love or perish

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

                                         Martin Luther King, Jr.

“They want us to be afraid.

They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes.

They want us to barricade our doors and hide our children.

Their aim is to make us fear life itself!

They want us to hate.

They want us to hate 'the other'.

They want us to practice aggression and perfect antagonism.

Their aim is to divide us all!

They want us to be inhuman.

They want us to throw out our kindness.

They want us to bury our love and burn our hope.

Their aim is to take all our light!

They think their bricked walls will separate us.

They think their damned bombs will defeat us.

They are so ignorant they don’t understand that my soul and your soul are old friends.

They are so ignorant they don’t understand that when they cut you I bleed.

They are so ignorant they don’t understand that we will never be afraid,

we will never hate and we will never be silent

for life is ours!”

― Kamand Kojouri

___________________________________

Is anyone tired of all the hate?

The name calling?

The bullying?

The fear mongering?

Is anyone tired of all the division?

And distrust

It seems patently true that there are those who seek to divide us

It seems as if those souls are everywhere, everywhere

With their memes, and articles, comments

And we,

Most of us

Walk around with emotional shell shock

Vigilant

And either silent and cautious

Or outspoken and aggressive

And it is taking its toll

On our nation

On our communities

On our churches

It has made it hard to sit down together and worship, together

it has made it difficult to sing praise, together

It has strained the bonds of affection

I cannot help but remember the words of President Lincoln

Who, in his first inaugural address

As the dark cloud of the civil war loomed on the horizon

(it would begin one month later)

Uttered these words

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

I cannot share, adequately

The depth of pain I feel when the bonds of affection are broken

By political passion

By hatred, planted, watered, and nurtured

By those who would use it for their own purposes

My heart is torn as I see the faces of people I care about

People whom I have visited as a pastor

People whom I have prayed with

People whose loved one’s I have buried (and perhaps married)

Harden

When they see other people whom I have visit, with whom I have prayer

Others who have lost someone dear, or whose family has been stricken by illness

Harden because instead of community, there is division

This is a difficult time

People with strongly held beliefs think a person is the savior of our nation

People with strongly held beliefs think that same person is its greatest threat

There are many points of division

But the point is these are all people who are trying to do the best they can

And the reasons for the differences are complex

They have to do with family and local culture, with whom a person chooses to trust, with sources of information, with what is being taught in a person’s church…

And we can judgmentally say (to ourselves)

They should be able to see the lies, see the damage see, the evil

(as we perceive it)

But those who believe differently from us are saying exactly the same thing in their head and hearts.

And everyone (OK, many) are totally sincere

Richard Rohr, in this blog (1/20/20) made this observation, when talking about the desert fathers and mothers, who were clearly people of faith and passion, but sometimes wrote things that make us cringe.

“Contemporary philosopher Ken Wilber offers a helpful distinction between stages and states. Your stage is your outer awareness. Your state is your inner aliveness. The goal is to be both holy and whole, saintly and wise. But your state and stage don’t always coincide; many of us are stronger in one area than another.

You can be a high-level thinker and be quite astute about psychology, theology, history, or philosophy (a high stage), but do it all from a perspective of individualism and arrogance about that very information (a low state)—because it is still all about “you.” Conversely, you could be quite unified within and with others, in a high state of loving consciousness, but be poorly informed, lacking in exposure and education to helpful and informative knowledge.”

In short this mixture of stage and state make us inconsistent

Confused

And sometimes inexplicable

In terms of what we think and believe, and

In terms of who and what we support

And so, I have decided, that even though I have my passions

And even though my great passion is Jesus, and his way of

Generosity and servanthood

I must find a way to be in the same town

The same pew

The same space

As those who do not agree with me

My job, if I am really going to take Jesus seriously

Is just that

To be in the same space

And to talk with those people, kindly

And listen to those people, openly

And hold the tension that arises

Hold it carefully, so that the bonds are not broken

So that we can continue to be

In community

And in communion

Gathered around the same table

Breaking bread

And drinking from the common cup

Of Sacred Love

This is not easy

It may not always work

The bonds may sometimes snap

But this pain, the pain that comes when I see

Tight angry faces

Read hateful words

See empty places in the pews

And at the table of the Lord

Impels me

I will not be silent

But I will not hate

And I will not exclude

And I will not avoid

And I will not hold back from doing good,

Even for those with whom I do not agree

I will pour as much of my time and ministry

As much of my love into those with whom I disagree

As into those with whom I agree

(to the best of my ability – come Holy Spirit, I need a lot of help)

For we must learn to live together as brothers and sisters,

or perish together as fools.