MY STRUGGLE WITH VETERANS DAY

Both my parents served in World War II, and were proud of their service.  Both had scars from that service, especially my dad, who saw combat duty in Europe.  As I’ve learned more about what veterans suffer with after war, I see a part of their suffering that often goes unnoticed is “moral injury”.  Moral injury is when your moral center is damaged because you’ve done something you know is wrong.  My father’s generation didn’t talk a lot about their experiences in the war, but one thing my father once said has stuck with me, probably because it was the only time he spoke it: “Sometimes in war you have to do something you shouldn’t do.”

Admitting to moral injury means having the honesty to admit your participation in evil and the humility to suffer through what that means.  It is the part of healing that rarely, if ever, gets publicity or calls for support or understanding.  Nearly every week, there is a TV news show that shows veterans bravely coping with physical injury, and the committed caregivers who work with them.  There are constant calls for us “to remember and support our veterans.”  Every NFL game last Sunday had some “Salute to the Troops”. Today Perkins is giving a free breakfast to past or present service members.  All these gestures are accompanied by the statement that they “did it for us”—to “protect our freedom”, usually.

I’m sure the breakfast was appreciated, but when was the last time you hear anyone talk about moral injury—in the news, in entertainment, or even in your place of worship (which should be the very place we talk about evil and heal from it)?  When have you seen a feature story or human-interest story about someone helping a returning vet to admit to the evil he or she had done, been forgiven for it, and be welcomed back into a community that has its own need to repent.

Probably never, I would guess.  Because for us as a society to offer that kind of help, we would have to admit that the evil done by our military was done for us and by us.  Which would mean that we have suffered moral injury as a result of our supporting and benefitting from what our nation has done in its wars.  My Lai, the tiger cages, Operation Phoenix (what a macabre irony that name is) and all the other atrocities done in Viet Nam are our atrocities.  Abu Ghraib, water boarding, drone strikes on civilians, Guantanamo are our shame.  The mining of Nicaragua’s harbors, the training of assassins at the School of the Americas in Georgia are our war crimes.

Often when I bring this up, particularly near Memorial Day or Veteran’s Day (or 4^th of July, which had nothing to do with the military), I am told “this is not the time to discuss that.”  But when exactly is the time to do so?  Is it just a pipe dream of mine that some day we the people will spend as much time remembering Hiroshima and Mozote as we do Pearl Harbor? Or spend even a fraction of the time remembering what we did on the other 9-11, facilitating a military coup in Chile on 9-11-1973?

Don’t want to think about all this?  Well let me ask what is to me what is one of the most problematic questions of all: Why is it that every country we’ve invaded since the end of World War II has been much poorer than us: Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, and including our proxy wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia and Nicaragua? Not to mention our support of military coups and dictatorships in Iran, Dominican Republic, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, the Congo, Uruguay and on and on. What does it say that the richest country in the world goes to war against some of the poorest?  What does it say about our values?  (Of course we did plenty of invading prior to WWII, mostly of other Americans—Native and Latin Americans, that is).

My father was a member of the VFW, but stopped going in the late sixties and seventies.  He didn’t like the jingoism that seemed to dominate every gathering.  I also think he was struggling with the idea that his sons could be drafted to fight in Viet Nam, in a war that he came to see as unjustified, from top to bottom.  In the last decades of his life, I believe that he found the most important “welcome home”, which was forgiveness and reconciliation.

I know that it is hard to hold together gratitude for the sacrifice our troops make, and anger at what our troops have done, in our name.  But it can be done.  At least some Germans reflected this November 9, about the 25^th anniversary of the end of the Berlin Wall, and the 76^th anniversary of Kristallnacht.  Many, many Latin Americans love our country for its freedoms and opportunities, while detesting what it’s done to their lands.  I think we owe it to ourselves as a people and as a nation to try.

This poem is one of a series about my father, and was published in the Ilanot Review from Israel, in their issue about “Conflict” (which ironically, went on-line right at the beginning of the latest war between Israel and Palestine).

FALLING

A man hung from his parachute

like a seed softly whirligigging down,

shouting “Don’t shoot—I surrender!”                       

in the tongue of the enemy, your first tongue.

He had no way to reach

his weapon, but the men under

you did, and in a minute—though your voice

was raised and your rank commanded

obedience—it was the county fair

in Shreveport, in Pembina, in New Ulm                    

and New Prague, step right up, everyone                  

wins a prize, the lights flashing,

the girls all giggles, and bullets

and a ribbon for the man who hits the nose.

Then, silence, the head of the boy

on his chest, his body limp

in its harness, gravity doing

its work.  The son of German cousins—

perhaps the grandson of your grandfather’s friend—

spoiled blood over his uniform. Father,

why did you tell me this story

and not my brothers?

Your memories are like your hands:

big, calloused, open.

His boots newly shined, pulled him

down to the earth he finally

met as a shroud, a nothing,

a home. Your men did not speak.

They held their rifles across

their chests, as if bearing sick children.

*  * *

Today, I feel that to

            Be justice, and

                        Be beauty

We must mostly

                                                            Be honesty

Patrick

JOY COMES FROM CREATING

During the last two weeks, I’ve attended a couple of conferences: one on the ministry of daily work, and one on our emotional and spiritual response to money.  While the presenters had a lot more faith in the market than I do, I learned—or re-learned—some things that are making me think.

            One is how important it is to have creative work, whether that is in your job or in family life or in an avocation that brings joy.  In fact, I don’t think you can have joy without immersing oneself in creating and in creation.   Creating—at least for me—brings me in contact with both the unlimited nature of human and natural gifts, and the struggle to bring those gifts into being as a fragile, complicated being.

            Another is how much our current economic system and our adoration of money saps the human spirit.  In part, because it takes the joy of creating out of people’s lives—especially the materially poor—and turns everything into a commodity.  Commoditization kills communion, because it takes compassion out of everyday life.

            And finally, I have learned again that creation often takes place in the context of struggle.  I doubt that anyone has a “perfect job” where there is no drudgery, conflict or futility.  My father was a barber for nearly three decades, and I know there were times of physical pain as well as emotional loneliness and spiritual struggle.  But he made our family a living, and especially as he grew older, he made of his conversation and welcoming spirit a place of hospitality for those who came through the doors of his shop.

            I’m thinking about saints on this All Hallows Eve, and Walter Hansel was one of them.  Here is a poem set in his shop, which explores the tension and love in our relationship (It was originally published in Turtle Quarterly, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize).

QUITTING TIME

I sweep up the hair that lies like pigeon’s feathers

on my father’s shop floor: Callahan’s red

mixed with the dark Slavinskys and Knauers and Ryshavys,

and one blonde Swede who must have snuck

in just before five.  His candied fleece shimmers

on top of the pile.  Dad double counts the till

and snaps caps back onto brown bottles of tonic

and grunts with the weight of the day. And all the men,

who sat in the chair while he plied their heads

with scissors and razors and combs, the men

from the plant, still aching from cutting hogs

and steers into bite size pieces, the men

who smoke Camel Straights and hit their kids

because God says it’s good for them and because

their hands were tied behind their backs

by fathers whose tongues were stolen from them

when they crossed the sea, all of them have

trailed off into the twilight like fog,

leaving their hair to sparkle under my broom

as my Father and I work in silence, and in hope of wings.

Be justice. Be beauty.  Be creative.

Patrick

ECLIPSED BY BEAUTY

Like a lot of people, I got up early to watch the total lunar eclipse today.  I saw the beginning from the bedroom window, and stood outside our house to see the advance of the shadow over the lesser light that governs the night.  The moon was setting as it was being eclipsed, and so I went to the park a few blocks away. 

