Category: Reflections - Page 144 - We Get There By Walking

Collateral Damage

I got home late last night, but just in time to see the opening couple of minutes of the new NBC’s news program Rock Center. With the Iraq War coming to an “end” after nine years, the program began by recounting the cost of the war. Cost-in terms of dollars, American lives lost, and the number of soldiers wounded. But not a word about the “collateral damage” caused by the war. Collateral damage in terms of the number of Iraqi citizens killed or wounded which estimates put, at least, in the tens of thousands if not more, and the amount of destruction done to Iraqi homes and businesses and infrastructure. Maybe something was said later in the program which I missed, but nothing was said in those first few minutes.

All that is very troubling to me for two reasons.
The first is that, as a nation, we have never been willing to really talk about the human cost of the war. We have been purposefully shielded from those images and that heartbreak in an effort to make the war more palatable to the American public. And, the second reason is that the very real human suffering, when it has been talked about, has always been referred to as collateral damage. Something like “Opps. My bad.” and never about children being killed or mothers losing a leg or a family’s home being destroyed.

Until we are honest…
And, until we demand a level of honesty from our elected officials about the true cost of war, war will continue to be far too easy.

Wasting Time

Yesterday as I was walking through the village where we live I passed a car parked on the village street. A mother had dropped off one of her sons with instructions to pick up something in the post office. Her other son sat in the front passenger seat with the window down. The son who had been dropped off must have been uncertain about what he was to pick up because he ran back to the car, asked his mother a question and then turned to run back to the post office. His brother called after him, “Stop wasting time.” I am sure it was a sibling tease, but it started me thinking.

Wasting time.
It caused me to recall the exchange in Antoine de Saint Expery’s book The Little Prince between the fox and the little prince. It goes like this:

And he [the little prince] went back to meet the fox.
“Goodbye,” he said.
“Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”
“It is the time I have wasted for my rose -” said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember. (pp. 87-88)

The truth is that most of us rush through these days that lead to Christmas.
From one moment to the next.
From one event to the next.
From one expectation to the next.
Never wasting a second.
Barely slowing down to see where we are or to know who we are with.
But, maybe there is something about Advent…
Something about really getting ready for Christmas…
That is about creatively, lovingly, thoughtfully, prayerfully wasting time.
Wasting time to think not just about what gift you will give, but purposefully thinking about the one who will receive the gift.
Wasting time to pay attention to the interplay between the darkness and the light.
Wasting time to ponder the meaning of these passing days.

What is essential is invisible to the eye.
The time you waste on them is what makes them so important.

The War On Christmas

I know it is just politics.
Each year at this time, some public figure says Happy Holidays rather than Merry Christmas, or they light up a Holiday Tree rather than a Christmas Tree and the pundits are off and running. All of it has become fodder for the 24 hour news outlets, the comedy satires and, now, a political ad for Governor Rick Perry. Most of the time I ignore it, doing my best to tune out the din and to pay attention to what is in front of me.

But today it got me thinking.
If I take Christmas seriously…
By that I mean that Christmas is more about God than gifts…
More about…
God coming;
God with us;
That which is Holy mixing it up with my humanity and your humanity so that we can never look at each other in quite the same way. (Was it C.S. Lewis who said, “You have never met a mere mortal.”?) then there can be no war on Christmas because Christmas does not depend one iota on you and me. It doesn’t need our gift giving. It doesn’t care whether we say Merry Christmas or Happy Holiday. It doesn’t even require our going to a church on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. It just happens.

Thank God!

Yesterday’s email…

Yesterday I received an email from Glory2Jesus@armyofgod.com.
Just reading who the email was from I knew the sender was angry about something.
It turns out that he (and it was a he) had seen our church’s name on a list of congregations that welcome gay, lesbian and transgendered people. And, he was writing to tell me how wrong I was…how wrong we are and that, in the end, I was headed to hell. He was right in one regard. Bedford Presbyterian Church does welcome all those people and many more. We do our imperfect best to practice what we preach including extending to others the gracious hospitality of God.

I was tempted to write back and to thank him for his email because it reminded me that congregations like ours and Christians like us still have work to do confronting bigotry and hatred and a misuse of scripture. And, for the powerful reminder (as if we need it!) that there are those who, in the name of religion and a loving God, point fingers and issue judgments which demean and intimidate and brutalize others.

I go back and forth between being angry and being sad.
For me, the Christian faith offers such a powerful and provocative vision for how the world might be, and a message of hope that sustains my meager efforts to continue to do my small part in “bending that long arc of history” in the direction of the grand Dream of God. The Army of God and others like them turn so many people away. They give Christianity a bad name. They give religion a bad name. If God is the way they describe God to be who would want to believe in a God like that. Not me.

Yesterday I received an email…

Believe…in what?

This time of year it is often the advertisements that cause me to stop and say, “Really?” This morning it was a Macy’s ad in the New York Times. A full page ad featuring an attractive woman reaching towards an stack of wrapped boxes as tall as she was with a single word across the page. Believe. For those of us who do our best to hold the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, the ad presents us with a stark choice. Believe…but in what.

Macy’s, and other retailers, would have us believe that happiness, joy, love, fulfillment come in beautiful boxes beautifully wrapped bought at their stores. Those of us on the faith side of the equation would beg to differ. But, before I am accused of being Scrooge let me say that I love Christmas. I love picking our or making a gift to give to those whom I love. I even enjoy sitting down with my wife and my checkbook and thinking about year end contributions that we would like to make to those organizations that work tirelessly to provide for the most vulnerable. But, I chose to believe in something more.

We cannot buy what we most long for.
It does not come in a box tied up with a bow.
For those of us who stand in the Christian tradition we believe that joy, peace, happiness, fulfillment have something to do with that which we know and name as God. And something to do with the wisdom and teachings of Jesus who did his best to point us in the direction of the grand Dream of God where all have enough and all have a place and where Peace on Earth is more than a Christmas card greeting.

Thanksgiving Reconsidered

“If the only prayer you ever said was Thank you it would suffice.” – Meister Eckhart

Don’t get me wrong.
I love Thanksgiving with all its traditions.
Family and friends gathered.
Good china carefully placed on the table.
Turkey dinner with all the trimmings.

But even with all that, this year I find myself longing for something different.
Something more.
I still want to gather with family and friends.
I am still willing to break out the good china.
But what is different is that I want a more simple meal.
Maybe turkey soup and homemade bread shared with those I love after a moment when we all genuinely said Thank you.

Two reasons push me in the direction of Thanksgiving Reconsidered.
The first is that I wonder if Thanksgiving becomes more about “too much;” a celebration of over abundance rather than a moment when we deeply and honestly give thanks. More about how it should be with everything in its place rather than a moment to look around the room or around the table and celebrate the presence of those who are gathered there with us.

The second reason is that this year, in this nation of abundance, more people struggle against hunger than at any point in my life time. In the last several weeks, as we have approached the holidays, I have seen a number of news articles that speak about how food pantries are struggling to provide the much needed food to meet the very basic needs of those who line up outside their doors. What if my meal were more simple and I took the difference between that simple meal and the lavish feast I will enjoy and shared it so that others might simply eat? I wonder…

What if we all did that?
Maybe at the end of the meal we would be able to whisper Thank you and that would suffice.

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Several things I believe: