The Owls, The Holy One, and Me

by Jane Jones

(A prayer for anyone who feels sadness at this time)

As I write this (in the pre-dawn of a wintery day), I hear the dialogue of two owls close to my home; two different voices, quietly calling back and forth.  What a blessing, to be in a space where this is even possible!

I’m grateful for my home and what it brings to me in terms of peacefulness and escape from the outside world where the busy-ness abounds, and where some of my former life remains without me.

I need to keep reminding myself that I’m in a good place…that being on my own isn’t horrible…that I’m loved and included, if not by a family that once filled my life with joy, then by many dear, generous (and patient!) friends who know me well – and love me anyhow.  That, too, is a major blessing…a blessing I need to remember and be thankful for.

This is the holiday season, and, as it does for so many others,  it has again brought me deep sadness that I’m struggling with.

All the ugly questions (why, why, why???) pop into my head randomly while the Christmas music in the stores offers triggers galore, and my head and heart are more than willing to respond to them.  I step in-and-out of a dark space where much about this time hurts me, and my first instinct is to hide in this funny little house and tell all these days of “joy” to move on.  They aren’t listening; these days don’t seem to fly by like the less-focused, supposedly “lazy days” of summer do.

So, in the darkness of predawn as my owl friends call to one another, I call out to You, Holy One.

I lie in my bed and pray to the overhead fan, knowing that you’re there, waiting to hear me. Often, there are tears to remind me that this time of remembering can cleanse my soul…sometimes, I even laugh when I think of something I said or did that was just so dumb

But mostly, I pray for Peace, for my own heart and for so many other hearts who are not loving this time of year. 

I pray for Peace, for anyone who needs a little glimpse of It this day – any day. 

I pray for Peace, for a world full of people who are in much worse life-space than I am. 

And I pray for Peace-full acts, that those who lead will consider consequences to the innocent, living in way too many horrible circumstances beyond my control or understanding. 

I pray to You, Holy One, and we share my dark heart, my dark bedroom and a welcoming, dark silence of prayer, knowing that later, you will show yourself to me in little ways.  You always do.

So, like the owls calling to one another, I wait for your response, and I crawl out of bed to begin the day again – with Hope, with more inner Peace, with Love.

Thanks.

A Prayer for Today

by Rev. Lynne Hinton

God, the Great Creator, You may know the plans for us but we do not. We try to focus on what you have done throughout history. How you have brought us strength and courage for the difficult times, how you have been present to us, faithful throughout all our wars and battles, a mother hen, a shepherd, a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire at night; but being completely honest, Holy One, it is hard to think of a future with anything but sorrow. The fights between enemies seem long and never-ending. The struggles feel complicated and rife with old pain. The weapons are deadlier, the costs higher, the consequences more dire.

We cry out for peace. We beg for the harm to cease. We pray. We light candles. We preach. We prophesy. We reach out. We weep. And we look ahead to the days before us, the tanks along the border, the rockets filling the skies, the anger growing, the death count rising, the blame shifting; and we imagine the worst. We fear what we will now ultimately and finally do to each other.

On this day we pray for those most affected by the violence. We pray for the children hiding in fear, the grieving mothers, the old ones begging to die, the young vowing revenge. We pray for the leaders of all nations to be wise and guided by courage and humility. We pray for those trying to breach the gap between those who hate each other. We pray that people of all faiths and those without, for people across the world, different and yet the same, for all of your children to see this as an opportunity to come together and say, “Let us begin again. Let us stop the killing, the destruction. Let us find a way to peace. Let us believe in a future with hope.”

Merciful God, help us to stop the violence building in our hearts, to see goodness in each other even when it seems impossible. Help us to put down our weapons and words of hatefulness and anger and pick up bread to share with the ones before us. Help us to open our clenched fists and receive your blessings that await us when we surrender. Help us to release the despair and have our hearts filled with hope. For today. For tomorrow. For a future we all desire. We look to you, The One Great Source of Love.

Amen.

Crawling Out of the Hole

by Jane Jones*

I’m constantly amazed at how the Holy One works – we just have to learn to (as my Gramma Milly would say), “Let go.  Let God.”

I suppose I can admit to the fact that as a lifelong “fixer” this is one hard task!  I’m used to being in charge of something – I’ve trusted what I’ve known as “The Voice” my whole life, and so when I feel called to take on a challenge, I tend to step up to the plate and get to work. 

