Seeing our belovedness in sanitized ashes

On the first Sunday of Lent, we discussed the story of Jesus hearing God’s voice calling him beloved before going off by himself to make choices based on that belovedness.

Then, everyone was invited to come forward for ashes.

I know – in most churches, those got distributed the previous Wednesday. It’s not practical for our church, which meets in a YMCA that is busy on Wednesday nights just like many of our church members.

So, this year we reverted to the original practice of starting our Lent on a Sunday. We called it Ash Sunday.

The palm branches from our virtual, pandemic service a year earlier were burned into a gritty, ashy pile. Instead of blending in a few drops of oil for lubrication, we use hand sanitizer to make the ashes stick and avoid germs.

Folks in our church come from different denominational backgrounds. Some are familiar with Lent and ashes; others have never experienced the centuries-old practice.

On this day, everyone is invited to come forward and choose where Lent’s message will be traced. If they leave their arms down, the ashes will go on their forehead. Or they can present the back of a hand to be marked with a cross.

Made from the same ashes and love

I sink my right thumb into the wooden bowl holding the ashes and scrape out a small load. I make eye contact with the person in front of me and greet them by name as I reach my ash-blackened thumb for their forehead or hand.

“Remember you are God’s beloved,” I say, “made from the same ashes and love as everyone and everything else. Keep living your precious life in this love.”

Remember your belovedness. Relax into it. Embrace it. Let it transform how you look at yourself, at others, and at all creation. Live in this connective love.

The ashes remind us of two defining truths that need to be revisited not only during Lent but throughout our lives daily.

First, they remind us that life and love are unlimited – how could they be otherwise? — but this phase of unending life comes with a shelf life. It’s the most precious gift we receive. What are we doing with this part our precious life?

Second, the ashes remind us of our connection to everyone else and everything else that God has made. The beautiful, poetic creation story describes God scooping ashes and dust from the earth – our umbilical cord to the rest of creation — and breathing divine life into us.

Then God makes us one from the other, locating our precious lives within a sacred and universal mutuality. All is done out of love. Everything pulsates with this eternal breath of life.

Remember you are God’s beloved … and so is everyone else. You have sacred life within you … and so does everything else. Now, go live in that love. Try to live gratefully, graciously, generously, lovingly, sacrificially, joyfully. Go and nurture the breath of God in all.

Remember …

Some members of my church had other commitments on the first Sunday of Lent. When they expressed disappointment at missing out on the ashes, I was tempted to respond: Well, maybe next year.

Then I thought: Why not next week, too?

So, for the second Sunday of Lent, we shared ashy blessings again. Those who couldn’t be there the previous week were invited to come forward. Those who had already received ashes were invited to come up for seconds and another blessing – there is no limit!

They came forward to hear their name and receive Lent’s everlasting reminder:

You are God’s beloved, made from the same ashes and love as everyone else and everything else …

A communion of dust

(Photo by gocyclones@creativecommons.org)

Watching the horrific images from Ukraine – buildings and people and communities turned into dust – pulls us more deeply into the message of a day focused on ashes.

Some faith communities use ashes to open Lent, a season of trying to do better. In a skin-on-skin way, the tracing with ashes reenacts two foundational truths.

First, the ashes remind us life is the greatest gift, freely given to each of us. It’s meant to be savored and celebrated and shared gratefully, generously, and sacrificially.

Although life itself is unending, this phase has a shelf life. The ashes shaped into a cross pose an overriding question: What are we doing with our precious life?

Which brings us to the second reminder writ in ash: Our lives are meant to be lived in communion with God, each other, and all creation.

A beautiful and poetic creation story in Genesis presents the image of God forming us from the dust and ash of the earth, a vivid reminder that we are linked on our deepest levels to the rest of creation.

All is created from the same unifying stuff.

Although the long-ago authors of that story didn’t know much science, they got it right in the big picture. Science details how we are indeed made of the same stuff on our deepest physical level.

We are human. We are stardust. We care connected to everything in our shared dustiness.

Gratefully, generously, sacrificially

The creation story also forcefully reminds us we are connected to each other. There’s no room for strident individuality; we’re made in mutuality.

And the breath of God – the divine force of life – animates everything. All is woven together in endlessly sacred breaths – people, plants, animals, oceans.

On Ash Wednesday, ashes become our reminder and our communion.

We trace with ashes in solidarity with Ukrainians and all who are beset by violence and oppression. We pray for them and work with them to bring more peace into God’s world.

People of many nations, races, and backgrounds are tracing with ashes today, rubbing them into different skin tones as a reminder of our combined work of bringing more justice and less hate into our lives and our world.

The ashes connect us with those struggling to breathe in hospitals and hospices, and with newborns taking first breaths in maternity wards and homes around the world.

The ashes also remind of our connection with the green daffodil shoots poking from the cold ground and the rhythmic pounding of the piliated woodpecker prying a meal loose from tree bark.

Life. We are connected in life. How are we recognizing it? How are we using it?

Life from the ashes, love from the dust

Ashes ground our time of Lent, six weeks of taking a clear-eyed look at ourselves and our world and seeing how we need to repent. Simply, we acknowledge how we’re missing the mark and we try to do better. There’s plenty of room for improvement.

We try to reconnect where we’ve pulled away. We try to live more fully within the love from which and for which we are made. We try to move beyond the attitudes, insecurities, fears and self-centeredness that cause division and pull everything apart.

We’re invited to make small changes that will lead to bigger changes in our lives and our world. As more people change and work together, the world changes in profound ways.

On earth, as in heaven.

From the ashes, may we experience a rebirth of God’s peace, love, and justice in the world. May the dusty reminder of life’s preciousness inspire us to use it more gratefully, generously and sacrificially.

May new life grow from the ashes. May new love emerge from the dust yet again. 

Our work of making peace

We drove through a small town that has a quaint public square. A large war monument dominates – a cannon with plaques recording the names of town residents who died in far-away wars.

That’s all there was about the town’s history.

No mention of the town’s founders; or the first town doctor who visited sick children in the middle of the night; or those who started the town’s first school; or the wise and compassionate leaders who helped the town through its many challenging times.

War was remembered and monumentalized. Only war.

The town is typical of other small communities and big cities across our society and our world. There are many monuments to war. Wars and warriors get the pedestals and parades.

What about the makers of peace? Those who save countless lives by leading us away from conflict?

One of my favorite monuments to a maker of peace is in downtown Pittsburgh. Across the river from Fort Pitt – a place of war – is a statue of Mister Rogers.

Fred Rogers once said: “Peace means far more than the opposite of war.” It’s a spirit, a work, a way of life that we’re called to follow.

Our faith reminds us we’re called to be makers of peace. “Peace on Earth” is more than a feel-good verse; it’s the work given to us. It’s challenging and unpopular and counter-cultural work, but it’s our work.

Making peace means more than hoping and praying and wishing for peace. We must actively challenge attitudes about war and peace, reminding everyone we’re meant to love each other as siblings in God’s family instead of fighting one another out of self-interest.

Unpopular work, but it’s our work

War is the ultimate human failure: God’s children killing each other over land, religion, power, influence, wealth, supremacy. We destroy each other, what we’ve built together, and what God has created.

War must never be glamorized or romanticized. Instead, we need to lead our societies another way as makers and promoters of peace.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they understand what it means to live and children of God.

Making peace involves building and nurturing mutually beneficial relationship, which is the heart of our faith traditions and our scriptures. We’re called to put selfishness aside and find ways to meet others’ needs for food, housing, healing, and spiritual uplift. We do this not only in our collective relationships but in our individual ones as well.

Making peace involves a willingness to do the hard and unpopular work of changing attitudes and showing people that we can and must get along. It entails working for justice for all God’s children.

We need peace on our pedestals.

Creating peace requires listening, honesty, trustworthiness, and justice. It’s about seeing everyone’s needs as equally important to my own – love your neighbor as yourself.

Peace on our pedestals

Again, this isn’t popular work – never has been, never will be. Many “religious” people have rejected the summons to be peacemakers and instead embraced the us-against-them warrior mentality that we see raging in our society right now.

Wars never just happen. They’re the accumulation of many smaller moments of injustice and selfishness. And they always result from demagogues riling people up for combat, insisting they must attack others before they themselves are attacked.

Demagogues excuse themselves from any actual sacrifices, increase their power in the fog of war, then put themselves on pedestals as great warriors to be emulated.

And war follows war follows war …

We’ll always have war – it’s who we are as humans, one of our original sins – but we can and must create conditions for a more just, humane, equitable, and peaceful world. We can and must create more peace in our individual lives.

This is the work given to us. It’s our calling. May we be makers of peace in how we live and interact with one another. May we work for the justice and mutuality that create conditions for all God’s children to live together as we’re meant.