There were a few other visitors whose voices I heard, or whose silhouettes I saw in the early dawn.  A man walking his dog. A couple in the front seat of their pickup, doing something.  Voices of a family leaving their house down the block.  A couple of birds.

It was a cool fall morning with lots of dew, and I am still recovering from hip surgery, so I didn’t sit down. But standing in one place made me feel cold and achy.  So I walked up and down a little on the edges of the park, keeping my eye on the moon, which changed shape and color with each minute, it seemed.

It struck me that I was walking on the very body that was causing the wonderful show in the skies.  I was moving on the earth whose movement made the shadow across the moon’s face, and revealed a beauty in our nighttime companion that we rarely see.  The last time I remember watching a total lunar eclipse was in 1982, at Camp Koinonia in upstate New York.  I was on crutches that night, and also had another body watching with me.  Here’s a poem I wrote about that night years later:

FULL ECLIPSE AT KOINONIA

I crutched out to Jubilee Meadow,

flashlight in my teeth, skin of light

bouncing off the low and high bush blueberries.

The dew was liquor thick

on the grass.  The mud, solemn.

I found my perch upon the wooden planks

where the campers did their silly skits.

I sat and waited for the moon to die.

That summer, gypsy moths had devoured

ash, maple, shag bark hickory

from Eldred to Liberty, leaving the forest

and its bright air stripped as for a scourging.

Trees forgot how to bend in the breeze.

Birds lost their bearings.  Even the long rains

and the raspy invasions of midges and bats

could not cleanse the sky of its desolation.

My foot sang in its temple of dirtied plaster.

That night, as the moon hunted above,

and the destroyer began to carve the shadow

into its bruised face, an animal rustled

a few yards down the path. My light found

its black and white form crouching

in the middle of my way home.

Her tail, a shadowed leaf

swaying in the wind, her head

bowed upwards, as if to catch

the light of heaven in its hour of need.

“Who are we, and how are we together”

is what the ancients asked, the children mock,

and now, sitting, I pondered, in the realm of skunk.

My companion didn’t seem to mind

the rending of the sky queen, nor my body

resting on the same earth

that was causing all the heavenly commotion.

(It was, after all, this planet we rode together

that was eating away the moon’s visage.)

And so, we sat together in the night,

until all that was left of the lunar countenance

was its halo, and the sky seemed to screech

with stars.  It began to chill, and I wondered

how I would hop and peg my way

around my sylvan friend, and back to bed.

I shined my beam upon her

and saw that she had gone.

Perhaps she became bored with her guest,

or tired of the celestial show we shared.

It’s probably true of skunks as much as a man on sticks

that seeing the moon come crawling back lacks the terror

and greed of seeing it eaten bit by heavenly bit.

Something else has power over us now.

Oh, the beauty of this early morning, when all created things were moving, and all creatures were held together in peace.  The beauty of this world, though beset with violence and hunger and injustice, calls out for our love.

Be beauty.  Be justice.

Patrick

OUT OF CONTROL AND INTO TRUST

A couple days ago, I got home from having total hip replacement surgery.  I was in the hospital for 3 ½ days, during which time I was working toward a series of small steps that would effect my release, a series that has some parameters, and has quite a bit of objective data from others who have undergone this surgery.  Once at home, I begin working toward a series of steps that are larger, not as well defined, and which can vary widely from person to person.  The data that surgeons and other healers have about this second phase is mostly self-reported by the patient and thus subjective rather than objective. 

I’ve only been home a couple days, but it’s looking like this stage of my healing could be much harder than the first one.

It’s interesting, because here at home, I have much more control about where I can go, what tools I have at my disposal, just how much physical space I can operate in, and how many physical activities it is possible to do, and yet in some ways, being in the hospital was easier.  There are many reasons, but it seems to me that at the core of them all was the issue of control.