Often, I’m successful in these attempts, because I believe the Holy One uses me as a tool for the good in this world.  I feel humble and grateful to be chosen to help…but what happens when you suddenly find yourself on the other end of fixing?

Four years ago, real life of a different type happened and suddenly, I was the one who needed help at the deepest level anyone could know.  A relationship I treasured and totally devoted myself to suddenly ended; my marriage of 22 years ran into a cement wall. I was blind-sided, shocked, heartbroken. In one day, my whole world took a 180-degree turn.

The circumstances swirling around it were ugly,  very public, and it all ripped me apart.  So much pain, so much doubt about myself, so many details forcing me to step into a life I truly never expected to live – on my own. 

I went down a very dark hole, doing all the things another instinct tells us to do to ease the pain, and I wondered how I’d ever crawl out of it again.

This Fixer was in desperate need of being brought back to life. 

Here’s the part where the God reveals just how amazing a Being God is…

At the worst time I’ve ever experienced, I was surrounded by a cloud of atypical saints, (most of them not people of faith!) and each one of them contributed to the healing journey I found myself on.

I truly was never alone. 

Did you know that the God has many disguises?  Do you remember that Spirit can show up in the oddest places at just the right moment (in the wrong place) to give you a poke, reminding you who and Whose you are?  Did you know that getting through a life-changing event can change you in ways you never thought you would know and understand; dropping new hope, new strength, new life right at your feet? 

These aren’t just buzz words thrown at us during a sermon in any church…this is absolute Truth. 

I know this, because I’ve been constantly in awe of how the Holy One works – how the Holy One reaches out – always, and often when you least expect it. 

With honest love from friends, family, even people I didn’t know personally, I’m finding my way back.  I’m crawling out of that dark hole, one step at a time. I’m also learning about real forgiveness – God’s trademark – and true peace.

The newer me is a modified version for sure, (and a better one, I think) – and as I squint each morning at a much brighter day ahead, I find that I’m not the only one who has suffered such loss. There is so much to grieve about in this world these days…The Voice is telling me that it’s time to get to work again. 

What’s different, though, is that instead of being a fixer, I’m now a “mender” because we’re all in this together. We need to patch up the torn places…and keep going.

It feels good to step up to the plate again.

Thanks, Holy One.

*Jane Jones served as the licensed pastor for First Congregational Church in Prescott from 2009 – 2015, has been SWC’s Moderator and Moderator Elect, is almost a former member of COCAM B, and currently sits in on Faith Formation ZOOM meetings.  She will be one of the facilitators at the “Doing Grief Community Healing Project” at Church of the Palms in Sun City.

I think I’m a little strange…

by Rev. Deb Worley

“Let us now confess our sin…” 

This is from [the 3/13/2022] worship service, as the introduction to our time of confession. I think this time each week is so important, so critical, so potentially powerful! I love it. For myself. And for our community. And yes, I know–I’m a little strange that way… But bear with me. I think there’s a chance you just might come to love it, too…

“I know we’re just a little ways into our worship this morning, but I’m going to do a quick review. So far I and we have said the following words:
‘Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus Christ!’
‘God is good, all the time!’
‘…with God on my side I’m fearless, afraid of no one and nothing.’
Whether it’s because we are in Lent, or because of what’s going on in the world, or because of other things that are stirring in my soul, I find myself asking myself (and not for the first time!), do those words –Grace…peace…God-is-good…fearless–really mean anything?

And then I answer myself, Of course they do.

But then I wonder, what? What do they really mean? How do they really affect my day-to-day life? Because they have to. They have to.

At the core of my identity is that I am a person of faith, a beloved child of God. Those words 
have to make a difference in the living of my life. Or they are just words….

And they are not just words—grace…peace…God-is-good…fearless—they are powerful truths about the Reality of God, the Kingdom of God, the Possibilities of God!

And as I, and we, live into the reality of these truths, as we live more and more out of these truths, I have to believe that the Kingdom of God will grow. Bit by tiny bit, moment by singular moment, interaction by individual interaction. But it will grow…

One part of that process of living into the reality of those truths–just one part—but it’s a significant part—is owning our sin. Yep, that’s another word that’s not just a word but a powerful truth—sin.

And unlike “grace” and “peace” and “Good-is-good!” it’s one we don’t like to think or talk about much.

But our not-thinking-or-talking-about-it-much—or at least the depth of the reality of it—is, I am convinced, part of what keeps us from living more deeply into God’s grace and peace and goodness!

Our reluctance to admit those things with which we struggle, those things around which we feel shame, those things for which we have either stepped deliberately off or fallen accidentally off the path of love and healing—all of those things that keep us distant from one another, from our true selves, from God—our reluctance to acknowledge, to admit, to confess those things is part of what keeps things like “grace” and “peace” and the goodness of God as simply nice words rather than deeply profound truths.

Our reluctance to consider the truth and power of our sin, both individually and corporately, is part of what keeps us from accessing and living into the truth and power of God’s grace and peace and goodness.


So(!)…now’s our chance. A chance. A chance to get real about our sin. In these moments, we have a chance to ‘fess up, to God and to ourselves—and in a few moments, to and with one another—our mistakes, our failings, our screw-ups. Our struggles, our secrets, our shame. Or even just one of those, if that’s where you need to begin. 

As we do that, God can begin remove the weight of all of that from us, look us in the eyes, and whisper to us, “I know. And I still love you. Now get up and try again.”

And in that, we will begin to experience the reality of God’s goodness and peace more deeply. And those words will become truths. And God’s Kingdom will grow, first within us and then in the world around us, bit by tiny bit, moment by singular moment, interaction by individual interaction.


There is real power available in the act of confessing our sin.

I invite you now, as beloved children of God, to join me for a few moments of silent confession.

Let us pray…

And of course, a time of confession is not complete without what I like to call an Assurance of BelovednessSo know, dear one, that even in the face of full admission of your sin (or as “full” as you can muster at the moment), you are deeply and utterly loved. Always. Forever. No matter what. Know that in the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven! Get up and get living!

—————————–
So–what do you think? Do you love it?? If not yet, keep trying. Keep returning to it. You just might surprise yourself one day…and love it. 

Or maybe I’m just a little strange that way… 🙂
Deb

The Contents of a Heart

by Rev. Lynne Hinton

He is red-hot angry. “When Mama dies, I’m going after him with everything I have. I’m going to make him pay.”

 “You’re seventy years old.” I tell him this because I like him and because I adore his mother, my patient.

Her son, this man, furious because he believes his brother has stolen from the family, has told me how splendid his life is, how he’s been married for forty-nine years to a woman he loves completely, how he has a successful business, a wonderful family, how they’ve traveled the world enjoying great adventures. “So,” he snaps, “what does my age have to do with anything?”

“Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned working as a hospice chaplain it’s that life is short. Do you really want to spend your time consumed by this anger? Do you really want your life to be about that?”

In his book, The Exquisite Risk, Mark Nepo writes about an Egyptian myth that explains an end of life ritual. The Trial of Heart is a ceremony in which the heart of every deceased person is weighed on a scale, balanced against one ostrich feather, the symbol of truth. If the heart is lighter than the feather, it is believed that the person did not recognize and honor truth, that it demonstrated a life not fully experienced. If the heart weighs more than the feather then it has carried too much. It has held onto the painful truths, giving them too much weight. The ceremony reveals the contents of one’s heart and unless the heart is balanced, the soul is unable to enter into eternal peace.

We cannot dictate all of the circumstances of our lives. We cannot control all of the things that enter and exit. People we love harm and help us and sometimes we are left flattened by the choices they make that deeply affect us. We cannot orchestrate all of this. We can, however, choose what we hold and what we let go. And we make those choices every day of our lives, from ages seven to seventy and beyond.

I’m not sure I believe there is a court of the dead waiting to measure the contents of our hearts; but I do believe that no heart can fully experience peace unless there is true balance, unless there is equality in what is gained and in what is surrendered. I do believe that if a person picks up and hangs onto anger, the heart has no room for love.

I have no idea what this troubled brother will choose, where he will ultimately land. I can only hope that when the day of death comes for him, as it will come for us all, that his last breath is taken with ease because he knows his heart is at peace, because he has chosen forgiveness, because he has surrendered to love. And I hope when we face our own days of death, it may be so for us all.

You are the light of the world!

Make Peace Inevitable: Reflections on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 2017

guest post by John Leung, preached on August 6, 2017
at First Congregational Church, Flagstaff

Scripture: Matthew 14:13-21

Prayer:
O God, may the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you. If our words and our thoughts offend anyone, Dear God, may there be mutual forgiveness between the speaker and the listener, and may you, our refuge and our redeemer, grant us reconciliation.

Seventy-two years ago today, at 8:15 a.m., Tokyo time, the American warplane Enola Gay dropped a uranium bomb into the heart of the city of Hiroshima. A little over 72 hours thereafter, on August 9, a plutonium bomb was dropped into Nagasaki, a port on the other side of Japan. In Hiroshima, roughly 70,000 Japanese citizens were killed, literally in a flash, by the blast and by the firestorm on the same day of the bombing. Approximately another 70,000 would die in the following two to four months from burns, other injuries, radiation sickness and collateral illnesses. In Nagasaki, the numbers were roughly 40,000 and 50,000 respectively. Instantaneously AND in time, those two atomic bombs would claim the lives of roughly a quarter of a million people, and generations of Japanese people would bear the physical, mental, psychological and cultural scars of those bombings. At Noon on August 15, 1945, on radio to a nation reeling from the devastation and mourning for the dead and dying multitudes, Japan’s Emperor Hirohito broadcast his message of surrender.

We are probably familiar with the story, and perhaps even with the statistics. Over the last seventy years, there have been numerous debates, in the media, in scholarly and non-scholarly publications, in and outside academia, about these historical events, mostly centered on the question of whether the use of these atomic weapons was justified, and if so, how? As a professor of history, I have participated in many such debates, and moderated quite a few. Arguments run a broad gamut. Here, in summary and composite, are some of the more common ones I have read and heard.  

“The only way to end a war is by overwhelming force. The Japanese deserved it; war is war, and THEY started it. The atom bombs are just payback for Pearl Harbor.”

“The question of tactical or even strategic justification in 1945 is shortsighted. These atomic bombings did not just end WWII; they were also the beginning of the threat of nuclear war, and the world has had to live with that ever since. We also have to live with the fact that the United States is the ONLY nation to have actually employed nuclear weapons in war. This has cast a shadow over nuclear politics ever since, and many of today’s international problems have their roots in this reality.”

For most Americans, looking for a silver lining behind the mushroom cloud, so to speak, a “centrist” perspective is the most appealing, and it goes something like this: “Well, the atomic bombs were necessary to induce Japan to surrender and thus end the war swiftly; more people — certainly many more Americans — would have died if the war had dragged on any longer.”

Some years ago, this “centrist” American position seemed to receive corroboration, from a rather unexpected source. In 2007, Kyuma Fumio, Japan’s Defense Minister at the time, scandalized his constituents of Nagasaki by remarks he made in a commencement address: “I now have come to accept in my mind that in order to end the war, it could not be helped that an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and that countless numbers of people suffered great tragedy.” Kyuma’s words translated here as “it could not be helped” were translated and broadcast in the English-language Japanese and international press as “NECESSARY AND INEVITABLE.” Many American observers immediately seized on these words, spoken by a prominent Japanese politician, as validation that, however terrifying the results, the use of the atomic bombs was necessary, and a historical inevitability. On the other hand, however, the Japanese people were shocked by those words. As a consequence of his remarks Kyuma was compelled to resign his cabinet post four days later. This also played a significant role in the ruling party’s defeat in Japan’s upper-house elections that September.

My purpose today is NOT to litigate or adjudicate any of these arguments. I do believe, however, that in these commemorative days each year, we have the opportunity to learn once again from these intertwined awesome and devastating historical events and the world’s memories of them. Some years we may merely repeat the lessons we had already learned from years past; other years we may learn something fresh. What, and how, do we learn this year? And how do the lessons we may learn come from, and in turn, affect our faith, and our faithfulness to God?

The Kyuma episode provokes fresh thinking about attitudes we hold about the “total war” use of atomic weapons at the end of the Second World War and about war itself, AND ABOUT THE ANTITHESIS OF WAR – PEACE. What is “inevitable?” What does “inevitable” mean? With their time-lines and historical interpretations, historians tend to come up with explanations of how wars became “inevitable,” and then such notions of war’s inevitability come to be etched in our collective psyches.  