(Image courtesy of uwgbadmissions@creativecommons.org)

Freedom to serve, liberty to love

Liberty. Independence. Freedom. We heard those words mentioned this past weekend. But often, something vital was left out of the conversation.

While freedom matters greatly – it’s a divine gift and individual right – how we use our freedom is the measure of our faith and our lives. Our independence must be grounded within our interdependence.

Our culture promotes the myth of the self-made person, though nobody ever is. We’re lectured to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and be responsible for ourselves alone. We’re told that God helps those who help themselves – words preached not by Jesus but by Benjamin Franklin.

We worship zealous individualism: Don’t tread on me or limit my rights for any reason. I’m free to do anything I want regardless how it affects anyone or anything else. The person bleeding by the side of the road isn’t my concern.

Our faith presents an opposite way of living. It centers the “me” within the “we”, places the “I” within the “us”, locates our individuality within our mutuality.

When we lose that focus, we end up in very dark places. Look at us now! In a society with so much, we have so little joy and peace. Instead, we overflow with anger, hate, disillusionment, lying, divisiveness and unhappiness.

Mother Teresa reminds us that if we have no peace, it’s because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

And we often forget. It’s a tale as old as time.

Consider Paul’s letter to the Galatians reminding them that their ongoing problems — hostilities, bickering, jealousy, outbursts of rage, selfish rivalries, dissensions, factions, and envy – are the result of forgetting their interconnectedness. It was true then, and now.

You end up in mutual destruction

“Remember that you have been called to live in freedom – but not a freedom that gives free rein” to selfish living, Paul says. “Out of love, place yourselves at one another’s service. The whole law has found its fulfillment in this one saying: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

“If you go on biting and tearing one another to pieces, take care! You will end up in mutual destruction.”

It’s important to work for justice so all God’s children may have the freedom they deserve. But it’s equally important to remind ourselves that freedom isn’t meant to be used only for ourselves.

When we use our liberty selfishly, we put ourselves in a prison. Our egos, our fears, our self-absorption become the bars to our individual cells. Our lives become very small, narrow, and unfulfilling.

By contrast, love liberates us – love and love alone.

We’re liberated when we recognize that yes, I am a child of God, but I’m not the only child; I’m part of God’s family where everyone is loved equally and must be treated with dignity and respect and compassion. And yes, we‘re part of an incredible creation, but we’re not the only part of creation that matters.

Love liberates us

Jesus invites us into this way of living – help the person bleeding by the side of the road, care for the needy, heal the hurting, love everyone the same way you love yourself, be compassionate and connected.

We can experience life in abundance when we ground ourselves within God’s inescapable web of creation. We’re fulfilled by joy, peace and love when we live within this Spirit of mutuality.

We experience God and our true selves when we use our freedom to serve and our liberty to love.

(Image courtesy of CrittentonSoCal @ creativecommons.org)

Shamrocks, triangles, and our many-ness

Trinity Sunday was never one of my favorites growing up. We’d hear references to shamrocks and triangles and the nature of God, and I’d wonder: What do any of these theological lessons have to do with me?

 Well, everything, actually!

 Trinity Sunday – celebrated a few days ago – is one of my favorites now, a necessary reminder of who we are, whose we are, and how we’re meant to live together amid our differences. 

The lesson of many-yet-one starts with the truth that the diversity around us and within us is a sacred reflection of our Creator. Each of us is a beautiful piece in a masterful mosaic, one moving body out of many in this collective dance of life.

What holds it all together? Love, of course.

Loving relationship is the glue that centers everything in its perfect place, the thread that binds us snugly together, the gravity that prevents our heavenly bodies from drifting apart. It’s been that way from the start.

Our faith tradition begins with the poetic lesson that diversity is at the heart of the divine nature Itself. God says let us create in our image and likeness. Plurality, not singularity. And it’s all good!

Thus, we get not just one kind of tree, but many. Not just one type of fish or bird or forest or mountain or planet or … you name it. There are countless versions of everything, each uniquely radiating the same divine image.

Plurality, not singularity

So, too, for us humans. There’s great diversity within our human family. Each unique face is another sacred reflection of our multifaceted Maker.

And it all coalesces around love.

In John’s description of the last supper, Jesus prays to God that we, his beloved friends – we the many, we the different – may be one as they are one, living within and through each other. That oneness forms from our many-ness when love is present.