When I went under anesthesia, I lost—or rather ceded—control of some key physical functions, among them breathing, urinating and finally, consciousness.  Agreeing to the surgery was essentially an act of faith.  I chose to trust people and a process over which I had no control. I chose to put my body and my life in others’ hands.

Even after waking from surgery, in many ways my life was still in others’ hands.  They decided when I could be moved from the recovery room, when I could eat solid food, when the catheter would come out. I had some control over that, in that there were certain steps I could pass.  I could drink a clear liquid diet and report no problems; I could report that I didn’t feel dizzy or nauseous.  (That reporting required a trust on the part of the staff—that I was telling the truth—but also they had a lot of machines to gather my data).

In fact, as the recovery in the hospital continued, I was asked to trust in a different way: that my body, with help, could do certain things.  Get up, walk to the hall, do physical therapy exercises, go to the bathroom, practice climbing stairs.  The more active I became, the more I was asked to both trust my pain (stop an exercise when it became intolerable) and trust that the pain would diminish as I got stronger.  The staff kept asking me to trust them with information: how I was feeling, if I could do more activity, if I could reduce the pain medication.  They also asked me if I had passed gas, and showed disappointment when I answered no (tell me another social situation where that happens!)

At home, it’s a different level of trust. I have to trust my family to adapt their lives and activities to my condition. And I have to trust my mind and spirit to make choices that aren’t necessarily black and white.  For example, how much should I push myself, and bear the pain, trusting that becoming active will reduce the pain versus how much I should take it easy, trusting that my body needs time to heal, and will do so at its own pace.

Anyone who has undergone major surgery will know that dilemma.  Doctors and nurses aren’t really helpful on this, because the best advice they will give you is “well, if it hurts too much don’t do it”, which basically leads you back to your subjective evaluation of what your body is telling you.

But coming home after surgery also challenges me to trust the trust I put in my family.  The people I trust the most are also the people I need to choose to trust the most.

The nurses and physical therapists never did anything that would test my trust in them. I was only in the hospital for 3 ½ days after all. But all of us in our family have done things that have damaged and even broken the trust between us for a time.  There has been more practice of forgiveness and reconciliation here, which has deepened the bonds of trust.  But even though I trust that I can trust loved ones with whom I have shared pain, I have to make that choice daily.  In the hospital, I didn’t have much of a choice whether to trust the staff: I depended on them.  At home, as I gain a little more independence physically, my dependence on my family is slowly diminished. But it takes time, time in which I must depend on people who are not being paid to help me (like in the hospital) but choosing to help me.  That dependence is a difficult spiritual discipline for me

I’ve been through a couple of workshops this year that sought to help us uncover—or discover—what is at the core of our being as leaders.  In both, my need to be in control surfaced strong and sure. I don’t like not being in control.  I want to know how things are going to turn out, and I feel that I need to make sure that they do.  Logically, of course, that doesn’t make any sense. No one can control the outcome of what we do.  But there is this power in me that demands that I keep my hands tightly on the reins, and shout directions to everyone travelling with me.  It is the opposite of trust, and the only way I can diminish that power is allowing myself to feel vulnerable and trust, even when I don’t feel it.  It’s not telling myself that “everything is going to be all right”, because not everything will be.  It’s more encouraging myself to trust that I will be all right, that those I love will be all right, that no matter what, life is precious and good.

I had a physical therapist in the hospital who epitomized the kind of coach or teacher I admire and aspire to be.  She was in her last year of school at the University of Minnesota, and combined in just the right proportions support and challenge.  She pushed me to do new things, and helped me to do them.  She was not going to make me get better, she was going to help me get better.  Her two most common phrases were “how do you feel?” and “do you want to try something else?”  No doubt, she had a written plan to guide her treatment of me, but it was her trust in me as a patient—that I would tell her what I was feeling, and that I would trust her as she guided me on—that made the healing relationship work.