But what if we flipped our perspectives? What case can we make for the INEVITABILITY OF PEACE?

This brings me to the scripture passage that we read earlier. A familiar biblical story – we all probably learned it since we were young. Oddly, however, I step away from the larger narrative picture of this well-known miracle. What struck me more deeply is this:

When it was evening, the disciples came to Jesus and said: This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them: “They NEED NOT go away.”

How often do we come to see things from the perspective of OUR DIRE NECESSITY? We have a problem. Something drastic – and often drastically bad – HAS TO HAPPEN. We have to build a wall! We have to scrap health care for millions of people! We have to deport people! We have to turn people away at the airports! Really?

NO! Jesus said: “THEY NEED NOT GO AWAY.”  We say: “War is inevitable! The atom bombs could not be helped!” Jesus said: “No! Peace is inevitable!”  Perhaps if we can break down that sense of necessity, of inevitability, of war and conflict, of competition in scarcity, we can begin to take steps down the path of MAKING PEACE INEVITABLE, and the miracle of peace can really happen.

How do we make peace inevitable? Let me begin to offer a modest proposal, inspired by our faith and the words that God Still Speaks to us today.

Number 1. We need to have a revolutionary change of heart. A paradigm shift. Let us start with understanding that WAR IS NOT THE WILL OF GOD. For far too long humankind has projected our wars onto God’s will. Today we decry the word and the idea of Jihad – a perversion of Islam’s concept of struggle, and we denounce the idea of Holy War, which we think is peculiar to Muslims, or some convenient OTHER. However, if we looked back honestly into history, we would find that the idea was, at least just as much, of our own making. The slogan for our version of Holy War, “Deus vult” (God wills it) emerged as the people’s response to Pope Urban’s call for the first crusade in 1095. Can we honestly say that we do not carry a single trace of that mentality in the wars we wage today?

We MUST start with embracing the principle that WAR IS NOT THE WILL OF GOD.

On July 19, 2006, when a conflict between Israel and the Palestinians  expanded into massive bombing of cities in Lebanon, the Rev. John Thomas, General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ, wrote a prayer accompanying the UCC’s call for peace. This prayer speaks to the point I make today. Please allow me to read it in part to you:    

You did not make us, O God, to die in bomb craters or to huddle through the night in basement shelters.  You made us to play under olive trees and cedars and to sleep soundly with animal toys and gentle lovers.  Lord, have mercy.

You did not make us, O God, to hold hostages for barter or to rain deadly fury on innocent children and beautiful coast lands.  You made us, O God, to welcome strangers and to cherish all creation.  Christ, have mercy.

You did not make us, O God, to oppress in the name of security or to kill in the name of justice.  You made us, O God, to find security in justice and to risk life in the name of peace.  Lord, have mercy.

… Save us from self-justifying histories and from moral equations that excuse our folly.  Search our hearts for our own complicity.  Spare us from pious prayers that neglect the prophet’s angry cry.  Let us speak a resounding “no” to this warring madness and thus unmake our ways of death, so that we may be made more and more into your image.  Kyrie eleison.  Kyrie eleison.  Kyrie eleison.

Included in this change of heart must also be a transformation in our calculus of war and peace. Remember, a few weeks ago, Rev. Margaret Gramley encouraged us to adopt a new way of understanding God’s moral economy – to think of God as a prodigal sower – one who flings the seeds of grace with wild abandon? Then let us think of God commanding that the seeds of peace also be sown with equally wild abandon and fullness and “care-lessness.” Unfortunately that is not so with our usual mathematics of war and peace, often characterized by a “tit for tat” frame of mind. Even in our democratic societies, our politics, our military configurations, and our foreign relations tend to be loaded with dangerous logarithms that make war, not peace, inevitable. We more often demand unconditional surrender than we make peace unconditionally. We forget the words of Christ who said, “I do not give to you peace AS THE WORLD GIVES.” We fail to grasp Paul’s meaning when he described “the peace of God” as a peace “that surpasses all understanding.” Peace will not be made inevitable as long as we remain within our “normal” ways of making peace. We have to think of the peace that we seek to make as the peace of God, a peace that we cannot comprehend normally. When we reach out to others with THAT peace that defies norms, peace will then become a necessity of history, an inevitability.

Secondly, making peace is an ACTIVITY. Peace may be God’s will, but it also will not fall into our laps. We have to DO something to make peace. In describing God’s mandate for peace, the prophet Isaiah wrote: “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” If peace is to become inevitable, we need to actively disarm, and we need to UNLEARN war. This may not be an easy thing, but think about it this way: As a species, we have spent thousands of years “learning war.” Can we not devote a few decades to unlearning war and learning peace instead? Can we not – should we not — have, at every university and college and school, at least as many students majoring in peace studies as we have in, say, in ROTC and military sciences? We learn a lot of things from the things of our “popular culture” – our literatures, the things we watch, the games we play, the technologies we employ. Why, then, are these things so inundated in the images and ideas of conflict and combat? Can we not devote even a small portion of the technological genius that we deploy in creating such things as films, videos, images on the Internet, and videogames in order to create at least a sector of our “popular culture” that would extol peace, and not valorize war?

One of the things that we must DO to make peace inevitable is to take care of people’s wellbeing and needs. In the next breath, after he proclaimed that the people “need not go away,” Jesus said: “YOU give them something to eat.” He made it clear that simply not turning people away is not enough; we must also bear responsibility for meeting people’s needs. It is so, too, for the peacemaker. War and poverty and scarcity go hand in hand, and it is often difficult to tell which is the cause and which is the effect. It is estimated that about one tenth of the people who died in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts did so from causes and conditions complicated by dehydration and starvation. To say that we are giving people peace without addressing their needs makes the promise of peace a hollow one, and such peace cannot endure, much less be inevitable.

We must not fear, nor be discouraged, when our work to make peace inevitable happens on a small scale. That is one lesson I took away from Jody’s sermon last week. The peace that we sow may be the smallest and seemingly the most insignificant of seeds. Let us remember: The horrific bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, arguably the most enormous weapons ever used, wreaking the greatest destruction, came from SPLITTING THE ATOM, the smallest thing imaginable. Why then should we not learn to sow, instead, the atoms of peace?

Finally, I submit that to make peace inevitable, we must also learn how to live a new life, or, to live Life anew, not only as individuals and families, or even as nations, but as the world, as humankind, as God’s entire creation. Many of us are aware, I am sure, that the famous Godzilla stories and films originated in a post-war Japan in reaction to the atomic holocausts suffered by its people. In the decades since 1945, we have seen the proliferation of films depicting how people learn and struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic global landscape. That survival is not only grim and bleak, but it is also one that is most often filled with the same conflicts that begat the cataclysm in the first place. The question that stares us in the face is: Why do we wait to learn to live anew AFTER the whole world and all Life have been devastated by our weapons? Why can we not start right now to learn to live anew? What on earth are we waiting for?

The lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are lessons for the future and not just for comprehending how the past may be “justified.”  They are not merely lessons explaining how such a vast number of people died, but lessons for how the whole world must live.

In March 1988, Japanese author Kurihara Sadako, herself a hibakusha, a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, wrote the following poem, teaching us this very lesson:

“In the rubble a single wildflower
Sent out small white blossoms.
From the burned soil filled with the bones
Of fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, relatives,
From the now-silent ruins
Where every living thing burned to death:
A small life that taught us to live.
Hiroshima, carrying on from that day –
A flower blooming in the midst of destruction.”

If “inevitability” is not a matter of fore-ordained fate or of strategic expediency or even tactical necessity, but a matter of building up the conditions for a process that points in a particular direction, then it is indeed within the power of every one of us to make peace, not war, inevitable; to make life, not death, inevitable. It would mean that each and every thing we do can, potentially, be a building block for that process, however large or small. It would mean that we, like all the generations of our forebears, are constantly at the crossroads of choice. What is inevitable is of our own making, and of our own choosing.

I used to, sometimes on my way to work at NAU, drive past the Quaker meeting house on Beaver Street and see these inspiring words: “There is no way to peace; Peace is the way.” For people of faith, making peace inevitable must begin with our completely identifying with God’s will for peace and with our own responsibility in the process. It is a painstaking process, one that might not be completed in our own lifetime, but is the most precious legacy and gift we can ever hope to pass on. We can, and we must, build peace in our lives, in our church, in our society, and in the world, piece by piece, peace by peace.