When there’s love, there’s no need for division or suspicion or competition or recrimination or insecurity or fear or privilege or superiority or violence or partisanship.

As we’re reminded, love drives out fear. Relationship grounded in love recognizes diversity as a blessing rather than a threat. It seeks to work with the other for the common good.

Our diversity leads us to our God.

Of course, we’ll never have the depth of love that eliminates all fear and competition and insecurity – not on this side of heaven, anyway. But our call is to work at building and nurturing such relationship in our lives and our societies.

Diversity at the heart of the divine

This work starts by recognizing we’re caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., puts it so beautifully. Our many, varied relationships with God, one other, and nature are intertwined. They can’t be teased apart or separated.

What we do in one relationship affects all.

And, yes, it’s very hard work! We are hard-wired to gravitate toward the familiar and the similar. But the wisdom of trinity challenges us to open ourselves to that which is different and to see God present within people, places and encounters that might seem foreign or even frightening on the surface.

Unfortunately, some forms of religion lead us away from this wisdom. They seek to create “culture wars” among God’s equally beloved children and reject the diversity woven into our very nature.

Our refusal to recognize God’s presence within our diversity causes much of the division, fear, mistrust, hatred, and deep unhappiness in our world. If we can’t accept our many-ness, we’ll never know the oneness of Spirit for which we are made.

 Trinity reminds us of this foundational truth and invites us into this loving relationship.

(Photo courtesy of jmccarthy99@creativecommons.org)

Gardeners, not gods

Writers, artists and composers love the garden of Eden story because it works on so many levels and gets to the heart of who we are as humans. The story isn’t about disobedience as much as broken relationships – with each other, with nature, and with God.

The creation stories remind us we’re made from relationship and for relationship. We’re fashioned within a trinity of relationships — with God, with each other, with nature.

Those relationships are interwoven. If one suffers, they all suffer. Everything unravels quickly if we’re ignoring one area of relationship.

We experience that so profoundly in our world today. Our “original sin” or fundamental failure is refusing to center ourselves within the nurturing relationships that are essential if we’re to be happy, peaceful and fulfilled.

Without nurturing relationship, we never experience love.

Made from relationship, for relationship

The parable of the garden of Eden reminds us of who we are, whose we are, and how we are meant to live in harmony. The story places us in the role of gardener, not the garden owner. We’re meant to “cultivate and care for” God’s creation.

It nurtures us, and we nurture it. God is inviting us to become partners in this holy, ongoing work. And the story warns that if we choose not to accept the role and instead focus only on ourselves, we are “doomed to die.”

Of course, the humans in the story aren’t satisfied with the role of cultivator and co-creator. They decide they’d rather assign themselves the role of God – well, their self-indulgent version of a god, anyway – and do whatever they wish.

They delude themselves into thinking the garden belongs to them.

Once their relationship with creation begins to go awry because of their choices, so do all their other relationships. Their relationship with each other quickly degenerates into pointing fingers and assigning blame. They try to hide from God.

Every relationship quickly breaks down. Ultimately, they’re not so much driven from the garden as they’ve chosen to leave it by placing greed and self-interest above the garden and all within it.

I wish we could say that religion helps us refocus and re-center ourselves in the truth of relationship, but we all know that’s often not the case. It has too often been used to divide rather than reconcile.

A web of interwoven relationships

Instead of calling us back to our roles of gardener and lovers, religion has been turned into a weapon for cultural, religious and political wars. Loving relationship has been rejected for power and self-importance. The original sin is repeated.

Sadly, religion also gets misused as approval to rape, pillage and desecrate God’s sacred creation. Some “religious” people insist they can do whatever they want to nature because they, as humans, are all that matter.

Destruction and self-destruction result from this horrid theology.

Last week, we celebrated Earth Day, a reminder of our interwoven relationships with all God’s creation. We need reminders of our call to be in nurturing, loving relationship with nature, one another, and God.

Our faith reminds us that we’re not gods but gardeners. There’s a lot of restorative work to be done. It’s time to get our fingers dirty.

The price of living passionately

In 2004, Mel Gibson directed a film called “The Passion of the Christ.” Perhaps you’re familiar with it. The movie focuses on Jesus’ final hours, depicting his death in gruesome detail.

The rest of his life is mostly edited out.

Some of us were raised in traditions that focus almost exclusively on Jesus’ suffering and death – referred to as his passion – while skipping what he was passionate about. The lessons he taught, the love he embodied, the relationships he established are relegated to verses recited on Sunday but relegated to the cutting floor the rest of the time.

The truth is that Jesus’ suffering and death weren’t his passion; they were the price he paid for his passion. And there’s a lesson in this story for all of us about living with the same passion.

He was passionate about healing and reconciliation, not only us to God but to one another as well. He passionately announced, embodied and created a sacred space where everyone is welcomed and treated as the beloved child of God that they are.

This alternate kingdom was the antithesis of Caesar’s kingdom, then and now.

The price for living passionately

He preached about God’s deep passion for the needy, the struggling, the oppressed – woe to the rich, blessed are the poor, the least are the greatest, help anyone who is bleeding by the side of the road. He made whole again anyone who came to him for healing.

And justice – he was deeply passionate about justice.

Gospel stories describe him staging a provocative Palm Sunday procession that confronts Caesar’s values of power, wealth, dominance, violence, and militarism.

He was passionately prophetic by overturning the tables of those who misuse religion – then and now – to amass power, preserve the status quo, and ignore the needs of those they are supposed to serve.

This was his passion. He lived it. He paid a price for it. And he invites us – no matter what faith or religious background — to do the same and live in a passionate way that challenges the status quo and heals the world. He challenges us to put our passionate lives on the line for those who are being trampled by the many opportunistic political and religious leaders of our world.

Each of us can, in our own unique way, bring love, healing, reconciliation, restoration and resurrection to our world, our society, our relationships. We’re forced to choose between between living passionately or playing it safe and never truly living at all, which is an even greater price to pay.

Jesus knew there would be a cost for his passion– there always is. He lived it anyway. May we, too, live passionate lives sustained by transformative love and daily resurrection.

Where did you go?

I was 4 or 5 years old when my mom took me to a department store. I recall standing next to her looking at some display, then wandering a few feet away to look at something else.

Shoppers moved into the space between me and mom and blocked my view of her. When I looked back, she was hidden from my sight. All these years later, I remember my panic.

Was she gone? Would I ever see her again?

My memory of that frightening moment is fuzzy, but I remember calling out to her. And right away, she stepped away from the other shoppers so I could see she was there.

I ran to her. She swept me up, held me and told me she was right here – she’d never leave me. She was watching me out of the corner of her eye the whole time.

We’ve all had moments of feeling lost or left behind by a parent, a group, a companion. Those terrifying moments can stick with us a lifetime.

We’ve all called out: Where are you?

Advent is a time of asking that question of God.

Where are you God in my life? In this mess? In this pandemic? In this divisiveness? I don’t recognize you. I’m not sure what you look like. I’m not sure you’re really here. Honestly, at this moment, I’m not sure you actually exist.

“Watching you the whole time”

Advent invites us to be honest and real in whatever we feel, and then watch and listen for answers.

We all go through times when we doubt the Creator’s presence and existence. We ask how God could allow things to happen and whether God really cares.

Who are you? Where are you? Are you even here?

It’s important to share our feelings and ask our questions, whatever they may be. When I became separated from mom in the department store, she didn’t know I was afraid until I called out to her. She responded immediately.

As I’ve grown, I’ve found that my feelings of separation and alienation most often come from my own distractions or my preconceived ideas of how things ought to be. I get so focused on one thing that I lose sight of everything important.

Something as small as a few shoppers can obscure my view of the ever-present Parent.

During my daily walks, I’ll get so focused on watching my individual steps – don’t want to trip! – that I don’t even look up at the gorgeous sky during the day or at the amazing stars at night.

They’re right there, but I don’t notice them.

“Invites us to be honest and real”

Or I obsess over some act of narcissism or injustice to the point that I lose my internal peace and no longer notice the countless acts of kindness and joy around me that more than outweigh the others.

I can so easily forget that love is our uninterrupted connection to one another and to the One who creates and sustains everything with an ever-present love.

So feel free to accept Advent’s invitation to stop, ask, and listen. To seek, knowing that what we want is right in front of us – obscured perhaps by our distractedness and panic, but present nonetheless.

And when we call out, to listen for that voice reminding us again: I’m right here. Watching over you the whole time.

(photo by Jasmic at CreativeCommons.org https://www.flickr.com/photos/58826468@N00/422104937)

Max and the fifth home

All Max the cat wanted was a home.

He didn’t have one that day many years ago when my daughter discovered him curled up in the corner of a park near our house, frozen with fear and overheating on a scorching summer afternoon.

