the greens.

Hardly with awareness
Much less anticipation
God’s people sleepwalk
Through the prophecies
And Annunciation.

We may finally stir
By the time children sing
“Away in a Manger”
The Sunday before Christmas,
Their raised voices spark
A light in our slumbering souls.

Is it only children and prophets
Who grasp the urgency,
Sense the passion;
Whose hearts are rended
And readied by the
Promise of Light shining
In the darkness?

Is it only to them that Advent
Becomes no mere repetition
Of myth-laden past events,
But days of embracing
The living Mystery,
The basis of all hope?

By God’s mercy and grace
Children and prophets are
Only the first to hear,
The first to recognize,
To proclaim that
It is indeed Mystery.

The Light ever dawns,
Beaming its rays into the
Eyes of even the groggiest saints,
The hardest sleeper
Among us.

Only those who refuse to rise
Amid many urgent shakings
And light flooding their beds
Sleep through the
Incarnation.

“Wake up, O sleeper,
Rise from the dead,
And Christ will shine on you.”

Eyes Wide Open

2011-11-26T13:38:00.001-05:00

How my attempt at contemplative praying and living impacts my worldview, faith, and dailiness.

I enjoyed talking with protesters at St. Paul's
Cathedral at Occupy London last month.

Glenna Thomas, one ofmy favorite old saints at the church of my childhood, was once looking aroundduring congregational prayer. After the“Amen” and when everyone else had raised their heads and opened their eyes, hergranddaughter, who had spied Glenna’s eyes wide open, blurted out loud: “Grandma,you’re supposed to close your eyes when we pray, but you were lookingaround.” Glenna laughed and, withoutmissing a beat, retorted just as openly: “Honey, the Bible says to watch andpray, and I was watching!”

Impressed by thewitness, practice and writings of Thomas Merton, I committed to try to become acontemplative a number of years ago. It’s a spiritual practice deeply rooted in church and spiritual history. Though most often associated with monasteries(Merton was a Trappist monk), contemplative Christian spirituality is just aswell practicable in a fully engaged, work-a-day world. Who knows? You may be a contemplative and not even realize it.

The best way I candescribe it is this: contemplatives live and pray with eyes wide open. We pray with the newspaper in one hand andthe Scriptures in the other. Weliterally pray the news—and not just the news, but life as we experienceit. We try to take it all in—the good, the badand the ugly—consider it, reflect on it as fully as possible, and then respondto it in light of what we can grasp of God’s story and Spirit of grace.

Contemplative livingintentionally heightens awareness and sensitivity to what impacts life bothnear and far, small and great, personally and systemically, micro andmacro. Instead of narrowing one’s focusto one’s own particular vocational niche, organization, ideological preference, interests, directresponsibilities and assigned tasks, a contemplative dares to set one’s ownlimited responsibilities and small tasks in the context of all others--ofsystems, of networks, of powers that be, of relationships with known neighborsnearby and unnamed and not known on the other side of the world. A contemplative takes the whole world, as itwere, into one’s heart, and begins to see otherwise imperceptible connectionsand relationships across the whole spectrum.

This way of livingrefuses to pretend that what’s really evil or difficult or inconvenient isn’treally there, isn’t serious, or isn’t “my problem” and dismisses it. Instead of using religion to label, avoid, ortrump what’s difficult or oppositional, contemplatives dare to let the fullnessof both light and shadow, both positive and negative, both what is soulfullyuplifting and what is soul sabotaging to be revealed, felt, considered,discerned, lifted up, and then continue to be responded to in grace again andagain throughout life.

Contemplative prayerdoesn’t grant the option of ignoring or caring less about what is troubling orcomplex in our world. Instead, it facesit (sometimes with trembling), takes it in, discerns it as fully as possible,and lifts it up to God. For long periodsof time, it sometimes seems, apparently irreconcilable paradoxes can weigh onone’s mind and heart. One feelssomething of the impact of profound tensions--real sorrows and the agony ofinjustices, as well as the joys of breakthroughs and healings. As the weight of paradox is felt, heavinessis lifted to God. Contemplative pray-ersturn heartfelt anguish or awe inside out to God in a manner similar to thePsalmists.

So, I approached thisThanksgiving with an acute awareness of the profound paradoxes in our cultureand world at the moment. I hold intension Thanksgiving and Tahrir Square, Black Friday frivolity and Occupy’soutcry, the desire for personal integrity and the reality of confounding socialcomplexity (and my unavoidable complicity in it). And I pray for a heart broken enough, a mindbroad enough, and a faith buoyant enough to embrace these realities with aforward-looking, creative stewardship.

A Litany of Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T08:24:00.000-05:00

By Howard Thurman

Howard Thurman--African American, Quaker, pastor, writer, mentor to a generation of developing civil rights leaders--is an inspiration to me in many ways. I read his “Litany of Thanksgiving” each year and marvel at Thurman’s insight and humility. If you have not read him, find his books and take a soulful journey.

Today, I make my Sacrament of Thanksgiving.

I begin with the simple things of my days:
Fresh air to breath,
Cool water to drink,
The taste of food,
The protection of houses and clothes,
The comforts of home.
For these, I make an act of Thanksgiving this day!

I bring to mind all the warmth of humankind that I have known:
My mother’s arms,
The strength of my father,
The playmates of my childhood,
The wonderful stories brought to me from the
lives of many who talked of days gone by
when fairies and giants and all kinds of
magic held sway;
The tears I have shed, the tears I have seen;
The excitement of laughter and the twinkle in the eye
with its reminder that life is good.
For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day.

I finger one of the messages of hope that awaited me at the crossroads:
The smile of approval from those who held in their hands
the reins of my security;
The tightening of the grip in a single handshake
when I feared the step before me in the darkness;
The whisper in my heart when the temptation was fiercest
and the claims of appetite were not to be denied;
The crucial word said, the simple sentence from an open page
when my decision hung in the balance.
For all these I make an act of Thanksgiving this day.

I pass before me the mainsprings of my heritage:
The fruits of the labors of countless generations
who lived before me, without whom my own life
would have no meaning;
The seers who saw visions and dreamed dreams;
The prophets who sense a truth greater than the mind
could grasp and whose words could only find fulfillment
in the years which they would never see;
The workers whose sweat has watered the trees,
the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations;
The pilgrims who set their sails for lands beyond all horizons,
whose courage made paths into new worlds and far-off places;
The Savior whose blood was shed with a recklessness
that only a dream could inspire and God could command.
For all this I make an act of Thanksgiving this day.

I linger over the meanings of my own life and the commitment
to which I give the loyalty of my heart and mind:
The little purposes in which I have shared with my loves, my desires, my gifts;
The restlessness which bottoms all I do with its
stark insistence that I have never done my best,
I have never reached for the highest;
The big hope that never quite deserts me, that I and my kind
will study war no more, that love and tenderness and
all the inner graces of Almighty affection will cover the
life of the children of God as the waters cover the sea.
All these and more than mind can think and heart can feel,
I make as my Sacrament of Thanksgiving to Thee,
Our Father, in humbleness of mind and simplicity of heart.

From For the Inward Journey, selected writings by Howard Thurman, 1984, Richmond, Indiana: Friends United Press

Thanksgiving from a Hospital Bed

2011-11-23T03:32:00.006-05:00

A prayer of my Aunt Willie Mae Sheffield in the last year of her life

A member of the Sheffield family gave me a prayer which my Aunt Willie Mae Sheffield typed out on portable word processor while in the hospital during the last year of her life. A life-long citizen of New Castle, Indiana, a graduate of Ball State University, a fourth-grade school teacher forever, a musician, a church leader, single, Aunt Mae became the buoyant center of the Sheffield clan--my mom's extended family. Aunt Mae died immediately following Christmas in 1997, at age 63, of complications due to an extended bout with diabetes. This prayer followed an important eye surgery.

Dear God,

I just wanted to thank you forletting me be happy. I really need some happy time right now. I do not exactlyknow why everything has happened the way it has, and I am not sure what kind ofmessage You are sending me, but for some strange reason, I feel a lot smartertoday than I did yesterday. And everyday I am getting stronger. Thank You formaking me who I am. Thank You for helping me realize I am thankful for who Iam. All I want is to be happy in my life, and to be a warm-hearted person. Ireally do not have a selfish agenda. I am so happy to have my family and myhealth. I feel so lucky to have ten fingers and ten toes, and a good mind. I amso thankful that when I put my head down on my pillow at night, I am at peace.I love You. And I love knowing that You have surrounded me with people lovingme. I do not say or show You my thanks enough, but I really think it a lot.Thank You for allowing us to have beautiful things, and thank You forunclouding my eyes so that I see them. Amen.

Gratitude

2011-11-22T05:08:00.005-05:00

Gratitude comes from some place deeper than mouthing the words “thank you”

I penned this poem thinking of gratitude, which is a grace that runs much deeper than the socially-expected etiquette that surrounds “giving thanks.” As important as it is to celebrate Thanksgiving and to take up the practice of saying “thank you,” finding gratitude reverberating authentically in one’s heart is the surpassing gift. I hope you experience and express it this season.

Thanksgiving doesn’t live in a vacuum;
We do not pluck it from thin air.
We cannot be grateful on command,
Genuflecting at the drop of hat.

Talk is cheap when it comes to thanking,
Yet beyond courteous etiquette
Lies a deeper reality that beckons,
Inviting us to reckon with grace.

Native American graciousness
And Pilgrim hospitality,
Turkey and all the trimmings point
Beyond finely folded, praying hands.

Through and beyond these images
We glimpse a sacred connection,
As generations across time
Hail some gracious provision.

It’s not so much a debt we owe
Or tribute for posterity
As it is a virtue we receive
And reflect into eternity.

We deep-down know we are held
By sustaining, life-giving hands.
Not our own or on our own,
We belong and are lovingly known.

We cannot utter such mystery--
Tradition and rite fall short;
But these, and we, can point and say
“Thanks” for life and grace today.

London in our Eyes

2011-11-21T23:49:00.000-05:00

Three Americans in London for four fast, full days

It was our first visit to London and we only had four days to try take in much of what have always heard of. Our daughter Molly (who is in a study abroad program in Athens, Greece and whom we had traveled to Europe to visit) set the pace and we got to see quite a few of the things on our list...and then some. We found Londoners friendly and helpful, for the most part. These slides are some glimpses of some what we saw and experienced. I think we need to go back.

For This Curious Day

2011-11-21T06:10:00.000-05:00

An attempted Thanksgiving (note his gratitude for country) by Ted Loder

Glorious God,
how curious
and what a confession
that we should set aside one day a year
and call it Thanksgiving.
I smile at the presumption,
and hope you smile, too.
But the truth is, Holy Friend,
that my words can’t carry all the praise
I want them to,
or that they should,
no matter how many trips they make.

So this day,
all is praise and thanks
for all my days.
I breathe and it is your breath that fills me.
I look and it is your light by which I see.
I move and it is your energy moving in me.
I listen and even the stones speak of you.
I think and the thoughts are but sparks
from the fire of your truth.
I love and the throb is your presence.
I laugh and it is the rustle of your passing.

