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The prayer attributed to St. Francis — Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace — has hovered at the edge of my awareness since childhood, when I first saw it on a plaque in my small-town Methodist church fellowship hall.

I’m still working on forgiveness, whose longstanding shortfall in me toward those who support(ed) BushCo threatens my undoing. I want to applaud daylight dawning on anyone. Really.

On the one hand, Hunter masterfully, justifiably, and with much truth today puts words to the phenomenon of people insisting they’re right even when they’re demonstrably wrong. I like being right, too, but “right” needs to mean “the assessment nearly all people of good will, clear thinking, and command of facts inevitably converge to,” as is now happening about BushCo [as evidenced by its plummeting poll numbers]. When discernment [finally] trumps deception, of course that’s a good thing, a wise thing. The earlier on, the better.

OTOH, spiritual health and community are more important than [kudos for] “being right.” And forgiving, yea, even forgiving willful dumbassery, past and present, is a prerequisite for both. Vengeance, I finally remember, is not mine.

In the process of working on forgiveness, still becoming — on the inside, and maybe soon, on the outside — a Quaker (which may or may not entail giving up use of the word “dumbassery”). You know that eerie, wonderful homecoming feeling you sometimes get as you learn more about something? Like, “Dear God, have I been a Quaker all my life, but didn’t know it?”

What’s being impressed upon me today, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian Nobel laureate, says well, speaking to the perennial assumption that has undergirded support for this war, that “if only we can get rid of those people, then we will all be safe and happy” (as reported by Anne in Friends Journal, Becoming an Instrument of Peace):

If only it were so simple. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were simply necessary to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, and who among us are willing to destroy a piece of their own heart?

Anne’s experiential vignettes concerning becoming an instrument of peace in the midst of war are speaking to my condition today:

To walk a path of peace in a country that is deeply involved in war brings us to our growing edge.

Yes. As in, for example, growing a commitment to forgiveness where there was none. Then Anne pinpoints where I’m mostly still at in her observation —

My self-righteousness has the poisonous high of an addiction: I like it and I know that I have to root it out of my life. Over and over and over.

[I’m] busted.

Building bridges instead of burning them is such a better plan.

Walking a path of peace sometimes brings us not just to our growing edge, as Anne says, but to our dying edge, too. Rest in peace, Tom Fox. Thank you for your work, your life, and your example.

2006-03-13 update after more thinking:

So where does justice fit in? In all my “foolish talk” about forgiveness, am I whitewashing over BushCo immorality and crimes against God and humanity (e.g., fiscal irresponsibility, destroying creation, screwing the poor, spying illegally, bearing false witness, war, torture)? Are they not accountable?

Here’s where I’m at today: I think if “justice roll[s] down like waters,” then BushCo and enablers will be repaid. Here’s the kicker: But not by me. According to scripture, God says, “I will repay.” Who do I think I am? My job is to lift up, care for, forgive.

(Sometimes I daydream, wondering if it’s as hard for God “to avenge” as it is for me to forgive. In each case, the action seems to run counter to our natures. Mystery indeed.)

As to whether we should be confronting others in their complicity, I observe that all evidence needed to see is already in front of us. Are not those with eyes to see, seeing? Can anyone be forced to see? I think not: we have to be wooed to see. (Still thinking. Insight welcome.)

2006-09-27 update (months later during a Quaker Spirituality class):

I’m clued in enough to recognize in my class reading today that Quaker author Parker Palmer is most definitely speaking to me:

When I give something I do not possess, I give a false and dangerous gift, a gift that looks like love but is, in reality, loveless — a gift given more from my need to prove myself than from the other’s need to be cared for. That kind of giving is not only loveless but faithless, based on the arrogant and mistaken notion that God has no way of channeling love to the other except through me. Yes, we are created in and for community, to be there, in love, for one another. But community cuts both ways: when we reach the limits of our own capacity to love, community means trusting that someone else will be available to the person in need. …

When the gift I give to the other is integral to my own nature, when it comes from a place of organic reality within me, it will renew itself — and me — even as I give it away. Only when I give something that does not grow within me do I deplete myself and harm the other as well, for only harm can come from a gift that is forced, inorganic, unreal.

—Let Your Life Speak, Parker J. Palmer (1999), pp. 48–50

What I’m not sure of is whether this applies in the case of forgiving, especially forgiving those who advocate torture, etc.

Months after I wrote the article above, my hellbent determination to forgive when no forgiveness is forthcoming does indeed appear to me “forced, inorganic, unreal.” Is my forced determination coming more from “my need to prove myself” than from “the other’s need to be [forgiven]”? I think it is.

For if I’m truthful, I must acknowledge I have reached the limit of my own capacity to forgive. What has been done in my name — making war based on false witness, torturing, maiming, killing — is for me, for now, unforgiveable. I hadn’t considered I may be causing harm by pretending otherwise.

“What theological and ethical principles should inform a post-Christendom vision for the political order?”

Isaiah reminds us to take a bath (and probably, an enema).

I am temporarily shorn of hope; hence this lamentation.

The reason this U.S. presidential election is much, much bigger than a win/lose contest is that it is, at its heart, a spiritual issue with global consequences.

Here’s what I think today [the day after the 2004 U.S. presidential election]:

Because we in the U.S. have embraced the ways of the Enemy [by approving our government’s use of deception/fear/violence], we have become the enemy of the world.

We have chosen not to excise the cancer of fear afflicting us, and by this choice we have exchanged <bubble-headed?>the godly ideals we once held as Americans </bubble-headed?> for the Enemy’s secrecy and deception, anger and retribution, hate and oppression.

All our choices have consequences, individual and national, and because we the people are responsible this time for this outcome, the consequences will soon roll. Here begins the tribulation (in the very real literal sense: a time of “great affliction, trial, or distress; suffering,” “an experience that tests one’s endurance, patience, or faith”).

Earlier this week a friend reminded me of Jesus’ imagery in Matthew as he charges the teachers of the law and Pharisees:

You give a tenth of your spices — mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law — justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

Those in the Church who are dwelling on, and enraged by, individual issues like abortion, homosexuality, evolution, and “liberals” (as if liberal is a bad thing), with all due respect I say to you that you, too, are straining for gnats while swallowing a camel: the Religious Right worldview. For years to come you’ll be passing fœtid camel chunks while the gnats swarm.

The Church in America has failed her Lord because she has not taught her members to recognize counterfeit spirituality.

What is counterfeit spirituality? It’s spirituality that sounds good but leads to results that oppose God’s will.

• Is killing 10,000s of innocent men, women, and children God’s will?
• Is accusing an entire people of being an imminent threat when they aren’t, also known as “bearing false witness,” God’s will?
• Is favoring the wealthy at the expense of the poor God’s will?
• Is igniting war in the name of the Prince of Peace God’s will?
• Is plundering God’s good creation God’s will?
• Is blaming others for one’s own mistakes God’s will?
• Is being arrogant and haughty, either personally or nationally, God’s will?
• Is being spendthrift and reckless God’s will?
• Is loading our children and grandchildren with an unpayable debt, for all intents and purposes a generational curse, God’s will?
• Is forcing millions into poverty and hopelessness God’s will?
• Is living in fear God’s will, when God’s representives throughout scripture are constantly saying “fear not”? When John asserts that “perfect love casts out fear”?
• Is mocking study, learning, thinking, planning (in short, wisdom) God’s will?
• Is lauding any man and his ways over the Lord and his ways God’s will?
• Is divisiveness instead of unity God’s will?

We have a responsibility to recognize counterfeit spirituality, then to (1) not fall for it and (2) not propagate it.

Counterfeit spirituality is worse than no particular spirituality at all, I think, as evidenced by Jesus condemning the Pharisees while hanging out with prostitutes and tax collectors.

The Pharisees were sincere, but they were sincerely wrong. They were resolute — according to scripture, clear through to killing him — but their resolution scored them no points with Jesus.

I think endorsing counterfeit spirituality [as the Christian Right has] damages the kingdom of God because presenting as truthful and good that which God opposes [war, ignorance, greed] is misrepresenting God. The consequence is millions turn away in disgust, some forever, thinking our misrepresentation presents God as God is.

If “by their fruit you will recognize them,” what does our fruit — America’s results in the world — say about us? What are we being recognized as? Ambassadors of godly virtue or unthinking, arrogant warmongers?

Morally, how can anyone say ends justify means when the means are repugnant and the ends are catastrophes?

I’m left to infer that God, in his wisdom, recognizes that to bring us to repentance, we’re going to have to be allowed to suffer, else we will keep ignoring him, keep disobeying him, keep misrepresenting his son — by those of us called Christian — as Lord of War instead of Prince of Peace. I think we may be therefore entering our exile to Babylon, not just our children [being sent to die in Babylon, aka Iraq], but all of us.

Don McLean’s lovely version of Babylon, based on Psalm 137, keeps looping in my brain (listen, and weep):

By the waters, the waters of Babylon
We lay down and wept, and wept, for thee, Zion
We remember thee, remember thee, remember thee, Zion

Ah, ah, America, land that I love, I’m sorry we have forsaken you.

I’m probably about to go silent for a while. Peace to you.

[2004-11-04: edited to add section on counterfeit spirituality that came to me in a dream]

2004-12-03 update:
QotD: Can an Ichthus symbol and a W sticker coexist on a car bumper without tearing the fabric of the universe? (I think not.)

My friend Dale writes about not only his Kerry/Edwards yard signs being stolen, but his God is Not a Republican or a Democrat sign was taken, too.

I’m at 7-8 9 10 11 12 Kerry/Edwards signs stolen during this past month the past 6 weeks. Just flat-out made to vanish under cover of darkness. This phenomenon recapitulates for me an entire worldview’s unfortunate M.O.: trespass, steal, suppress dissent and all contradicting evidence. It’s a strange and unconvincing plan from people preaching “freedom” and “democracy,” I think.

Two things help me short to ground my occasionally flaring anger at practitioners of this M.O.: specifically, a boxful of K/E signs that allows me to replace the sign daily if necessary, and generally, (mis)remembering the adage “Anger is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” (Google reveals Malachy McCourt actually said “Resentment is like …” but that’s close enough to work.)

Beyond my obvious-but-ridiculously-hard choice not to take poison, my prayer asking how I’d best respond keeps returning an image of the prodigal father — that is, one extravagant with his love — who watches, watches, watches for his wayward son to repent and come home, and when he finally sees his son a long way off he runs out to embrace him.

Yikes, that’s a difficult example to follow. (Whether father or son.) But imagine the result — the homecoming — what a celebration that will be!

Dale’s sign, “God is Not a Republican. Or a Democrat,” refers to Sojourners’ ongoing petition to “take back our faith,” a stance I support as well. (Sojourners is “a Christian ministry whose mission is to proclaim and practice the biblical call to integrate spiritual renewal and social justice.”)

In his About.com article on this topic, Charles mentions the conviction —

A politics that privileges the powerful over the weak and the rich over the poor, and favors violence and the unilateral use of force over the use of diplomacy in the resolution of international problems, cannot be reconciled with biblical ethics.

That’s my inescapable conviction, too, one that arose in me during several years of seminary study:
I cannot reconcile prevailing U.S. political behavior with biblical ethics.

It’s not an exclusionary, “my way or the highway” kind of conviction — because I don’t know everything — but it’s nonetheless a fire-in-the-bones conviction in me that I understand as providing sufficient work-that-needs-doing to last me the rest of this lifetime.

For me and my house, then, this conviction is why I’m happy to support, work for, and vote for Kerry/Edwards and the Democratic worldview, however short of perfect it may be, and why I’m unable to ever, ever, ever support the Bush/Cheney worldview.

(“My house” tells me right away whenever she thinks otherwise. :-) )

half a day later:

And sometimes, like now, rage seems like a perfectly appropriate response, not to be shorted to ground. Meteor Blades reminds me:

In between my unfettered rage at the ideologues who lied us into the Iraq war and my cautious elation that we may elect someone who brings an end to that nightmare, I sometimes catch myself going numb. The statistics are numbing. Perhaps 25,000 people dead, most of them civilians. Perhaps 100,000 wounded, many of them maimed forever. …

Damn, bouncing between idealism, rage, and numbness is awkward. But part of human being, I think. Seasons turn: buds of spring burst to life, ease into fiery summer, wind down to autumn spent and brown, then cool down to icy winter, and back again. Likewise, our bodies run in cycles, ebbing and flowing throughout the day, the month, the years. Even scripture is cyclical, boldly wandering through the range of human emotions, unflinchingly touching on all extremes.

Life’s a rollercoaster all over, I think. Some of us loop-de-loop more than others, and some of us half fall out, but none of us bounces alone.

O Lord, just please deliver us from permanumb.

Something spiritual shifted today. [Wed, Sept. 22, 2004]

Pretty unmistakeable. A sea change, I think. Steph noticed it, too.

A weight lifted. A breeze of hope, incoming fresh air. I think it’s political.

As usual, I sense these things kind of like a barometer, then it takes me several days to concretely identify what happened. I’ll be back.

2004-09-30 update:
Today as I look at the assembly line of B/C yard signs in my neighborhood — even as someone steals my Kerry/Edwards sign, again and again — the breeze of hope seems faint at times. Is this America? And yet …

Last Sunday I walked in the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ) Walk-As-One fundraiser in downtown Memphis. Fascinating people and surroundings! I noticed with some relief that as you drive from affluent suburb to downtown, the B/C signs slowly give way to Kerry/Edwards signs. Once downtown, I didn’t see one B/C sign.

In the midst of the multicolored throng of smiling brothers and sisters walking with me, and especially as we passed the Lorraine Motel where MLK was killed, now the home of the National Civil Rights Museum, I recalled that the God of scripture, history, and my experience is primarily about community and justice, as conveyed in the prophet Micah’s summary (or its more familiar translation, if you prefer) —

He’s already made it plain how to live, what to do,
what God is looking for in men and women.
It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor,
be compassionate and loyal in your love,
And don’t take yourself too seriously—
take God seriously.

Compared with this, today’s prevailing political understanding of community and justice seems lacking to me — Denying free speech to neighbors as in my neighborhood and across the country? Denying rights to people who are different, even unto writing discrimination into the U.S. Constitution? Bearing false witness against others, of which the reason given for invading Iraq is a prime example? Killing men, women, and children with bombs (“collateral damage”) almost indiscriminately? Sending people into poverty while favoring the wealthy with tax cuts? Passing the curse of a crushing debt onto our children and grandchildren? Avoiding responsibility saying “it’s not my fault — he did it, she did it, they did it”? Ridiculing knowledge, thoughtfulness, and wisdom? Being adamantly unrepentant? I find behaviors like these completely opposed to Micah’s understanding of what God is looking for in us.

Yet even in the face of these destructive winds, I detect the breeze of hope. We will not succumb to this curse. The spiritual shift I felt last week is a critical mass of us clicking into awareness: We will no longer be captive to fear and deception. We will no longer tolerate lies, hate, and endless war masquerading as the will of God. As Martin puts it, we will “overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.”

I share Martin’s “abiding faith in America” and “audacious faith in the future of mankind.” With him I audaciously believe that “unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.” And I will work to my dying day to speak this word, to help bring about this reality.