Maybe we could apply that to other human relationships—at work, in our families, in community.  If we truly asked each other how we felt—and listened to the honest answer—and truly asked each other if we ‘d like to try something new, how much richer would our lives be?

I wonder.

Be beauty.  Be justice.  Be trust.

Patrick

WHAT HATE LIES WHERE?

The news of the last several weeks has been hard to take: the plight of the Yazidis and Christians and others in Iraq, the punishment of Gaza, the ongoing carnage in Syria, the Ebola outbreak and the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.  And then last night, the news of the beheading of James Foley by ISIS or ISIL or IS, whatever grandiose name this determined group of killers has chosen for the moment.

Today, on the way to the studio to write, I caught part of an interview on The Take Away about a white sheriff’s deputy in California, who is raising his adopted African-American son with his husband. (http://www.thetakeaway.org/story/white-sheriff-talks-race-police-his-black-son/#commentlist). He shared how his own views on race changed as he watched his son grow—how people looked at the child suspiciously in stores for example. You could hear the emotion in his voice when he told the story of his son crying at the kitchen table when a Latino youth (holding a toy gun) was killed by police in California, and his son asking him if that could happen to him.  Killed for being black.  Stopped for being black.  Arrested for being black or Latino or anything considered “other”.

My two girls are adopted.  My oldest is Latina (as is my wife), my youngest is African-American.  And though I have lived and worked in diverse inner-city communities for over 30 years, I cannot say that I know or can comprehend fully how they navigate the American landscape that still bases so much on race, on perception of “otherness”.  I know that I live my life with privilege that the rest of my family doesn’t have, because I am white.  I also know that race in America is complicated, entangled as it is with class and gender and neighborhood and region, with perceptions and resentments that are generation-deep.

We moved from Philadelphia to Minneapolis almost exactly nine years ago, when our girls were 5 and 14.  I will never forget something that happened in a drug store, somewhere in Pennsylvania or Ohio.  My wife confronted the manager because he was following our then five-year-old daughter around the store (and not following other children who were white).  He denied that he was doing it, period.  My wife said something like “oh, yes you were, you know that you were.”

Thinking back, I wonder how much the manager knew he was doing it, and how much was an automatic response, given his background and status.  Which makes it harder to see, and harder to root out.  I wonder how deep that automatic response is in me, is in us, and how we can help each other see that and root that out.  It was so easy for me to see the manager as uneducated racist jerk, and leave feeling righteous.

The deputy sheriff talked about how important conversations around the kitchen table is for his family, to have meaningful dialogue about race; and how important real dialogue—that does not paper over injustice—is for Ferguson, and the whole country.  And the world, of course.  Of course, the bigger the entity gets, the harder it is.  It’s hard to see an Israeli or Palestinian as a dialogue partner when you’re trying to kill each other. And a “let’s all be friends” pseudo-dialogue won’t work.  There is any real peace without justice, but there may be no real peace without forgiveness as well.

One of my favorite writers is Thomas Merton, who though being a Trappist monk in a monastery guided by silence, was one of the most astute witnesses to our world. Henri Nouwen (another favorite) put Merton’s ideas this way:  “If you see evil as something ‘out there,’ something outside yourself, sharply defined and irreversible," explained Nouwen, "then the only way to deal with it is in the same way you would deal with a malignant tumor: You cut it out, take it out, eradicate it, burn it away, kill it—which means you immediately become violent.”

But if you see evil as something inside of all of us, something we are caught up in, then there is a chance for dialogue and transformation.  I hope that this happens in Ferguson, but I’m realistic enough to know that it often takes “deepening the pain” (my term) that makes people want to risk it.  At the root of all hate and violence is fear, and I know that sometimes the thing that gets me past my fear is feeling so bad, I have no choice but to change.

I’m risking a new direction with some of my poetry.  I’ve been writing a series of connected short stories about a fictional village named Two Rivers that is near a packinghouse town, and becomes the repository for “otherness” for the townspeople.  (It is fiction, fellow Austinites by birth or choice!) One of my protagonists is Graciela, who at age twelve flees with her family when the townspeople burn Two Rivers down in 1918 because they believe the village is the origin of the Spanish flu epidemic.  Graciela comes back to the town in 1933, after suffering—and causing—various traumas, ostensibly for some kind of revenge, but then discovers a deeper purpose.  (I hope you’ll be able to read it some year soon).  I’ve written a number of poems in her voice—this is her speaking, after her return in 1933:

SIN

What is it, exactly?

Why do people have a need

To point it out when it

Flows from another person?

The priests seemed to think

We were born with it,

And that somehow during

Our first long journey

Down our mother

We catch if from her.

Like a disease.

Or a curse.  I confess

I have clung to my sin

As a trophy, as if to say

You can’t make me

Any worse than I am.

I have stolen.

I have lied.

I have killed one man

And thought about many others.

If rape were a crime

That a woman could commit,

I would gladly do that.

But when I am alone

At night, with no body

Or word to console me,

I know a deeper hurting

Than I can explain. It’s as

If there is a war inside

Of me, and both sides

Brook no prisoners.

I cannot say that I pray

At such times as these,

Because prayer demands

A willingness to listen.

I see how Jesus sits down

With sinners and eats,

I’ve heard a thousand times

How he died to save all sinners,

And will come back to punish

Those who will not obey.

But I have two questions

Simmering in me:

If Jesus’ death did not do it,

What death will? And

If God fights with the same

Weapons as the devil,

Then who would you have win?

Be justice. Be beauty. Be dialogue.

Patrick

SHUT UP ALREADY!

My memory has been sparked all over the place this past week, and there’s nothing like a photograph to set one’s memory going.  I’ll get to this week’s photo—taken by one of our youth photographers—but first a couple of memories.

Twenty nine years ago, I was privileged to return to the Soviet Union. I had been there in 1982, as part of a group of seminarians, visiting Lutherans in the Baltics, and Orthodox in Moscow and Leningrad.  I had brought out my college Russian text book, bought some flash cards and tried to beef up my dormant Russian, which enabled me to order tea on the train, introduce myself and greet people, tell them where I was from and so on (and then listen to a Kalashnikov-speed reply from a Russian, of which I got about every sixth word).  I was frustrated and wanted to speak better. Curiously, when I was trying to speak Russian and got stuck, the English word did not come to my mouth, but Spanish. I was not fluent in Spanish at the time, but conversant enough.  (I went to Amsterdam after being in the USSR for three weeks and spent part of an afternoon with a person from Barcelona.  When I got stuck on a Spanish word, Russian, not English came out!)

By 1985, I was fluent in Spanish, and not much advanced in Russian, but I got out the flash cards.  I told a fellow traveler (pun intended) that I hoped I met someone in the Soviet Union who spoke Spanish.  I did. The first night. In Red Square, I met a couple of Cubans who were studying in Moscow, and we had a nice conversation.  I remember the last thing I said to them: “I hope relations between our countries are normalized soon.”

I’m still hoping, but not holding my breath.

Of all the stupid things we’ve done as a nation, the Cuban embargo has to be one of the stupidest (among other things, opening up their economy to Disney and Apple and McDonalds would be the surest way to subvert any socialism).  It has been in place for 55 years, más o menos.  Has Cuba “changed”?  Have “we” gotten anything good out of it?  (The shame of Guantanamo only adds to the stupidity of it).

Yes, I know the human rights record of Cuba is bad.  But we’ve endorsed and funded and supplied with arms worse countries and dictators, from Rios Montt in Guatemala to the Somozas in Nicaragua to a series of military governments all over South America.  Yes, Cuba’s form of government is not democratic, but they have universal health care that is marvelous and a literacy rate that is the envy of many developing countries. And please don’t tell me it’s because they’re communist. We have huge trade with Viet Nam and China who are communist (besides being great capitalists, which is another story!).