Each year at 8:15 a.m. (Tokyo time) on August 6, Japanese throngs gather at the cenotaph in Hiroshima in remembrance of the horrifying event and those who died in the atomic bombing with a long silence. Representatives of many faiths offer prayers. Then bells are rung to complete the commemoration. Perhaps this year, and for years to come, those bells could ring out not only in Hiroshima but all over the world and most of all in our own hearts, to echo our commitment to make peace inevitable.

Let us pray:
To you, O Christ, who taught us that to be estranged from another human being is to be estranged from God, and that to be reconciled to a brother or a sister or to a “stranger” is to be reconciled to you, to you we pray:

Let a small flower of hope blossom from the rubble of death and destruction, from the ruins of our times, some silent and some still raging with the voices of the dying and the dead;

Come, small life, living, crucified, dead, and resurrected, and teach us how to live. Amen.

Reflections from Christmas Eve in Iraq – 2016

by Owen Chandler

The chapel is quiet right now. The only noise comes from the Black Hawks and Chinooks preparing to take off to destinations around Iraq. It is Christmas Eve. The rain is pouring and the ground is rapidly covered in a type of mud that is anything but festive. It bogs the mood of the camp, but the war effort does not slow. I have been here for every holiday this year. It never slows, not even in Taji, a place far from the thunder of the front lines.

In just a few short hours, the Australian Padre, fellow US chaplains and I will lead a candlelight service celebrating once again the birth of the Prince of Peace. We will sing traditional carols as military personnel and contractors from around the world pause to pay homage. It is a wonderful reminder. Men and women have looked to this event with hope-filled wonder for many years.

I think a great deal about peace these days. Whether it is Iraq or Syria, it is difficult for those who care not to watch with broken hearts. I feel fortunate to be part of an ongoing operation trying to do something about the tragedy we all see on our screens, but it never seems to be enough and it never seems to move fast enough. The destruction is indiscriminate and especially brutal to those most vulnerable: the elderly, women, and children.

As I unpack the candles for the service, I meditate on the last year. I’m getting ready to leave. The battles still rage to my north and probably will for some time to come. There is a certain guilt I cannot help but feel as I prepare to leave. I get to go home. I get to hug my wife and children and sleep in relative safety under the beautiful Tucson night sky. If I want, I do not have to even consider the war-torn events I am poised to leave. It is a strange luxury lost on most of our country. I am ill at ease with that reality. And so I wonder and pray, what will PEACE look like for this part of the world?

One of the officers at lunch recounted the story of the Christmas Truce from WWI. I googled it when I returned back to my office. The story perfectly illustrates how, during the weeks leading to Christmas, tragedy becomes the paradox of God’s grace. The story has the feel of myth. As it goes, roughly 100,000 British and German soldiers were involved in an unofficial cessation of hostility along the Western Front. The Germans placed candles on their trenches and on Christmas trees. Both sides joined in singing Christmas Carols, shouting greetings across the way. They even made excursions across No Man’s Land to exchange gifts of food, tobacco, and alcohol.

How were they able to peer past their training and their reality to see the peace being celebrated in the birth of Christ? I think of the enemies we now face and I cannot imagine a similar scene. I cannot see the same opportunities of make-shift sacred space or a common understanding of humanity. During the Christmas Truce, there was a stalemate in the trenches. There was a space created in the impasse. The space was steeped in desperation and prayer. It became a sacred moment juxtaposed with the coming Christmas morning. There was time to actually consider the story of the one hunkered in the opposite the trench. The soldier was drilled to believe that the enemy soldier is the enemy of all life and all future. But in the space in between, they saw a common humanity. They saw the image of God within the other. In a season where we celebrate hope, joy and love, peace overcame them, even if for only a short while.

In some respects, it is probably not completely fair to compare this current conflict with that one so long ago. As I hear the approaching steps of a chaplain, one cannot help but wonder, however. Have the last 13 years of war has created a similar type of stalemate? This deployment has created more questions than answers. Will we be able to take the tragic spaces created by war and make them holy? How will peace be possible if we are unable or even unwilling to see our own stories, sons, and daughters in the faces of our enemy? I do not know. In our candlelit circle tonight, there will be no elements of the enemy. There will be no echoing songs coming from battle lines afar. No gifts. No sharing of photos of family. No laughter. After nine months however, I can attest that the same desperation and prayer will be here tonight.