I weep and your Spirit broods over me.
I long and it is the tug of your kingdom.

I praise you, Glorious One,
for what has been, and is and will ever be:
for galaxy upon galaxy, mass and energy,
earth and air, sun and night,
sea and shore, mountain and valley,
root and branch, male and female,
creature upon creature in a thousand ingenious ways,
two-legged, hundred-legged, smooth, furry, and feathery,
bull-frogs and platypuses, peacocks and preachers,
and the giggle of it--
and turkeys (especially, this day, the roasted kind, not the flops)--
and families gathered, and the thanking;
the brave, lonely one, and the asking;
the growling, hungry ones, and the sharing.

I praise you, Glorious One,
for this color splashed, memory haunted,
hope filled, justice seeking,
love grown country
and the labors that birthed it,
the dreams that nurtured it,
the riches that sometimes misguide it,
the sacrifices that await it,
the destiny that summons it
to become a blessing to the whole human family!

O Glorious One,
for this curious day,
for the impulses that have designated it,
for the gifts that grace it,
for the gladness that accompanies it,
for my life,
for those through whom I came to be,
for friends through whom I hear and see
greater worlds that otherwise I would,
for all the doors of words and music and worship
through which I pass to larger worlds,
and for the One who brought a kingdom to me,
I pause to praise and thank you
with this one more trip of words
which leave too much uncarried,
but not unfelt,
unlived,
unloved.

Thank you!

From Guerrillas ofGrace

Thanksgiving

2011-11-20T08:02:00.005-05:00

Why we need this holiday - an original poem

This holiday is for all that we

Take for granted,

Assume as a given,

Absent-mindedly overlook,

Claim as our God-given right.

This holiday if for all those we

Unnecessarily criticize,

Agitate with our demands,

Impatiently rush,

Regularly impose upon.

This holiday is for all that we

By-pass in our drivenness,

Go out of our way to avoid,

Carelessly forget,

Thoughtlessly leave out.

This holiday is for all things we

Receive as gracious gifts,

Share as common ground,

Express as transcendent grace,

Return in praise to God.

Time to Face Another Way

2011-11-15T06:14:00.000-05:00

A Wendell Berry poem of Autumn

The summer ends, and it is time
To face another way. Our theme
Reversed, we harvest the last row
To store against the cold, undo
The garden that will be undone.
We grieve under the weakened sun
To see all earth's green fountains dried,
And fallen all the works of light.
You do not speak, and I regret
This downfall of the good we sought
As though the fault were mine. I bring
The plow to turn the shattering
Leaves and bent stems into the dark,
From which they may return. At work,
I see you leaving our bright land,
The last cut flowers in your hand.

From the ongoing series "Sabbaths" that continue through Berry's numerous books of poems. This segment, written in 1984, is from his collection of poems titled A Timbered Choir (Counterpoint, 1998)

A Graduation Reflection: 30 Years later

2011-11-12T09:16:00.000-05:00

What I wrote on the back of my college graduation commencement program in 1981

I thumbed through volumes of my personal journals dating back to high school to find the following piece that I'd scribbled on the back of my college graduation commencement program as I sat in the sun-drenched quad in front of Benner Library on May 25, 1981. Today, I will gather with fellow classmates of Olivet Nazarene University to celebrate our 30-year reunion (I'm really not that old; I was a child prodigy!). Here's what I wrote that morning, unedited:

As I sit here in the thirty-seventh row
amidst a sea of caps, gowns and tassels,
it all seems a bit hazy now.
I guess, like most things in life,
the anticipation seems greater
than the actually occurrence.

However, the meaning is not in the occasion,
but rather in living out the preparation.
Pomp and circumstance isn't an end in itself,
not the "high"; more, a sending.

I like the idea of commencement.
Commence: start, begin, get going!

These gowns remind me of death itself!
But, I suppose they can also call attention to
hope for life after death, too.

O Lord,
in this hour of my life, I ask you
for your very close, abiding presence.
I have not placed my trust in men and their wisdom,
but have placed it in You, in whom is hidden
the treasures of all knowledge and wisdom.
I don't seek the applause of people,
rather, yours.
I ask for guidance and grace--
that will be sufficient for me.
Thank you, God, for your watch care, love,
and "still, small voice."
You have brought me this far.
Yielded, I continue to listen, to heed.
I ask for strength to serve your Kingdom.
Help me seek truth,
whatever it costs,
whatever it takes.
In you I put my trust.
Psalm 16.
Amen.

Photo: Jared Emmanuel Hay, the second of our four children, graduated from ONU in 2009. Abby, our oldest child, graduated from ONU in 2007. Sam, our youngest child, is now a freshman at ONU. Becky graduated in 1983. I finished in 1981.

Belfast to Boston (God's Rifle)

2011-11-11T12:48:00.004-05:00

I just deciphered the lyrics to this James Taylor tune. Here's to all Vets and to all of us:

There are rifles buried in the countryside by the rising of the moon
May they lie there long forgotten till they rust away into the ground

Who will bend this ancient hatred, will the killing to an end
Who will swallow long injustice, take the devil for a country man
Who will say "this far no further, oh Lord, if I die today"

Send no weapons, no more money. Send no vengeance across the seas
Just the blessing of forgiveness for my new countryman and me

Missing brothers, martyred fellows, silent children in the ground
Could we but hear them would they not tell us
"Time to lay God's rifle down"

Who will say "this far no further, oh Lord, if I die today"

"Belfast to Boston (God's Rifle)" on YouTube

Veterans, War, and Dreams of Peace

2011-11-11T06:45:00.001-05:00

The line between honoring those who served in war and glorifying war is fine but critical.

ARMISTICE DAY - 94 YEARS LATER. Today is the 94th anniversary of Armistice Day, the day Germany surrendered, ending "The Great War." We now observe November 11 as Veterans Day. At least 8,538,315 soldiers died in World War I; there were 37,508,686 total casualties, or 57.6% of all troops deployed by allied and axis forces.

FOR REMEMBRANCE. I've found numerous poems in tribute to those fallen in World War I, but choose the following, called "For Remembrance" by Basil Ebers, to post:

What is it, O dear Country of our pride,
We pledge anew that we will not forget?
To keep on Freedom's altar burning yet
The fires for which a myriad heroes died
Known and unknown, beyond the far sea's tide
That their great gift be no futility.

Faith with the Dead kept through our living faith;
In this alone the true remembrance lies,
The unfading garland for the sacrifice,
To prove their dream of Brotherhood no wraith,
No moment's hope--its birth-pang one with death--
but the fixed goal of our humanity.

HONOR THE WAR DEAD, NOT WAR. A fine line it is, but oh so critical that it be observed and guarded. The line--almost imperceptible when inflamed with hatred toward enemies, drunk with hard-fought victory, or intoxicated with exaggerated nationalism--will glorify or condemn us. It is the line between honoring the war dead and glorifying war itself.

NEVER DREAM OF ITS VIOLENCE. Honor with reverence those men and women who died in battle. Weep and mourn for civilians cruelly caught in the strife. Give due respect for lives laid down in the name of freedom. But never glory in war. Never embrace its horrors. Never savor its torments. Never dream of its violence. Never drink to its return. Never gaze upon its power, lest its illusion seduce us. Lest war lust obsess us. Lest its siren sound lure us into its labyrinthine bowels and we swear allegiance to it, live for it, and our souls die even as we breathe.

NOT ALL WARS ARE EQUAL. Not all wars are equal. A vast majority are not really necessary. This is not a reflection on the troops who fought them as it is on those who chose and directed them. The current war in Iraq is an example of a war begun with highly suspect justifications and carried along with ranging political rationalizations.

VETERAN DREAMS. I know some Veterans and they are people of integrity. Some fought in World War II, some in Korea and some served during the Vietnam conflict. They tell different stories. All are glad to be alive. All grieve their lost comrades. All are relieved that their service is ended. None I know wish for their sons or daughters the opportunity to fight another war.

A NEW CROP OF HOMELESS VETERANS. I've worked with homeless vets for years. Just when we were getting most of the Vietnam-era Vets connected with counseling, housing, and the costly, life-long resources that are necessary for ones whose minds, emotions, bodies, and souls have been ravaged by war, America starts breeding a new crop soon-to-be homeless Vets. It doesn't take years for Vets returning from doing our government's dirty work to show up in soup lines and missions; think in terms of months. It takes many years--and often a lifetime--however, to overcome what a few months in front-line action can do.

WAR FINDS A WAY. Militarism always seems to find some twisted way to justify the necessity and perpetuation of war. Each generation seems to have its share of blood lust. Military training, heavy investment in weaponry and the "defense industry," and constant rehearsal for conflict seeks self-validation, self-justification. It doesn't take much of a provocation by one of the world's many tyrants or rogue regimes to pop the cork. Once engaged, militarism plants its gruesome seed then argues for its rebirth in every generation. War is self-perpetuating; few generations can resist it.

ART'S PROMISE AND POWER. It has occurred to me (or at least resurfaced within me) that a way to reveal the hollow way of mammon and violence, and to simultaneously bring light to grace and peace, is through arts and literature. Case in point: the Czech Republic and the nonviolent Velvet Revolution. Political partisanship gets us nowhere. The evangelical church has largely lost its witness amid partisanship. But art--the written word, the dramatized situation, the lifted song, and the vision graphically cast--has more power to delegitimate war and cumber, and to bring the possibility of grace and peace into our lives than the currently prevailing methods of choice.

Photo: I snapped this photo during an early-morning visit to the Korean War Memorial

To the Person who Stole my Laptop and Moleskine

2011-11-09T20:41:00.000-05:00

Dear...,

Hello.

You will likely never read this, but it's important to me to write it. Bear with me.

You are welcome to return my 5-year-old HP laptop with a pretty cool array of stickers on the lid, my Swiss Army nylon messenger-style carrying case, cords, pin drives, leather notepad, and my little Moleskine notebook full of journal entries and notes from my recent 30th wedding anniversary visit to Greece and England. I'd be most appreciative if you'd do this. Soon.

I imagine those items don't mean a thing to you. Likely, you just grabbed what you figured might be worth something after you broke out my VW's passenger-side door window. I imagine you threw whatever wasn't considered sellable in the trash somewhere. Too bad for you that I had my laptop locked and password-protected. And I immediately changed all passwords and deactivated any accounts you might have any remote possibility of accessing. But what was easy-come, easy-go junk to you meant something to me.

By the way, your petty crime has cost me upwards of $900 (so far) to cover an insurance deductible and the cost of replacing the car window (which did not meet my car insurance deductible). You are indebted to me for that. But you also have cost me quite a bit of time, lost work, and emotional energy. You are indebted to me for these, too. What took you 15 seconds to steal has taken me days to recover--and I'm still not back to square one.

While I had most of my computer work backed up to an external hard drive, my most recent and open projects were lost. I was thinking about this as I carefully reconstructed a time-sensitive project today at work. I made the project better than ever just to spite you. But you don't care about any of that.

Really, of all that you stole, I will be able to recover most of it and your act of vandalism will soon be nothing but a footnote of mild grief. I'll move on.

And you? Will you just move on? Or, will what you've done eventually haunt you? Whenever I've done something wrong, it bothers my conscience and I usually come clean in confession and, whenever possible, restitution. I know what it means to feel the weight of guilt, I know what it means to be forgiven, and I know what it means to make things right in restitution. I hope you find that--sooner than later.

Only one thing of mine you took that I cannot recover. My little black Moleskine notebook had precious things in it I will not be able to recover. It had ideas. It had insights. It had reflections. It had simple notes and prompts to myself. It had four pages on which I wrote about walking through the ancient Agora in Athens, Greece. It had several pages of reflections from my experience of being on the streets amid the Greek protests in Athens on October 20th and of talking with protesters at St. Paul's Cathedral in London a few days later. It had three pages in reflection on visiting the home of 18th-century reformer John Wesley on New Road in London. It had a few drawings. It contained several poems I was working on (or that were working on me). Even at that, my notebook wasn't even half full. All that's stuff I can't reconstruct or recover.

So, again, if you should read this and if, per chance, you still have my little black notebook lying around somewhere, I'd appreciate you returning it.

I don't know what will happen to you. I filed a police report. The laptop serial number is in their files. I suppose if you were careless or sloppy or novice in your thievery, law enforcement authorities will nab you sooner or later. Though, I'm not sure they take this level of crime very seriously. If they do find you and if you're interested in talking, I'd like that. Contact me.

Whatever happens in the days ahead, I have a suggestion for something you can do with your time (assuming you don't work and assuming you can read): Read my stuff--both what's in my Moleskine and whatever you might find on the laptop (should you somehow gain access to its contents). There's some pretty good stuff in there, if I do say so myself. Who knows what you might learn and use for your own benefit?

Well, that's about all I have to say for now. Gotta get back to recovering a bit more of what you stole. I hope you eventually recover whatever it is you lost that you are trying to get back by taking other people's stuff.

Peace,

John Franklin Hay

Athens through Our Eyes

2011-11-04T11:46:00.000-04:00

A few glimpses of Athens as Becky and I experienced it in October 2011

Our 5-day visit in Athens, Greece, was a combination belated 30th wedding anniversary celebration and an opportunity to visit our daughter, Molly, who is in a semester study abroad program there. We found the birthplace of philosophy and democracy both enchanting and gut-wrenching.

We flew into Athens on one of the days of national strikes that were in protest to austerity measures taken by the Greek government to try to solve the nation's economic woes and please the European Union. With transportation crippled, we walked several miles with our luggage in tow into the center of old Athens, only to find our way to the Amalias Hotel (which is across from the Parliament building) blocked by protesters and police. Wading through tear gas, anguished protesters, burning debris, rock throwers, and stalwart police, some friendly Athenian protesters led us through the barricades to our hotel. There, we had a "room with a view" of the stand-off. Alas, the next morning, the street in front of Parliament as clean and business was back to normal, it seemed. At no point were our lives in danger and we felt safe, free, and very welcome throughout our visit.

The photos reflect a range of our activity: strolling the Plaka and central Athens, climbing up to view the ancient Parthenon and other temples atop the Acropolis, browsing the New Acropolis Museum, taking in a few Athens beaches, climbing Lycabettus Hill, enjoying outdoor cafes and street life, and, finally, taking in the ancient Agora.

I will have more to write about this visit--and about London, the second half of our little October excursion--a bit later on Indy Bikehiker, but these photos capture something of our experience.

A Few Disparate Thoughts on Education

2011-11-03T07:43:00.002-04:00

Just examining the underpinnings and assumptions of schooling and education

A school in Haiti meet outdoors under a tarp since
the January 2010 earthquake. What motivates
the determination to teach and learn
even amid such displacement?

Working with an international child sponsorship organization that is engaged in Christian-based development in 30 countries, I spend some time considering not just the importance of education but underpinnings and assumptions of it.

If our organization supports a school with sponsors' money, it's just helpful to me to consider what's going on in that school beyond the assurance that children are being educated according to widely-accepted standards and for the sake of improving their lives and contributing to the advancement of their community and country.

Attending to the "why" of education--here and abroad and at every conceivable level and from every imaginable angle--might go a long way to helping us understand and direct its power in life-giving ways. So, a few disparate, initial notes and questions I recently jotted down regarding education:

Education is a justice issue. Basic knowledge, literacy, understanding, and empowerment are building blocks for meaning, community, cooperation and self-determination. Denial of access to education, the quality of education, and nature of it are critically important in diversely contextualized settings.

What does a school in a developing country represent? To an individual? To villagers or neighborhoods or communities? To the church? To a given government or the regime that is in power at the moment? To an elected government official? To industry--local and global?

"What's in it for you?" What's in schooling and education for the participant? For me? For us? For the powers that be?

Look behind established and unquestioned norms and rigors and "givens" of a school's curriculum, priorities, pedagogy, and determination of "success." At least know what leads to what.

Who is to benefit and how? This determines to a great extent the shape of formal education. Follow the influence and funding streams. What are the assumptions and what are the hoped-for outcomes?

I think of Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and of Parker J. Palmer's work in education.

What kind of education and teaching process liberates heart and mind? And a whole people?

Consider unanticipated outcomes of schools and education (positively). Consider unintended consequences.

A liberal arts education is to guide participants to learn to think and act critically and openly and expansively.

Consider the relationship of education to various dimensions of liberty/freedom.

What are the value added aspects of either assumed or intentional moral and ethical teaching in schools and education? What are the impacts of specific religious instruction in educational settings particularly in developing countries? Consider, also, the liabilities of this (fundamentalism, regimented thought and behavior).

Lots more related questions I am mulling over.

May education serve something greater than local and international economy and cultural interests, something greater than the interests of the church. May education serve life.

Purity's Time is Always Now

2011-11-02T07:24:00.004-04:00

This is one of my all-time favorite quotes

I've continued to be amazed and discomfited over the past ten years by For the Time Being by Annie Dillard. It's a book to grapple with, full of paradox and mystery. Reading in it always leaves me with a touch of wonder. I was listening to the following portion on audiobook while driving through the city recently and it struck me with fresh profundity:

"There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: a people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time -- or even knew selflessness or courage or literature -- but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age."

"There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less. There is no less holiness at this time -- as you are reading this --than there was the day the Red Sea parted, or that day in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as Ezekiel was a captive by the river Chebar, when the heavens opened and he saw visions of God. There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree by your street than there was under the Buddha's bo tree. There is no whit less might in heaven or on earth than there was the day Jesus said "Maid, arise" to the centurion's daughter, or the day Peter walked on water, or the night Mohammed flew to heaven on a horse. In any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger. In any instant the bush may flare, your feet may rise, or you may see a bunch of souls in a tree. In any instant you may avail yourself of the power to love your enemies; to accept failure, slander, or the grief of loss; or to endure torture."

"Purity's time is always now. Purity is no social phenomenon, a cultural thing whose time we have missed, whose generations are dead, so we can only buy Shaker furniture. 'Each and every day the Divine Voice issues from Sinai,' says the Talmud. Of eternal fulfillment, Tillich said, 'If it is not seen in the present, it cannot be seen at all.'"

THE FIRST REVOLUTION IS INTERNAL

2011-10-14T16:45:00.001-04:00

It is the responsibility ofspiritual guides to frame reality in such an honest,straightforward way that people grapple with it at a heart level.

Try this principle on for size: “the first revolution is internal.” Think about it.

While you’re thinking about it, read this story and consider ananswer to the question: “at what point in this story do you think an internalrevolution takes place?”

The story is a familiar one. It takes place in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955. A 42-year-old African-American womancatches bus #2857 and takes a seat on thefifth row--the first row of seats that are designated for “colored people.” The bus fills up as it follows its route. With the bus full, four white people boardthe bus. Bus driver James F. Blakehollers back for non-whites to stand so the white passengers than take aseat. But, while three people around her give uptheir seats, this woman does not. She decidesto remain seated. Blake comes back towhere this woman is seated and asks her if she is going to give up herseat. “No,” she says.” “If you don’t stand, I will call the policeand you will be arrested,” says Blake. “Youmay do that,” the woman replies.

You know this woman as Rosa Louise McCauley Parks, who, onDecember 1, 1955, was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a whiteperson—a simple, profound act that galvanized support for the Montgomery BusBoycott that played a critical role in springboarding the nonviolent civilrights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr. onto the national stage. When asked why she did not give up her seat,Rosa Parks said, simply, “I was tired.” Not physically tired, she later clarified, but “tired of giving in.”

Was this the moment of internal revolution in Rosa Parks?

Before you answer, here’s a bit more of the story: Four daysearlier, 14-year-old Emmett Till had been brutally murdered by a gang of whitemen in Mississippi for allegedly flirting with a white woman. Rosa had attended a rally calling for justiceafter Till’s murder.

Consider that in 1942—13 years earlier—Mrs. Parks became thevolunteer secretary of the local chapter of the NAACP. She attended training institutes in communityorganizing and nonviolent resistance and was by 1955 quite familiar with thechallenges and opportunities of the emerging movement for civil rights ofblacks.

Consider that as a young married woman, she had worked at thenearby Maxwell U. S. Air Force Base where segregation in any form was notallowed. She had riddenfully-integrated buses on the airbase many times. “Maxwell really opened my eyes,” she would later say.

When did the internal revolution occur for Rosa Parks?

Before you answer, consider, also, that she was from childhood anactive member of the African Episcopal Methodist Church in her community. She worshiped weekly and participated in the vibrantlife of the church.

Consider that she had witnessed atrocious racial bigotry as a child andyoung woman: Klansmen marching down her street while her grandfather stood at the door with a shotgun; watching white children ride by in a bus headedfor a new school while she and her black classmates walked to an old schoolwithout books; seeing the school she attended burned down—twice.

So, when do you think the internal revolution occurs in RosaParks?

Don’t you think it might have been long before that moment onDecember 1, 1955, when she decided not to give up her bus seat to a whiteperson?

What about other people who have been change agents in ourworld? When did an internal revolutionoccur in Martin Luther? Or SojournerTruth? Or the Quaker abolitionist JohnWoolman? Or the Methodist founder JohnWesley—what drove him from behind the sanctuary pulpit and into the fields andmining communities for open-air preaching and social justice organizing? What about the young people who are right nowcamping out and organizing and lifting their voices together in “occupy”assemblies across the country in response to unbridled Wall Street corruptionand its influence on elected officials—when did a revolution happen in them?

And what about us? When andhow does revolution—internal revolution—begin in us?

“The first revolution is internal.”

Internal revolution manifests itself in the heart. It is precipitated by a wide range ofawareness-raising personal experiences and frequently upsetting challenges. In education, it’s called cognitivedissonance. In leadership development,it’s called creative dislocation. Inspiritual terms we talk about the Spirit agitating us. Parker J. Palmer writes about the process of “dis-illusioning”—ofbeing slowly but surely stripped of our illusions until we see clearly.

In food preparation terms, this internal revolution seems more like apressure cooker than a baking oven or a frying pan. It takes a while for pressure to build and for the creative mix toboil. But then something happens—the pressurevalue releases and nothing can again ever be quite the same.

“The first revolution is internal.”

Let’s be clear: No one can manufacture an internal revolution in orfor someone else. Nor should anyone tryto precipitate such a spiritual crisis. Nothing good is served by pressure or hype orfalse pretenses.

However (and this is critical), it is the responsibility ofspiritual guides and change agents to frame reality in such an honest,straightforward way that people grapple with it at a heart level. Underline this. Asterisk it. Memorize it.

In my faith tradition we talk about “the Spirit of truth” who will“guide us into all truth.” We talk abouttruth being sharp enough to lay issues open quite revealingly. We talk about such truth piercingillusion. It recognizes elusive games. It gets to the heart of a situation. It wades through obfuscating and justifyingand blaming. It discovers what’s goingon—really.

Such truth shows me that my neighbor and my response to my neighbor isat the heart of community and responsible action. It is the truth that we are all alike createdin the image of God. It is the truththat we really do belong to one another. It is the truth that what impacts one affects all. That I cannot be who I ought to be until youare who you ought to be. That when youone part hurts, the whole cannot be healthy. That when you are suffering or are treated unjustly and I ignore it, Ibetray myself as much as I betray you. That when we ignore our sense of doing the good we ought to do, we beginto try to justify ourselves and distort reality—blaming others, telling falsestories, distancing ourselves from one another, and colluding with others inrelationships and organizations that systematize, empower, and defend distortion.

That’s why the age-old question “am I my brother’s and sister’skeeper?” is so critical. And that’s whya second enduring question, “who is my neighbor?” must be continuously surfaced.

When we tackle these realities honestly and let the Spirit oftruth gently, persistently help us connect the dots, internal revolutions canhappen. I might begin to see my ownreality, to see my own self-justifications and distortions, and to see mydisconnection. In response, I may seekpersonal purification, seek forgiveness, and seek reconciliation. And I might begin to see my neighbors in a newlight, to see us together on the same side, and to see “the powers that be”that act to sabotage our communion.

“The first revolution is internal.”

There is something of a personal, internal “tipping point” that leads us, finally, to say: “Enough.” “No more.” “It’s time.” “I am convinced.” “I’m all in.” “We are in this together.”

Sometimes this internal revolution comes well before one canexplain it or give reason for it. It’ssomething the heart knows and believes before the mind conceives. Sometimes, when someone else experiences acrisis or we see a group being mistreated, it connects with something we have feltbut haven’t been able to explain—but all of a sudden we know, and we act infull consistency with our heart.

“The first revolution is internal.”

This principle has a corollary: Personal internal revolution occurs in a small but critical mass ofpeople before outward change and community transformation occurs. There comes a collective readiness ofheart. There is a recognition of commonground. There is a solidarity withothers that sets in motion acts of care and compassion long before a specific wrongis identified and collectively addressed or a new way of expressing communityamong us is birthed.

Whenever the internal revolution happened in Rosa Parks, when shefinally acted on that revolution, it connected with internal revolutions thatwere occurring in others. That flashpointignited a fire of nonviolent civil disobedience and careful strategizing thatled, ultimately, to unprecedented breakthroughs in civil rights for African-Americansand many minorities in our country.

So, try to attend honestly and straightforwardly to what is goingon in your life and the lives of your neighbors near and far. Dare to be dis-illusioned. Perhaps there’s a revolution taking placecloser to you than you think.

WHAT INDIANAPOLIS NEIGHBORHOODS TEACH ME

2011-10-13T14:14:00.001-04:00

Seven lessons learned in 21 years of reweaving our community's urban fabric

NEAR EASTSIDE & WEST INDIANAPOLIS. I have invested most of my adult life working in Indianapolis urban neighborhoods. I first served as Pastor of Shepherd Community and a director of its then-fledgling, now-bustling compassionate ministry. I then succeeded the beloved John H. Boner at the Near Eastside community center now named in his honor. I was then asked to guide Horizon House to rebuild and reboot its day services to homeless neighbors. Coming full circle, I served as Pastor of West Morris Street Free Methodist Church, a 95-year old congregation in the southwest shadow of downtown.

NEVER MORE ALIVE AND HOPEFUL. Twenty-one of the past 24 years, I’ve been privileged to serve in or in relationship to the heart of the city. During this time, I have felt welcomed, invited, drawn forward, empowered, and blessed. I’ve been scolded, doubted, intimidated, stretched, and provoked. I’ve never felt more alive, more on a learning curve, more opened up to changing realities, more overwhelmed by immensities, or more hopeful of possibilities. The gift and challenge of community has taken hold in me. You might say that I am ruined for any other way of life or vocation because of these community organizing experiences.

MY TEACHERS AND TRAINERS. Caring neighbors, faithful congregations, committed activists, and supporting partners have shaped the way I view the city, the region, and the world. Out of this, I will forever be seeking to encourage community and foster the circumstances in which interdependence, trust, faith, hospitality, sacrifice, and neighborliness are the norm, not the occasional exception. I jotted down the following reflections on some of what I have learned from serving in Indy’s urban neighborhoods, and for these I am grateful:

1. THERE IS NO GREATER CHALLENGE OR DEEPER CALLING THAN BECOMING AND BEING A NEIGHBOR. Whether across the street, region, or world, we never max this most basic, humanizing challenge. It's far easier to say "neighbor" than be one. But with every neighborly action, we realize more of that for which we exist.

2. IT IS ONE THING TO MOVE INTO, LIVE OR WORK IN A COMMUNITY; IT IS ANOTHER MATTER TO MOVE TOWARD COMMUNITY. Proximity is of little value if it is not combined with opening one’s heart to one’s neighbors and getting involved. Community is, first of all, a movement of the heart.

3. THOUGHTFUL LOCAL ACTIONS HAVE GREATER POWER TO SHAPE COMMUNITIES FOR THE GOOD THAN WELL-INTENTIONED POLICIES PLANNED AND IMPLEMENTED FROM AFAR. Our world is more likely to be changed for the better from a strategic urban neighborhood initiative than it is from Washington, D.C. or the United Nations building.

4. AS A COROLLARY, I CONFIRM THE ADAGE THAT A FEW THOUGHTFUL PEOPLE ACTING TOGETHER MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE. Effective neighborhood actions and social service interventions are fueled by a few who believe it can be done, and they do it. Who knows what can happen if more get involved and act more strategically for the common good at local levels?

5. IN OFFERING HOSPITALITY TO STRANGERS, WE WIDEN THE CIRCLE OF COMMUNITY AND ANTICIPATE TRANSFORMATION UNIQUE TO SUCH OPEN-HEARTEDNESS. Some of the greatest gifts I have received have come from people who appeared to have little to give, no one to commend them, and whose stake in the community is generally overlooked. Within safe boundaries, learning to recognize and receive the contributions of otherwise disregarded citizens can be one of our city’s most valuable assets.

6. WHERE AGREEMENT ON AN ISSUE IS NOT POSSIBLE, THERE CAN STILL BE RESPECT FOR DIVERSITY OF PATHS AND EXPLORATION OF NEW COMMON GROUND. I have learned to reject most either/or, win/lose, good guy/bad guy framing of conflicts and community issues. Common ground is there, but it must be sought for and cultivated with a persevering passion, as if everything depended on it.

7. DEVELOPING EMERGING LEADERSHIP MUST BE A PRIORITY FOR EACH CONGREGATION AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION. The value of being “community based” is always just a generation of leadership away from extinction. Some non-profits have lost or seriously distorted this component of their mission and leadership without even realizing it. Every organization in the community owes it to itself, the community, and the future to grant the time and resources needed to help emerging leaders develop community networks and explore the challenges and opportunities of formal and informal neighborhood and community-based leadership.

AUTUMN AWAKENING

2011-10-08T09:05:00.000-04:00

This month starts green and ends golden. Take it in

ARRIVING AT OCTOBER. We have arrived at October, the month that becomes golden. Here in Indianapolis, everything is still mostly green. Leaves are turning and a few are falling, though not enough yet to rake. Each day I ride my bike through Eagle Creek Park (where this photo was taken), the colors become richer and my sense of autumn's emergence becomes fuller.

A PRAYER OF TED LODER. Here’s a piece out of Ted Loder’s Guerrillas of Grace (Innisfree Press, 1984), a striking collection of poems and prayers from the heart of a Methodist pastor from Pennsylvania. Thanks once again, Kathy Wallace, for the gift of this book; it’s one I open often.

O extravagant God,
in this ripening, red-tinged autumn,

waken in me a sense of joy

in just being alive,

joy for nothing in general

except everything in particular;

joy in sun and rain

mating with earth to birth a harvest;

joy in soft light

through shyly disrobing trees;

joy in the acolyte moon

setting halos around processing clouds;

joy in the beating of a thousand wings

mysteriously knowing which way is warm;

joy in wagging tails and kids’ smiles

and in this spunky old city;

joy in the taste of bread and wine,

the smell of dawn,

a touch,

a song,

a presence;

joy in having what I cannot live without --

other people to hold and cry and laugh with;

joy in love,

in you;

and that all at first and last

is grace.

What Free Methodists Now Say about Immigration

2011-10-06T10:03:00.006-04:00

This resolution was adopted at this summer's General Conference of the Free Methodist Church USA

"Issues surrounding immigrants and refugees in the United States are complex. They require solutions that halt criminal activity, provide access for legal documentation, and serve the needs of all persons--loved and created by God--who have come to the United States under a variety of circumstances. As we work to provide actions that minister to all immigrants and refugees, we do so with the basic underlying convictions:

1. We commit to the Biblical principle of caring for the foreigners among us regardless of racial or ethnic background, country of origin, or legal status.

2. We commit to acting redemptively with love rather than fear, and to reach out to meet needs as we see them.

3. We commit to identifying intolerance and working to end it, as well as ending any personal inclinations to refer to individuals in less than loving terms.

4. Where there is a conflict, it is our duty to oppose all unjust and harsh laws and to seek to change them. [This amendment was added to the resolution by Greg Coates of Indianapolis; it was ratified. See Greg's comment]

5. We commit to responding to this crisis in terms of the Great Commission, seeking to reach the lost whoever they may be; ministering to all, caring for all, and showing God's grace to all people.

Be it further resolved, that the position statement be distributed to all conferences, churches and entities of the denomination.

Be it resolved that the Study Commission on Doctrine be charged with developing guidelines and actions steps to help the FMC-USA respond to issues surrounding immigrants and refugees.

Be it further resolved that these guidelines and actions steps be included in the Church Leader's Manual and made available to other general conferences of the FMC around the world."

-------------

My responses:

1. Let us follow clear, courageous statements and resolutions with clear, courageous actions as individuals and communities of faith.

2. While this resolution comes later in time and is less assertive than numerous other Christian communions, it brings clarity and direction for Free Methodists, breaking a season of ecclesiastic reticence or uncertainty.

3. This resolution runs counter to laws that have recently been enacted in several states.

4. This resolution stops short of directly calling on our federal government to enact a comprehensive law that reflects the principles and practices it commends.

5. This resolution invites individual Free Methodists, clergy, congregations, and groups of Free Methodists to engage the immigration issue with confidence and wisdom.

6. Thank you, General Conference of the Free Methodist Church USA.

Gandhi's 7 Deadly Social Sins and 11 Ashram Observances

2011-09-30T08:28:00.000-04:00

My brief stay at Gandhi's ashram in 2007 continues to fuel my imagination

Early one January morning in 2007, our bicycle entourage that was making a 2000-mile trek from the southern tip of India to New Delhi was sent off by staff and students of Yavatmal College for Leadership Training in central India. Five Indian riders from the school would accompany us to Nagpur. The more the merrier! Early in the day, we passed through Wardha, a major intra-India train exchange depot. We then rode on in overwhelming sun and heat, finishing a long day of pedaling at a little place called Sevagram.

Gandhi's dirt-floor hut at Sevagram, where he lived simply
and from where he led India non-violently to independence.

Not much more than a wide place in the road, Sevagram became the rural home of Mohandas K. Gandhi in 1936. From this quiet place Gandhi not only practiced the simple, powerful principles of his convictions, but led India in a long, sustained non-violent march to independence until England finally "quit India" in 1947. Gandhi guided India to independence not with military force, but with the force of non-violent spirit and actions of civil disobedience.

Three years after English rule ended, the Indian democracy was established on January 26, 1950. Republic Day is commemorated across India with great affection. There were flag-waving parades in very village we pedaled through. We spent the night of January 25 in guest huts at Gandhi's ashram in Sevagram. It seemed fitting that we should begin Republic Day from the birthplace of Indian independence.

Visiting Sevagram was a deeply moving experience for me. At the ashram (retreat center, community, commune, monastery, etc.) where Gandhi lived, weaved, farmed, served, taught, and strategized, I read the sign posting the "Seven Deadly Social Sins" that Gandhi defined and which I have frequently contemplated before and since. They are:

Politics without principle
Wealth without work
Commerce without morality
Pleasure without conscience
Education without character
Science without humanity
Worship without sacrifice

I was also interested in the 11 Ashram Observances, which I had not seen before. I have since contemplated the impact--and potential impact--of the power of the use and abandonment of these practices both in India and among Americans. Here are the 11 Ashram Observances at Sevagram:

1. Truth
2. Non-violence
3. Chastity
4. Non-possession
5. Non-stealing
6. Bread-Labor
7. Control of palate
8. Fearlessness
9. Equality of religions
10. Swadeshi (Gandhi's description: "a call to the consumer to be aware of the violence he is causing by supporting those industries that result in poverty, harm to workers and to humans and other creatures")
11. Removal of untouchability

At the bottom of the sign was an additional directive from Gandhi: "Follow the above observances with humility and resolve."

Is the Sevagram ashram an exception to the rule? Sure it is. Are the Seven Deadly Social Sins front and center in what is ripping at the fabric of our personal lives, communities, and world today? Yes. Do the 11 Ashram Observances offer disciplines, practices, and principles that could reweave the fabric of personal integrity, interpersonal fellowship, community vitality, and world progress? Absolutely. Taken together, they could be again transformative.

I would say of Gandhi's experiment at Sevagram and its initial freedom-winning impact on India what G. K. Chesterton said of Christianity: "It is not that it has been tried and found wanting, it is that it has been found difficult and left untried."

But, perhaps there are those who are hungry enough for justice and authenticity in this and the next generation to have the courage to try again.

DOES INTERNATIONAL CHARITY [INVESTMENT] MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

2011-09-21T14:13:00.002-04:00

Investments in developing countries and children's lives are resulting in unprecedented breakthroughs in disease, education, and poverty.

International Child CareMinistries, the initiative I work directly with, is always asking for sponsors, for support for our food funds, and for contributions to specialprojects. Hundreds of other international charitable organizations do thesame. Is it making any difference?

Absolutely.

You likely miss it in the news media, but in the face of stillunimaginable poverty, suffering, and death, there are unprecedentedbreakthroughs. These are a direct result of caring people whopersistently invest in some of the most impoverished places in the world. Consider this good news from developing countries:

The number of children under age 5 who die annually has fallen from 12 million in 1990 to 7.6 million in 2010 (UNICEF & WHO). This is attributable to clean water initiatives, anti-malaria campaigns, investment in immunizations, and education of young women.
The proportion of underweight children younger than age 5 declined by 1/5 between 1990 and 2005.
29 million more African children are in schools today than in 2000.
Enrollment in primary schools in developing countries increased to 88% in 2006.
More girls are attending school now than ever before.
1.6 billion people have gained access to safe drinking water since 2001.
17 countries in sub-Saharan Africa have since 1995 increased the average income of their people by 50% and reduced poverty by 20%. 14 of these countries have also become democracies.

These breakthroughs, noted by David Beckmann in his recent book Exodusfrom Hunger (Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), have been hammeredout in the face of huge obstacles, resistant ideologies, marginal resources,and constant violence. But Beckmann, head of Bread for the World and winner of the 2010 World Food Prize, notes:

"Hundreds of millions of people have escaped from hunger andpoverty in our time, and all the nations of the world have acknowledged thatfurther progress is possible. Given what the Bible teaches about God'sconcern for the poor and God's presence in history, doesn't it make sense tothank God for this great liberation? Doesn't it make sense to see it asan experience of God's saving action in our own history? Isn't Godpresent in whatever efforts we make to help people escape from hunger andpoverty?"

Global needs continue to beoverwhelming. Thousands of children die every day of malnutrition andpreventable diseases; many thousands more have their futures compromised forlack of opportunities. Yet, it seems appropriate to take a moment to stop, take note, and give thanks for thesebreakthroughs--all the while intensifying our prayers and investment to see more livessaved physically, educationally, socially, and spiritually.

I'm thankful for the 12,000+ partners who invest in children, families, and communities in 30 countries through ICCM in thesmall part of this great effort that Free Methodists have been given to share in. I'm grateful, also, for millions who carry this torch through manifold efforts under breathtakingly diverse banners.

In the face of the specter of dramatic cuts to basic domestic and international hunger-prevention and development funding being considered by Congress (thus setting back long-term progress that's been made in our generation and overriding the will of a vast majority of good-hearted Americans), this is an important moment to let our national leaders know directly where we stand and what we desire. Advocates at Bread for the World can help you reach your Congressional representatives right now - http://www.bread.org.

To learn more about ICCM, explore a$25-a-month sponsorship, or get involved, clickhere. To contribute to an ICCM food fund, click here. To view an ICCM video story, click here. To receive an ICCM Church or Small Group Action Kit, clickhere.

BRINK OF AUTUMN

2011-09-18T19:23:00.000-04:00

LEAF CHANGE. So early do schools start in Indiana, late September feels like we are deep into the season instead of at autumn's onset. I love the spirituality of fall, which is what I try to describe in this poem. Change is occurring, ready or not. Better to turn and face its in-gathering and soul-baring possibilities. Autumn invites us to an experience of grace. Live it to the full.

On the brink of autumn,

a hint of chill in the air,

the sun’s setting sooner,

in a few days we’ll be there

where green turns to golden

and reapers harvest the yield,

where dry leaves are falling

and flocking fowl arc the fields.

Then we’ll don our jackets

and brace ourselves for the wind

that rustles through branches

and billows our souls again.

Do not shrink back from fall;

embrace this gilded season

as a grace that descends;

a gift to all from heaven.

It’s time for returning,

for in-bringing and burning,

for heart walks in deep woods,

for distilling, discerning.

What’s muddled becomes clear

and all chaff is left exposed

as autumn’s sun glows bright

and a harvest moon shines cold.

We may shed pretenses

and travel a lighter way

our hearts as crisp as leaves

that lift and then sail away.

As we are being turned,

turn—facing all the changes,

the falling, the cooling,

and the encroaching darkness.

Lean into the season

lest it overtake your way.

let your soul be opened;

relish its gift this fall day.

WE'RE WAY BEYOND INNOCENCE AND EXCUSES

2011-09-15T11:55:00.004-04:00

How do we respond to our complicity in our neighbors' struggles?

We’re way beyondinnocence,
past naïvetés
that excuse
and justify.
We’re in territory
of responsibility,
amid raw choices,
ethical dilemmas,
spiritual strongholds.
We’re in deep,
over our heads with
the future hanging
in the balance.

Yet we play
games of disguise
with ourselves
and our neighbors,
feigning sincerity,
acting as if all is well
(or nearly so),
as if our desires
and possessing
were disconnected
from any foreboding
impact beyond,
as if we were unaware
our choices destroy.

But love opens
eyes as well as hearts
with an ever widening
peripheral vision,
revealing connection
and complicity,
inviting confession
and repentance,
fueling hope
and possibility.
Love turns us
toward our neighbors
for a painful embrace
that heals the world.

LETTER TO MY CHILDREN: SEPTEMBER 14, 2001

2011-09-08T15:31:00.004-04:00

Not knowing what was ahead, I wanted my four kids to know my heart and responses to 9/11.

Dear Abby, Jared, Molly, and Sam,

I want to tell you my feelings and responses to the WorldTrade Center tragedy, the terrorism that caused it, and our nation’sresponses. So much has happened soquickly, things too big for rational minds and hearts to handle alone and in soshort a time.

This is the most grave and awesome thing that has occurredin my lifetime. Nothing compares toit. It stretches my senses andchallenges what I believe about humanity, evil, good, God, hope, our nation,and the world. It tests my faith andcauses me to search my heart. Somedayyou will better understand what I am trying to express.

In one sense, the scenes and replays on TV are distant. They seem like an unreal video game. Our family was not harmed, our community wasnot attacked; we know no one whose life was taken in New York City orWashington, D.C. The events occurred inother parts of our country and it appears that we are safe.

In another sense, this tragedy comes very close to home. It makes many Americans feel vulnerable toterrorism here in our own land. Becauseof it, a lot of safety and security measures will begin. And, because of it, the United States maylikely take military action intended to prevent it from happening again.

I have felt fragile since the tragedy, many times this weekat the point of tears. I tell myself itis over, that it is distant, and that we need to get on with our normallives. But I have this lump in my throatand pain in my heart. I hurt for thosepeople who lost loved ones and friends. It is so sad and so senseless.

I am also feeling anger about the tragedy. I feel anger at the terrorists and people whoprovide a place for them to plan and train for their destructive schemes. Anger is a natural and powerful emotion atsuch terrible acts that snuff out life—whether one or many. Anger, however, need not be vented asaggression or rage or destruction.

It may sound strange, but at the same time I am also feelinglove for the terrorists. For all theirmeanness and despicable actions, I believe they are still children of God. My faith leads me to this feeling. These must be desperately hurting and angrypeople to have done something like this. Perhaps it is their own outrage at their own losses, or the loss ofpeople whom they love, that has driven and twisted them.

I do not know why they did this, or why they hate as theydo. But I believe that God loves them asGod loves each of us. And I know thatthe Scriptures speak of a Spirit of love that overcomes hate and makes possiblea love for one’s enemies. Romans12:17-21 challenges me: “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Do not take revenge…but leave room for God’swrath. On the contrary, if your enemy ishungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evilwith good.”

You have seen and heard President Bush and our nationalleaders call for war against terrorism and vow to retaliate against theseterrorists and the governments that harbor them. I have very mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, to act to prevent furtheracts of terrorism on our soil seems reasonable. So does seeking out and bringing the perpetrators of this crime tojustice. On the other hand, to lash outbroadly in vengeance with the destruction of lives is contrary to my sense ofthe Scriptures and of Christianity. AndI have reminded myself this week that I am a Christian first and an Americansecond.

I do not believe war is justified simply because leaderscall for it or because such a crime has been committed. There are other strong but peaceful ways tosee justice prevail. “Seek peace andpursue it” is the prevailing guidance of the Scriptures. Perhaps there are rare situations inwhich peaceful methods cannot bring resolution to international conflicts. But most often peaceful measures—includingsincerely seeking to understand our enemies’ pain and changing our ownagitating behaviors—are not given a fair chance.

I am also feeling somewhat afraid in the wake of thetragedies in New York City and Washington, D.C. Fear, too, is a natural response to such attacks. But I am taking my fear to God in prayer. I am reminding myself of the constant call ofthe Word of God: “Do not be afraid. Iam with you. I will never leave you orforsake you.” I have found comfortand hope in Psalm 46 this week. Also inhymns like “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” In your times of fear, I hope you will findsuch as these helpful to you, too.

I just wanted you to know my feelings and responses to thistragedy. It is sometimes hard to talkabout these things and our feelings about them, but it is important to me totry to convey my feelings and thoughts to you. I do so because I love you very much. I hope for the very best for you and for your futures.

Love,

Dad

Thoughts in the Presence of Fear

2011-09-06T20:24:00.000-04:00

Wendell Berry's 2001 reflections on 9/11. Prophetic then, they are uncannily telling now.

These 27 brief, connected responses shine in stark contrast to popular reactions then and broken policies now. One of America's clearest voices of critique and re-centered renewal, Wendell Berry calmly reflects wider awareness and deeper faith in the face of despair and insanity. This piece appeared in Orion magazine not long after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Rereading it 10 years later, I recognize the prophetic nature of what he wrote. It is uncannily telling now. I wonder, in the words of the folk song, "when will we ever learn?"

I. The time will soon come when we will not be able to remember the horrors of September 11 without remembering also the unquestioning technological and economic optimism that ended on that day.

II. This optimism rested on the proposition that we were living in a “new world order” and a “new economy” that would “grow” on and on, bringing a prosperity of which every new increment would be “unprecedented”.

III. The dominant politicians, corporate officers, and investors who believed this proposition did not acknowledge that the prosperity was limited to a tiny percent of the world’s people, and to an ever smaller number of people even in the United States; that it was founded upon the oppressive labor of poor people all over the world; and that its ecological costs increasingly threatened all life, including the lives of the supposedly prosperous.

IV. The “developed” nations had given to the “free market” the status of a god, and were sacrificing to it their farmers, farmlands, and communities, their forests, wetlands, and prairies, their ecosystems and watersheds. They had accepted universal pollution and global warming as normal costs of doing business.

V. There was, as a consequence, a growing worldwide effort on behalf of economic decentralization, economic justice, and ecological responsibility. We must recognize that the events of September 11 make this effort more necessary than ever. We citizens of the industrial countries must continue the labor of self-criticism and self-correction. We must recognize our mistakes.

VI. The paramount doctrine of the economic and technological euphoria of recent decades has been that everything depends on innovation. It was understood as desirable, and even necessary, that we should go on and on from one technological innovation to the next, which would cause the economy to “grow” and make everything better and better. This of course implied at every point a hatred of the past, of all things inherited and free. All things superseded in our progress of innovations, whatever their value might have been, were discounted as of no value at all.

VII. We did not anticipate anything like what has now happened. We did not foresee that all our sequence of innovations might be at once overridden by a greater one: the invention of a new kind of war that would turn our previous innovations against us, discovering and exploiting the debits and the dangers that we had ignored. We never considered the possibility that we might be trapped in the webwork of communication and transport that was supposed to make us free.

VIII. Nor did we foresee that the weaponry and the war science that we marketed and taught to the world would become available, not just to recognized national governments, which possess so uncannily the power to legitimate large-scale violence, but also to “rogue nations”, dissident or fanatical groups and individuals - whose violence, though never worse than that of nations, is judged by the nations to be illegitimate.

IX. We had accepted uncritically the belief that technology is only good; that it cannot serve evil as well as good; that it cannot serve our enemies as well as ourselves; that it cannot be used to destroy what is good, including our homelands and our lives.

X. We had accepted too the corollary belief that an economy (either as a money economy or as a life-support system) that is global in extent, technologically complex, and centralized is invulnerable to terrorism, sabotage, or war, and that it is protectable by “national defense”

XI. We now have a clear, inescapable choice that we must make. We can continue to promote a global economic system of unlimited “free trade” among corporations, held together by long and highly vulnerable lines of communication and supply, but now recognizing that such a system will have to be protected by a hugely expensive police force that will be worldwide, whether maintained by one nation or several or all, and that such a police force will be effective precisely to the extent that it oversways the freedom and privacy of the citizens of every nation.

XII. Or we can promote a decentralized world economy which would have the aim of assuring to every nation and region a local self-sufficiency in life-supporting goods. This would not eliminate international trade, but it would tend toward a trade in surpluses after local needs had been met.

XIII. One of the gravest dangers to us now, second only to further terrorist attacks against our people, is that we will attempt to go on as before with the corporate program of global “free trade”, whatever the cost in freedom and civil rights, without self-questioning or self-criticism or public debate.

XIV. This is why the substitution of rhetoric for thought, always a temptation in a national crisis, must be resisted by officials and citizens alike. It is hard for ordinary citizens to know what is actually happening in Washington in a time of such great trouble; for all we know, serious and difficult thought may be taking place there. But the talk that we are hearing from politicians, bureaucrats, and commentators has so far tended to reduce the complex problems now facing us to issues of unity, security, normality, and retaliation.

XV. National self-righteousness, like personal self-righteousness, is a mistake. It is misleading. It is a sign of weakness. Any war that we may make now against terrorism will come as a new installment in a history of war in which we have fully participated. We are not innocent of making war against civilian populations. The modern doctrine of such warfare was set forth and enacted by General William Tecumseh Sherman, who held that a civilian population could be declared guilty and rightly subjected to military punishment. We have never repudiated that doctrine.

XVI. It is a mistake also - as events since September 11 have shown - to suppose that a government can promote and participate in a global economy and at the same time act exclusively in its own interest by abrogating its international treaties and standing apart from international cooperation on moral issues.

XVII. And surely, in our country, under our Constitution, it is a fundamental error to suppose that any crisis or emergency can justify any form of political oppression. Since September 11, far too many public voices have presumed to “speak for us” in saying that Americans will gladly accept a reduction of freedom in exchange for greater “security”. Some would, maybe. But some others would accept a reduction in security (and in global trade) far more willingly than they would accept any abridgement of our Constitutional rights.

XVIII. In a time such as this, when we have been seriously and most cruelly hurt by those who hate us, and when we must consider ourselves to be gravely threatened by those same people, it is hard to speak of the ways of peace and to remember that Christ enjoined us to love our enemies, but this is no less necessary for being difficult.

XIX. Even now we dare not forget that since the attack of Pearl Harbor - to which the present attack has been often and not usefully compared - we humans have suffered an almost uninterrupted sequence of wars, none of which has brought peace or made us more peaceable.

XX. The aim and result of war necessarily is not peace but victory, and any victory won by violence necessarily justifies the violence that won it and leads to further violence. If we are serious about innovation, must we not conclude that we need something new to replace our perpetual “war to end war?”

XXI. What leads to peace is not violence but peaceableness, which is not passivity, but an alert, informed, practiced, and active state of being. We should recognize that while we have extravagantly subsidized the means of war, we have almost totally neglected the ways of peaceableness. We have, for example, several national military academies, but not one peace academy. We have ignored the teachings and the examples of Christ, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and other peaceable leaders. And here we have an inescapable duty to notice also that war is profitable, whereas the means of peaceableness, being cheap or free, make no money.

XXII. The key to peaceableness is continuous practice. It is wrong to suppose that we can exploit and impoverish the poorer countries, while arming them and instructing them in the newest means of war, and then reasonably expect them to be peaceable.

XXIII. We must not again allow public emotion or the public media to caricature our enemies. If our enemies are now to be some nations of Islam, then we should undertake to know those enemies. Our schools should begin to teach the histories, cultures, arts, and language of the Islamic nations. And our leaders should have the humility and the wisdom to ask the reasons some of those people have for hating us.

XXIV. Starting with the economies of food and farming, we should promote at home, and encourage abroad, the ideal of local self-sufficiency. We should recognize that this is the surest, the safest, and the cheapest way for the world to live. We should not countenance the loss or destruction of any local capacity to produce necessary goods

XXV. We should reconsider and renew and extend our efforts to protect the natural foundations of the human economy: soil, water, and air. We should protect every intact ecosystem and watershed that we have left, and begin restoration of those that have been damaged.

XXVI. The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. It’s proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or “accessing” what we now call “information” - which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.

XXVII. The first thing we must begin to teach our children (and learn ourselves) is that we cannot spend and consume endlessly. We have got to learn to save and conserve. We do need a “new economy”, but one that is founded on thrift and care, on saving and conserving, not on excess and waste. An economy based on waste is inherently and hopelessly violent, and war is its inevitable by-product. We need a peaceable economy.

HEADING FOR HALF DOME

2011-09-02T14:39:00.000-04:00

You've seen Ansel Adams' iconic photos of Yosemite's Half Dome. I'll hike to its peak on Labor Day

Like you, probably, I've been viewing this Ansel Adams photo of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park since I was a child. Adams' black and white photos in Yosemite put the park's peaks into the realm of legend. And none of his photos have been more widely viewed and copied than this one of Half Dome.

At the invitation of my son-in-law, Alex Butler, I plan to join him for a day-long hike to the peak of Half Dome on Labor Day. We'll take what's known as the Cables Trail--a long route which ends with a final steep trek up the side of the peak stepping our way upward via steel cables that are fastened to steel poles embedded in the sheer rock surface. Every time I view photos of the jutting peak and of people using the cables, I get a little queasy.

I'm assured that this hike, while difficult, is readily doable. Though there are a limited number of passes issued for each day, thousands of people make this trek each year. I know I'm in the best physical condition of my life (yes, at age 52) and that I'll be fine. Still, looking at it from whichever angle... It has my respect.