Which brings me back to the photo one of our youth took.

I want my country to shut up talking about democracy and human rights.  I want it to stop sending guns to Israel and guns to Iraq and guns to Colombia and guns to Mexico.  I want it to shut up talking about climate change, and do something about it. I want it to just shut up about how being exceptional, and start being compassionate.  I wouldn’t mind if the whole collective nation just took a month-long reprieve from talking and just listened.

Enough of that rant.  A friend this morning reminded me that it was August 1, and seven years since the I-35 bridge collapse, which took place two days before our dear Talia’s 7^th birthday.  Which means now that Talia has lived half of her life since that terrible day.  I hadn’t thought about it for awhile, which shows, I guess, that it doesn’t have the same power over me that it did. (And as a friend noted last year, August 1 last year was the day Marriage Equality came to happen in Minnesota, a much better anniversary to celebrate).  Of course, I will never forget that day seven years ago, and it will come to my present memory when it will. 

We are often told as a people that we should never forget: never forget 9-11-2001, never forget Pearl Harbor and so on.  I don’t think it would be possible to do so, even if we chose to. I still hope we will start to remember: what we did on 9-11-1973 in Chile, what we’ve done for decades all over the world, what we are doing right now in Gaza, with bombs paid for by us, and sent with our best wishes.

Be justice.  Be beauty.  Be remembering.

Patrick 

WHAT DO WE SEE?

This photo could be a scene over Palestine as bomb after bomb lands on thin houses.  This photo could be the view from an Israeli farm, wondering when the next rocket will fly. It could be the sky over Ukraine, the sky over Iraq, the sky over Afghanistan, where red and orange and yellow do not harbor joy, but usher in another night of terror. 

But it isn’t. It’s the sky seen from our front yard, in a photo taken by my daughter, earlier in the summer, when the sun was reaching the farthest north, just before the solstice. Just after the sunset.

We’ve had beautiful sunsets in Minnesota lately, caused in part, I’ve heard, by the wildfires out west—acre after acre burning as the drought deepens and the planet gets hotter and hotter.  You can’t see the molecules that may be making the sky shimmer, and discern which comes from which source. Is it cloud, is it smoke, is it hope or is it fear?

My wife and I watched the 10 pm news last night, hoping, I suppose, to catch word of some miraculous peace, some unknowable justice that had rained down on a “conflict zone” and that now reigned instead of death.  It didn’t come.  There was a 15 second piece about Secretary Kerry demanding unfettered access to the site of the downed airliner.  There might have been a 15 second “shout out” to Gaza when I slipped into the kitchen to fill my water glass—I’m not sure.  We were told three times that today would be “steamy” with a chance for severe weather overnight.  We got something about cute animals or nice people helping neighbors, just before the requisite five minutes of sports.    

I’m not looking for an overabundance of gore, or story after story of homicides and assaults and wars.  But despite the access to “24 hour news”, it seems to me that we are shown so much that is not news that we are unable to see what is in front of us.  And so we hop from crisis to crisis: the schoolgirls kidnapped in Nigeria, the riots in Brazil, the fighting in Ukraine, ISIS in Iraq, the invasion of Gaza pop up into our consciousness like summer thunderstorms, rattle the windows for awhile and then pass on. 

I don’t have a ready-made solution.  I can’t tell the future.  Even though I am praying, at least some of the time I think that praying for peace may be a copout, because if it doesn’t inspire us to the kind of actions that make for peace, it is as empty as the news broadcast (No, parishioners, I’m not saying we should stop praying or that prayer is not efficacious. Just that uttering words by themselves without our spirit on the line doesn’t make a lot of difference.) 

I like to end these blog posts somehow tying it into the “Be justice. Be beauty” thing.   But I am not being either of those right now.  I am being frustrated, I am feeling broken, and I am hoping that what I can’t see I can truly hope for.

Patrick