The problem of peace is nothing new. I had hoped that this problem would be one I would not have to pass down to my children awaiting my return. I imagine that same hope was a driving reason for the anticipation surrounding Christ’s birth so long ago. And so tonight we will sing. And we will pray. And we will lift the light of Christ high into the air. And we will welcome the Prince of Peace, trusting like those soldiers did a hundred years ago that peace can be born in the most hopeless places.

Peace,
Owen

Hope in a Child

by Abigail Conley

“I think you have a kid in there,” I said, nodding toward his truck, and taking his empty cart back to the return for him.

“Thank you so much,” he answered, looking relieved.

Both of us were crazy enough to go to Costco in the week before Christmas and just happened to park near each other. I confess, I second guessed taking his cart for him. Mostly, I second guessed because women doing things like that for men in public space isn’t expected. I almost did it as soon as I headed toward the return with my own cart, but walked past him just a little bit. I looked back to talk to him, to offer to take his cart for him. In that split second, I might have seen his hesitation to walk away from the truck where his child was safely strapped in a car seat. I don’t know. I do remember what was expressed more deeply than usual, “Thank you so much.”

I’m quite certain he didn’t know that I’d seen him earlier, along with his son, inside the store. I was sitting at the restaurant, quickly scarfing down a slice of pizza before heading on to my next task. He walked by, between my cart and the wall, pushing his cart with both purchases and son. I noticed him because his son was crying. When I say crying, I mean that horrible version of crying that children do when they’re just done.

I’d taken notice because of the crying, and then I saw a father being a very good father. They had a smoothie, and the child wanted some. As he cried, the father gently coaxed, “Use your words.” Over and over, again, “Use your words.” The phrase is familiar, one often heard spoken by teachers and parents of young children. Those words struck me differently today, though, as the man spoke them to his son.

I thought about them after he left Costco, as I was finishing up my pizza and walking to my car. It’s the week before Christmas; the walk to the car in a Costco parking lot is extra long. I let the please, “Use your words,” roll over in my mind, thinking how different the world would be if we used our words, instead.

My mourning for Syria has been long and deep. A “complete meltdown of humanity” the news says. That might be the best summary imaginable if even half of the news making it to this part of the world is true. I fear we actually don’t know the half of it. My fear as leaders talk of the need for more nuclear weapons is deep, as well. Words, it seems, are always used to cry out for something more, too often, that thing is violence. It seems that’s the go-to answer right now, with no one quite sure how to put a stop to it all.

I don’t know any more about that father than what I just told you. Who knows what he’s like day in, day out. I have hope, though, that this father coaxing his very, very young son to use his words rather than have a tantrum might do even more good with that child in the long run. Use your words, not your fists. Use your words, not a weapon. Use your words, face to face. Use your words first, and finally.

It is the absurdity of the season, after all, that our deepest hope is in a child—a child called the Word, made flesh, and dwelling among us. The child, called Word, brought all sorts of hope along into that manger, including that swords would be beaten into plowshares, and we would not learn war any more. The beauty of that impossibility lingers deep these days, the promise that we will one day put away our many, many tools of destruction.

For today, while I still await the Christ child’s coming, I am comforted a bit by this man and his child. The hopes of this season run deep: the hope for peace; the hope for fear to subside; the hope that our words become enough. To this man who I’ll likely never see, again, thank you so much.

Speechless

by Karen MacDonald

I don’t know what to say today.

So in the midst of being heartbroken, I step outside this early morning and breathe in life. The waxing super-moon is veiled in thin clouds, throwing soft tree-shadows on the yard. The Big Dipper has wheeled around into the north sky. The wispy clouds on the horizon begin to show tinges of deep pink sunlight……Breathe…..Breathe….

The sun is still burning and the Earth is still turning—and we’re amazingly being given another day.

In the midst of being appalled, I seek the company of those also hurting and seeking hope. Together we pray and tell stories and cry and sing and hold silence and reach for the Spirit of Life.

In the midst of being angry, I re-visit what I wrote in June after the shooting in Orlando: “And we have to do this [pray and act] with an open heart and a spirit of love for all.

‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled.’

‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.’”  

Somehow, someday, maybe beginning today in the midst of deep emotions, may we all find a way to shalom, to peace, to well-being for all beings on this beautiful Earth.