FYI: The Next Few Days

During the next few days, the media–television, radio, newspapers, the internet–and, most likely, friends sending e-mail will talk about and editorialize 9/11.  One of the best editorials so far, in my opinion, is “If Sept. 11 Hadn’t Happened” by Gwynne Dyer.

Oh, but Sept. 11 did happen.  And as an American and a human being, I am saddened by the loss of life that day (and any other day for that matter).  But I am also saddened that our president led our nation into a war of retaliation.  I am saddened, when Americans often confuse peaceful Muslims with terrorists and feel it’s all right to lose our rights and use racial profiling in the name of safety.  I am saddened most of all that Christians fail to heed these prophetic words, spoken by Martin Luther King, Jr. at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. on March 31, 1968 (the last Sunday before he was martyred in Memphis) in a sermon entitled, “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.”

“The judgment of God is upon us today. And we could go right down the line and see that something must be done—and something must be done quickly. We have alienated ourselves from other nations so we end up morally and politically isolated in the world. There is not a single major ally of the United States of America that would dare send a troop to Vietnam, and so the only friends that we have now are a few client-nations like Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, and a few others.

This is where we are. “Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind,” and the best way to start is to put an end to war in Vietnam, because if it continues, we will inevitably come to the point of confronting China which could lead the whole world to nuclear annihilation.

It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine.

This is why I felt the need of raising my voice against that war and working wherever I can to arouse the conscience of our nation on it. I remember so well when I first took a stand against the war in Vietnam. The critics took me on and they had their say in the most negative and sometimes most vicious way.”  (emphasis mine)

Read entire speech here.  The war was different, but the message is not:  War will never lead to peace.  Interestingly, the name of the sermon King would have preached at Ebenezer the following Sunday, if he had not been killed, was entitled, “Why America Will Go to Hell.”

Oh, but he did die.  But not before his popularity plummeted from the heights of the March on Washington.  King spent his final years alone and depressed.  he was criticized by former friends.  Why?  He took a stand.  And for that stand, he died.

I love America enough to reiterate that stand.  And for doing so, I will be criticized.  

The Will For Reconciliation By Thomas Merton

“Man has an instinctive need for harmony and peace, for tranquility, order and meaning.  None of those seem to be the most salient characteristics of modern society.  A book written in a monastery where the traditions and rites of a more contemplative age are still alive and still practiced, could not help but remind men that there had once existed a more leisurely and more spiritual way of life – and that this was the way of their ancestors.  Thus even into the confused pattern of Western life is woven a certain memory of contemplation.  It is a memory so vague and so remote that it is hardly understood, and yet it can awaken the hope of recovering inner peace.  In this hope, modern man can perhaps entertain, for a brief time, the dream of a contemplative life and of a higher spiritual state of quiet, of rest, of untroubled joy.”

.

“It is true, political problems are not solved by love and mercy. But the world of politics is not the only world, and unless political decisions rest on a foundation of something better and higher than politics, they can never do any real good for men. When a country has to be rebuilt after war, the passions and energies of war are no longer enough. There must be a new force, the power of love, the power of understanding and human compassion, the strength of selflessness and cooperation, and the creative dynamism of the will to live and to build, and the will to forgive. The will for reconciliation.”

.

From Introductions East & West: The Foreign Prefaces of Thomas Merton, edited by Robert E. Daggy (Unicorn Press Inc., Greensboro, NC, 1981).

.

You see friends, the reason we don’t have peace is that we don’t want it badly enough: We just don’t have the will.   I find that especially sad concerning Christians.

Choosing the Blessings by Henri Nouwen

It is an ongoing temptation to think of ourselves as living under a curse. The loss of a friend, an illness, an accident, a natural disaster, a war, or any failure can make us quickly think that we are no good and are being punished. This temptation to think of our lives as full of curses is even greater when all the media present us day after day with stories about human misery.

Jesus came to bless us, not to curse us. But we must choose to receive that blessing and hand it on to others. Blessings and curses are always placed in front of us. We are free to choose. God says, Choose the blessings!