I am aware that 17 people have fallen to their deaths from various hikes and climbs in Yosemite this season--the highest number on record. Will I be careful? Absolutely.

I plan to share tweets (http://www.twitter.com/indybikehiker) along the trail on Monday. I hope to share photos as well as observations. I invite you to tune in. And, you might say a prayer during your Labor Day cookout.

LABOR DAY, HOMELESSNESS, & NEIGHBORLINESS

2011-09-01T13:04:00.000-04:00

For many, homelessness begins in the workplace. It doesn't have to be this way.

I can't help but connect Labor Day and labor issues to the challenge of homelessness. For many, homelessness begins in the workplace. Simply put: many workers can’t afford to live on the wages they receive.

Does the community consider it an injustice when a minimum-wage laborer must work 82 hours a week to afford the average apartment in Indianapolis? Are Hoosier neighbors concerned that many full-time workers cannot access affordable housing? Is it an acceptable ethical practice to build a business plan that counts on hiring most of one’s workforce only part-time to avoid paying benefits and fulfilling obligations required by law for full-time laborers, forcing workers into second and third jobs to try to get a roof over their heads?

These not-talked-about practices are “Hoosier values” that daily impact many homeless and near-homeless neighbors in Central Indiana. They fly in the face of a national survey that indicates 97% of Americans agree that every worker deserves a livable wage. Not high pay, mind you, not even union-leveraged incomes, but just enough to afford housing and stability. But to listen to some local influence groups (like the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce), you’d think the idea of a livable wage was a sinister communist plot.

A generation ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. observed that "there is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum and livable income for every American family." Shortsightedness--or something a bit more selfish or sinister--apparently continues to determine policies today. Yet, few businesses and government policy-makers want to honestly factor the high economic and human cost of unlivable wages and denial of basic benefits for millions of Americans.

All of us cannot work directly on the issue of homelessness. But all of us can advocate for and make available livable wage incomes for laborers wherever possible.

We can begin by ensuring that workers have a right to form a union and engage in collective bargaining. That's one reason I advocated for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. Its passage would have reversed a generation of bullying, intimidation, illegal firings, and manipulation of workers who try to exercise their right to form a union in their workplace.

Aside from collective bargaining, there are various tools and approaches that can bring worker wages--particularly in the unskilled and service industries--into a range in which a person can afford to live on the income for which they labor. One tool is free or low-cost trades and technology education available to every worker or unemployed person desiring it. Another is a living wage covenant supported by communities for all companies doing business within their jurisdictions. Another is to upgrade the earned income or housing tax credit for folks whose incomes amount to less than 200% of poverty. These are just a few possibilities.

Labor practices and livable wages--or a careless disregard for them--impacts the entire community and society. Beyond the very hard impacts on homelessness, health, and survival, labor practices have to do with our very sense of community--with neighbors both near and far. Robert Bellah, leading author of Habits of the Heart and The Good Society writes:

"We are facing trends, particularly downsizing and downgrading the work force, that threaten our basic sense of solidarity with others, solidarity with those near to us (loyalty to neighborhood, colleagues at work, fellow residents of our town or city), but also solidarity with those who live far from us, those who are economically in situations very different from our own, those of other nations."

Isn't it time to reverse this ugly, disintegrating spiral and begin to restore what is fair, what is right, what is just for all who live as neighbors in a common endeavor? What can you do in your sphere of influence to upgrade hourly workers' wages and make a an important dent in the specter of homelessness and disintegration of community?

COURAGE TO TEACH

2011-08-29T07:06:00.002-04:00

Parker J. Palmer offers insight that challenges the status quo in education

A GIFT TO WOULD-BE EDUCATORS. Of the many gifts Parker Palmer has given this American generation, The Courage to Teach is one of the strongest. I wish it could be given to and read by every educator, would-be educator, and everyone who has influence in shaping the American educational system (I know of a local church in Indianapolis that honored all teachers in its area and gave them Palmer's book).

PEDAGOGY, RELATIONSHIP, MILIEU. I reflect on this as I've returned to the classroom--both real and virtual--as Associate Faculty teaching graduate students in the School for Public and Environmental Affairs (Indiana University). It's not course content that is the challenge so much, it seems to me, as the pedagogy, the relationships, the milieu, and the context that can keep me awake at night wondering how much better learning might be. I'm grateful for Palmer's reflections, along with the excellent work of the Center for Teaching and Learning at IUPUI, for offering resources to me and to those who endeavor to enter this bloody arena.

INTERRUPT ROUTINE PROTOCOLS. If what Palmer says is even partly right, routine educational protocols need to interrupted for the sake of letting the quest for learning breathe anew. A few excerpts:

CREATING THE CONDITIONS. “Teachers possess the power to create conditions that can help students learn a great deal--or keep them from learning much at all. Teaching is the intentional act of creating those conditions, and good teaching requires that we understand the inner sources of both the intent and the act.”

A SILENCE BORN OF FEAR. “The silence of our students is the same silence we have known in other settings: It is the silence of blacks in the presence of whites, of women in the presence of men, of the powerless in the presence of people with power. It is the silence of marginal people, people who have been told that their voice has no value, people who maintain silence in the presence of the enemy because in silence there is safety. Student silence is normally not the product of ignorance or indifference or cynicism. It is a silence born of fear.”

EXORCISE FEAR. “I should have remembered from my own experience that students, too, are afraid: afraid of failing, of not understanding, of being drawn into issues they would rather avoid, of having their ignorance exposed or their prejudices challenged, of looking foolish in front of their peers. When my students’ fears mix with mine, fear multiplies geometrically -- and education is paralyzed. If we were to turn some of our externalized reformist energies toward exorcising the inner demons of fear, we would take a vital step toward the renewal of teaching and learning.”

BEYOND “OBJECTIVITY” ONLY. "Though the academy claims to value multiple modes of knowing, it honors only one -- an 'objective' way of knowing that takes us into the 'real' world by taking us 'out of ourselves'… In this culture, the self is not a source to be tapped but a danger to be suppressed, not a potential to be fulfilled but an obstacle to be overcome."

APPEAL TO THEIR INNER TRUTH. "We can, and do, make education an exclusively outward enterprise, forcing students to memorize and repeat facts without ever appealing to their inner truth -- and we get predictable results: many students never want to read a challenging book or think a creative thought once they get out of school…. What we teach will never 'take' unless it connects with the inward, living core of our students' lives, with our students' inward teachers."

CERTAIN AND UNCERTAIN

2011-08-20T08:26:00.000-04:00

A prayer, a recognition, a confession, a plea, a commitment

O God,
I have never been more certain and uncertain.

Grounded and tethered in grace,
I am pulled this way and that.

Certain I am Yours and You are mine;
uncertain what all that means or
what to do with it.

Certain my life is in mission;
uncertain how that plays out
from this point forward.

Certain of what I’ve learned and experienced
formally and informally,
by study and serendipity,
by blessing and curse,
readily and hard-headedly;
uncertain how what I’ve learned
and experienced thus far
serves the future.

Certain of my love for family and friends;
uncertain as we now scatter more than
gather amid complexity how I will
convey love’s depths.

Certain of my capacities and gifts
ever developing, still maturing;
uncertain when or how or where
they will yet root, grow and bloom.

Certain the greatest work of my life lies ahead;
uncertain of its nature or acceptability or usefulness
to You, Your people, Your world.

Whatever of my certainties that are misshapen
or vain, o Potter, remold, reframe.
Whatever of my uncertainties that float on fear,
founded or unfounded, untangle, free.

Certain and uncertain, by faith
I stand with You and with my neighbors
in respectful, creative relationships,
ready now to be and do what is responsible
in love’s eyes.

HEAVEN ENOUGH

2011-08-12T09:18:00.000-04:00

This poem of Wendell Berry reflects my sentiments or yearnings at the moment

O saints, if I am even eligible for this prayer,
though less than worthy of this dear desire,
and if your prayers have influence in Heaven,
let my place there be lower than your own.
I know how you longed, here where you lived
as exiles, for the presence of the essential
Being and Maker and Knower of all things.
But because of my unruliness, or some erring
virtue in me never rightly schooled,
some error clear and dear, my life
has not taught me your desire for flight:

dismattered, pure and free. I long
instead for the Heaven of creatures, of seasons,
of day and night. Heaven enough for me
would be this world as I know it, but redeemed
of our abuse of it and one another. It would be
the Heaven of knowing again. There is no marrying
in Heaven, and I submit; even so, I would like
to know my wife again, both of us young again,
and remembering always how I loved her
when she was old. I would like to know
my children again, all my family, all my dear ones,

to see, to hear, to hold, more carefully
than before, to study them lingeringly as one
studies old verses, committing them to heart
forever. I would like again to know my friends,
my old companions, men and women, horses
and dogs, in all the ages of our lives, here
in this place that I have watched over all my life
in all its moods and seasons, never enough.
I will be leaving how many beauties overlooked?

A painful Heaven this would be, for I would know
by it how far I have fallen short. I have not
paid enough attention, I have not been grateful
enough. And yet this pain would be the measure
of my love. In eternity's once and now, pain would
place me surely in the Heaven of my earthly love.

(What is bolded is my emphasis, what focuses my own reflection)

PEACEABLENESS TOWARD ENEMIES

2011-08-11T09:57:00.001-04:00

Wendell Berry offers fresh perspective on an age-old possibility: "escape from the logic of retribution"

I once again came across an essay by Wendell Berry by the title “Peaceableness Toward Enemies.” Found in his book Sex, Economy, Freedom, & Community, it is a reflection on America’s role in the Persian Gulf War. Berry perceived then that war was unnecessary and more costly to global politics and ecology than we have yet to realize. I think of this as the USA has surpassed 3000 troop deaths, multiple thousands of casualties, and $1 trillion spent waging war in Afghanistan and Iraq:

“The idea of peaceableness toward enemies is a religious principle. Whether or not it could be believed, much less practiced apart from authentic religious faith, I do not know. I can only point out that the idea of the ultimate importance of individual lives is also a religious principle and that it finally became a political principle of significant power and influence.”

“Peaceableness toward enemies is an idea that will, of course, continue to be denounced as impractical. It has been too little tried by individuals, much less by nations. It will not readily or easily serve those who are greedy for power. It cannot be effectively used for bad ends. It could not be used as the basis of an empire. It does not afford opportunities for profit. It involves danger to practitioners. It requires sacrifice. And yet it seems to me that it is practical, for it offers the only escape from the logic retribution. It is the only way by which we can cease to look to war for peace.”

“The essential point is the ancient one: that to be peaceable is, by definition, to be peaceable in time of conflict. Peaceableness is not the amity that exists between people who agree, nor is it the exhaustion or jubilation that follows war. It is not passive. It is the ability to act to resolve conflict without violence. If it is not a practical and a practicable method, it is nothing. As a practicable method, it reduces helplessness in the face of conflict. In the face of conflict, the peaceable person may find several solutions, the violent person only one."