Max was a house cat – he’d been neutered. But now, he was separated from home. Nobody knows why. Maybe his owners abandoned him. Perhaps Max – who was very inquisitive – boarded someone’s truck unseen and was transported away from his home.

How he got there didn’t matter anymore. Now, he had a second home.

Not that it was all easy for him. There were other cats in the house, one of which didn’t get along with him. Seven years ago, he was outside and got attacked, apparently by a much larger animal.

When I found Max that day, he was bleeding from the mouth and torn up inside. He nearly didn’t make it. The vets recommended giving him one more day and if there was no progress, it would be time to euthanize him.

On the day of decision, Max stood for the first time, took some wobbly steps and ate food. Down to his final hours, he clung to life and began to heal.

Sometimes, the final word is a purr.

“All he wanted was a home”

When I was divorced five years ago, Max came with me to his third home and was my companion. I’d arrive home from work and he was there to welcome me and demand attention.

He made sure I never came home to an empty house.

At night, he would jump on the bed and put his paw on my wrist as he curled in for sleep, wanting to feel that flesh-to-flesh connection. It was soothing.

When I moved a year ago, Max came along to his fourth home. He was content so long as he got a little tuna each day and a lot of attention.

After he nearly died in that attack years ago, Max’s need for attention and affection increased and could become annoying. He wanted to be petted nonstop. There were times I’d push him away or tell him to go away because it was too much.

Today, I miss the annoyance.

Max quickly went downhill over the weekend. He was 14 years old. Renal failure. It happens. Only one humane option left.

“Paw to wrist, heart to heart”

The vet gave him a sedative as he lay on my lap. I cradled Max’s head with my hand, reassured him everything was going to be OK, told him I loved him, and promised we would remain connected always.

He reached out his paw and touched my right forearm, maintaining our connection with his final breaths.

Gloria and I brought him home and buried him in the warm and welcoming shadow of his fourth home, even as he takes up residence in his fifth.

I believe the Creator of Life would never abandon a beloved creature or push them away. No, the God of Love cherishes and wants connections with us and among us: paw to wrist, hand to hand, heart to heart.

And home. God provides a loving home to all, no matter which number it is – first, second or fifth.

Welcome home, Max.

On the road to a better place

The last step in our mending process is choosing a new destination. Once we’ve identified our current location, we pick the place we want to go, map a route and head out.

We must envision a better place – and describe it for others – before we can get there together. We need to develop a path forward and extend a hand for others to accompany us.

That’s how societies heal and move forward again.

So, what’s our vision for our society? How is it different from the vision of those who want to keep us divided, angry, fearful, miserable and at each other’s throats?

Moving toward a different place begins with showing people what it looks like. It involves sharing our vision and our dream for how we can live together in ways that benefit all people of goodwill.

Jesus talked about the kingdom of God more than anything. He described it, modeled it, lived it and enacted it through his words and his choices.

He reached out to those who were on the receiving end of someone’s cultural, religious or political war and invited them into this alternate and already-present kingdom that operates on love rather than violence and respects everyone as an equal child of God.

He described it as a place quite opposite of how his society operated – the last are first, the greatest are the least, the hurting are freely offered healing, those who are struggling take precedence.

He invited everyone into a different way of living. That’s our intent, too.

Offering the world a very different image

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., followed this pattern. He offered a different vision – a new destination – for a racially divided society. He offered his dream of a world where all God’s children were treated as equals. He advocated and enacted it as best he could while inviting others to join the holy and creative work.

How we go about it matters greatly.

We must resist the temptation to respond to violence – physical or verbal — with our own. We can’t allow those promoting war to suck us into their anger and hostility and fear.

We’re not here to join in their mutual destruction; we’re here to transform.

This doesn’t mean we allow others to spew hatred unchecked or harm others without a response. The question is in what form we respond.

Trading insult for insult gets us nowhere – eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth stuff. Instead, we challenge purveyors of war with a vision of peace built upon nonviolent work for justice and equality for all God’s children.

We’re not going to change the opinions of those consumed by a war mentality, but we can reach the many people who are listening to our conversations and, like us, looking for a better world.

Most of all, we begin this re-creative act by living and enacting our vision through our daily lives, making it real in our interactions with others. Slowly and inexorably, the movement grows and the healing occurs.

That’s the journey. And it’s already begun.

(“Praying Hands” image courtesy of josephleenovak @creativecommons.org)