SAVE US FROM SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS

2011-08-09T10:26:00.000-04:00

A prayer of Stanley Hauerwas in his book, Prayers Plainly Spoken

“Holy One of Israel, who called Abraham and Sarah out of Ur, who called us, your church, out of the nations, save us from self-righteousness. You have made us different so that our difference might save the world. But too often our differences tempt us to ridicule because the world, after all, is ridiculous. Never let us forget that we too are the world, and so also ridiculous. Shape the judgments of our neighbors and our own foolish judgments by your love, so that we might be together saved—that is, be a people that continue the journey out of Ur. Amen.”

PARSING PUBLIC PRAYER

2011-08-08T13:13:00.001-04:00

Next time you're asked to bow your head for public prayer, don't dare close your mind. Instead, engage in these 5 practices.

Public prayers make me nervous. An ordained Christian clergy, I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve prayed publicly; likely as many times as I’ve listened to others offer them--whether at the beginning of a NASCAR race or graduation event. Once, public prayers seemed innocent to me--full of nothing but goodwill. As I’ve paid closer attention to them, however, I recognize layers of assumptions, mixed motives, and not-so-covert speech-making.

So, I found myself wincing as I observed Texas Governor Rick Perry's prayer event on Saturday, August 6. On the surface, it appeared as pure and simple as your great-grandmother's patchwork quilt. Underneath, it was a tangled web of perplexing messages and political motives. Proclaimed to be a non-political, nonpartisan prayer for the nation and its leaders, it was, in fact, the very thing it was declared not to be.

That's part of the irony of public prayer. And that's part of its problem for authentic Christianity. Perhaps that is why Jesus pointedly challenged its practice. “When you pray,” he said, “do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.” Instead, “go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Matthew 6:5-6, NIV).

For those who view public prayer as merely a traditional American ritual, it is readily endured and dismissed as meaningless and harmless. For those who view public prayer as a genuine collective engagement with the divine, it holds ultimate meanings and powers. Both views need to be challenged. Public prayer needs to be carefully parsed.

Public prayer is a most interesting genre of speech. Its practice is a complex social and political experience. I realize many will want to argue that public prayer has nothing to do with speeches or politics. "It's just a cry from the heart directed to God and God alone," defenders of public prayer will say. But personally believing or arguing that its has nothing to do with speech-making--and with social and political ramifications--is at least naïve and possibly self-deceived.

Think about what's happening in public prayer. One person asks all in a public place to be quiet, bow their heads, and close their eyes--presumably in reverence for God and as standard religious practice. For some, obliging this is just a respectful gesture. At the least, the person who is about to lead in public prayer has asked everyone--regardless of their trust or beliefs or faith--to let down their guard. And most go along.

However, for anyone who prays sincerely in private, this posture is perhaps the most open, vulnerable, trusting moment in religious experience. For these, it is about bracketing whatever else is going on, setting aside whatever is normal, casual, and routine. It is a moment when the usual rules of human discourse no longer apply. It is a moment of attention, focus, and receptivity...to God.

Yet, in reality, our collective attention, focus and receptivity in the moment of public prayer is not primarily to God, but to whoever is the designated pray-er. We are in the position of listening in and passively, presumptively agreeing with what is being said to God on behalf of ourselves and others.

Whether or not he or she recognizes it, the one who is designated to lead in public prayer is placed in a powerful position. Hats off. Heads bowed. Eyes closed. For a moment, many voices and conversations are hushed and all become as one. All anticipate what will be said to God on behalf of all.

Some who lead in public prayer recognize the fragility of this moment and respect it. Others take privileges, using public prayer to project their own perspectives and prescriptions on all. Granted, some convey their perspectives naïvely. Their own unexamined motives and unconsidered prescriptions for social ills spill forth irresponsibly. Others, however, convey their political perspectives with awareness and intention—convinced that their viewpoint is exactly God’s viewpoint, that their solution is equivalent to God’s solution. In my hearing, Gov. Perry’s prayer fell into this category.

In response to my increasing discomfort with public prayer, and instead of summarily dismissing it, I’ve developed a short list of practices for use during them. Try these the next time public prayer is on the agenda:

1. When asked to bow you head and close your eyes to pray, if you oblige, do not close your mind, do not be passive. In this sacred yet vulnerable moment, critical thinking and engaged discernment is most important.

2. Recall the differences between your private prayer and public prayer. Private prayer is sharing your own feelings, words and petitions with God as you conceive of God. Public prayer is listening in on another person’s words and personal perspectives addressed somewhat to God and somewhat to all who are listening with some intended or hoped-for effect.

3. It’s okay to disagree with the presumptions and petitions being offered in public prayers. Do not excuse what is not excusable or agree just to be agreeable. Often, I find myself uttering, “God, you know better than that. Don’t do it!” When I can’t agree with the prayer, I sometimes end up spending the moments praying for myself and the public pray-er—for mercy for us both!

4. Listen carefully both to what is said and what is implied. Sometimes what is not said but implied is telling and important.

5. Follow-up public prayers with personal reflection and contemplation, along with discussions with friends and neighbors. What is said or left unsaid in a public prayer can become a point of raising awareness, making constructive responses, and perhaps helping shape civil discourse. At least, that’s what Gov. Perry’s prayer did in this case.

ANY FUTURE IN "DOING JUSTICE?"

2011-08-05T15:32:00.005-04:00

What if local Free Methodists--and other Christian communities--took "doing justice" seriously?

I posited the following 14 possibilities as the conclusion of a presentation I made before the Free Methodist Historical Society in 2006. The presentation became a chapter in the book, Soul Searching the Church. You can download a PDF version of my presentation, "To Break Every Yoke," at this link.

Reading my treatise five years later, these issues/possibilities go mostly unaddressed and unanswered among Free Methodist pastors and leaders. Still, as long as it is "today," soul searching, change and redemptive action are possible.

For the sake of possibility, let us imagine placing the doing of justice more centrally in our lives as Free Methodist believers, pastors, and congregations. What does one’s weekly devotional life include? As a pastor, what teaching priorities or investments of time do I make? As a congregation, what does our “ministry menu” or thrust of service include? Where do we begin? What are we like? In the spirit of the optimism of grace, consider the shape and indications of a Free Methodism that embraces ‘doing justice’ more centrally:

1. We stop convincing ourselves that justice issues are too messy and complicated to get involved in. We seek to fully understand the nature of particular injustices. We begin to trace their sources in irresponsible or sinful values, actions, approaches, alliances, or habits at personal, corporate, social, and/or national levels.

2. We no longer just hope somebody else is doing something about poverty or human trafficking. We identify how Free Methodists and others are engaging in both relief and redemptive counter to these injustices. We support this work financially and prayerfully. We identify corrupting activities and also commend best practices to our representative church, government, corporate, and community leaders at all levels.

3. We incorporate ‘doing justice’ into the center of our descriptions and proclamations of salvation and discipleship. We reclaim Biblical guidance regarding ‘doing justice’ and forge a fresh Free Methodist spiritual formation with this mandate and heritage at heart. We both preach grace and do justice in our evangelism and discipleship. We incorporate “justice, mercy, and truth” into our Christian education, discipleship, leadership development, worship, and group life curriculum. Justice is not something talked about one Sunday of the year; it is woven into the texture of our life together.

4. We do not accept at face-value any politically-motivated or fear-based description or solution to social problems or injustices. We exercise a deeper sense of spiritual discernment and broader sense of social responsibility than can be reduced to sound-bytes, slogans, campaigns, and election-cycle political interest action.

5. We are educated and engaged regarding what is being accomplished within the Body of Christ regarding historically-core Free Methodist concerns--poverty, human slavery, and women’s issues (for starters). We encourage involvement in local and international initiatives like the Christian Community Development Association, the Blueprint to End Homelessness, and the International Justice Mission.

6. We take a global outlook and approach to ‘doing justice.’ We move beyond Americanism for the sake of authentic Christianity and our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world. While we address specifically American justice challenges like homelessness, affordable housing, livable wages, affordable health care, and access to quality public education at all levels, we do so within a global perspective. North American and Western lifestyles and choices are linked with the prevention or propagation of global poverty, human trafficking, fair labor, women’s rights, and economic domination.

7. We openly commit to solidarity with the poor and the plight of the poorest of the poor in our society and around the world. As best we can, we look at the world through the eyes and experiences of marginalized people and groups. We no longer insulate ourselves from contact with the poor; instead we look for ways to engage the poor with meaning, linking our own lives inseparably with theirs. We visit, develop relationships, and become increasingly aware of the immediate struggles of neighbors. We give more weight to their testimonies and experiences than to politicians and news media sources. We work with neighbors to understand and address poverty.

8. As we act for relief of the poor and vulnerable, we link relief with reform and establish just structures, policies, and opportunities whenever possible. As we give ourselves to salvage lives that have been swept over the proverbial waterfall, just as readily we move expediently to address what has caused people and groups to be swept downstream in the first place. We treat symptoms and we address sources of harm. To modify a well-worn adage: give people fish, teach them how to fish, guarantee their right to fish, and do all in your power to insure that the water upstream is not being polluted so that they can actually eat and sell the fish they catch.

9. We are as redemptively involved in our communities for social reform as we are in our congregations for spiritual formation and revival. Free Methodist spiritual formation encourages active neighboring as well as service to support congregational life. Volunteers serve local justice concerns in balance with congregational outreach ministries. We see the two as complementary, not competitive or exclusionary.

10. We act as responsible investors in global market dynamics. If we invest in the stock market or benefit from stock market investments (such as through tax-sheltered retirement accounts), we do so, as much as possible, without blindly contributing to or benefiting from unjust labor or unethical business practices. We refrain from investments that promote violence, war-making, addictions, or unfair trade and labor practices. We examine local labor and market practices of companies in which we invest and call for social responsibility. When stock-market and multi-national corporate activity is identified as rapacious, it is called to accountability and change.

11. We act as responsible consumers of global products, resources, and services. We see a higher value than the lowest possible retail price tag. We challenge our habits of purchasing and consuming whenever it is known to directly or indirectly feed injustices for laborers and the poor around the world.

12. We refute violence against human beings in all its forms. We speak prophetically to militarism and the violence of unjust war, to be sure. We also reject of the language and norms of violence in our society and world. Alternatively, we engage in, pursue, and encourage methods of conflict resolution and shalom-bearing that are a positive testimony to the power of a holy God whose way is love.

13. We address justice issues in the Spirit and manner of perfect love. Even as we identify injustice, seek to relieve the oppressed, call perpetrators of injustice to accountability, and work for reform, we do so with the redemption of the perpetrating individual or organization in focus. Our very approach and spirit is the key to transformative outcomes. As one early Free Methodist put it: “to find the remedy is easy; successfully to apply it involves the principle of holiness.”

14. We show by example and precedent what is possible when people of heart-felt faith and vision creatively engage the call to ‘do justice.’ We demonstrate the promise of restorative justice initiatives. We model best practices in socially redemptive ministries and volunteer services. We are proactive instead of reactive. We exemplify to the best of our ability, acting with all the light that we currently, collectively have, the principles of the kingdom of God. We live earnestly the petition we constantly make: “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”