If faith has taught me anything, it’s that the highway of retribution and violence we’re on leads to hell. We’re approaching the last exit before we hit desert. Let’s take it.

2004-10-03 update:
I’m not wild about Kerry’s saying “I will hunt down and kill the terrorists, wherever they are,” of course, but I assume that’s an essential criterion for the bloodthirsty vote. Why this unappealing stance doesn’t dissuade me is summed up by GussieFN in this succinct analogy praising competence:

Kerry and Bush have the same plan on the war
and Tiger Woods and I have the same plan on the golf course.
What’s the point, again?

NY Times op-ed: Bruce Springsteen: ‘It is through the truthful exercising of the best of human qualities … that we come to life in God’s eyes.’

Sojo.net: Bill Moyers: ‘How do we nurture the healing side of religion over the killing side? How do we protect the soul of democracy against bad theology in service of an imperial state?’

Boston Globe: Jim Wallis: ‘The best public contribution of religion is precisely not to be ideologically predictable or a loyal partisan.’

Sometimes another person can, in just a few words, sweep away cobwebs that are obscuring meaning in a way I only notice when a clearer, brightly-lit meaning jumps off the screen at me.

Candace does this for me as she writes about John Dominic Crossan’s lecture yesterday on what life was like in first century Israel:

Crossan spent a great deal of time talking about justice and how our form of justice differs greatly from the form of justice touted by both Judaism and Jesus. We see justice as retribution, but Crossan argues that the Old Testament and Jesus both argue for distributive justice — a form of justice that distributes God’s mercy and love evenly to everyone.

Yes, yes! This is the justice I’m always longing for … and agitating for.

I use the word “justice” frequently, and these days — by the grace of God and some excellent theology teachers — I habitually mean distributive justice. But others could easily assume I mean retribution when I say “justice” as I haven’t been accounting for that as an unintended connotation. Hmmm, that would change my meaning rather radically.

Candace then expands wonderfully on this idea of upending our might makes right retributive understanding of justice, as Jesus does with Rome’s “first victory, then peace” slogan, replacing it with the Jewish notion of “first justice — that is, the fair and equitable distribution of God’s blessings on earth — then peace.”

Thanks very much, Candace.

According to the WaPo yesterday, Gen. Clark Reportedly Is Asked to Join Dean (as Democratic candidates for U.S. president/vice president).

My impression? Dream team.

And not just because both Dr. Dean and Gen. Clark appear to be decent, real, articulate, intelligent human beings. That alone would be a breath of fresh air. But much more important is the spirit behind them for which they’re a visible face, a whole movement for justice (of the true biblical kind, generally speaking, IMO) that gives me hope and determination to engage again in the real nitty-gritty life of the world.

Maybe I’m overstating the case, but to be able to be hopeful again about the possibilities for our future — as a country and as a world — is for me an answer to prayer.

Already-present upside: I’m not angry for the first time in nearly two years. As more of us wake up to the chronic injustice and global destruction wrought by the Bush Administration — finally a majority of us in the U.S. are awake now as polled by Zogby (my interpretation) — I’m able to let go and rest.

Anyone else experiencing this sense of relief, this lifting of weight? The sea change in perceptions that began in July is becoming visible everywhere now. I think we’re finally escaping the clutches of deceit.

Later in the day, 3:13 PM ET:

According to the AP, Clark set to enter 2004 presidential race as 10th Democratic candidate (also here).

Really, it’s this aspect of Gen. Clark that revs up my enthusiasm at his participation in any capacity, whether as presidential or VP nominee (or even as Secretary of Defense):

Clark has a resume that unnerves potential rivals — Rhodes scholar, first in his 1966 class at West Point, White House fellow, head of the U.S. Southern Command and NATO commander during the 1999 campaign in Kosovo.

I insist on smart leaders. If that’s being prejudiced against dumb leaders, then so be it.

My friends keep putting words in my mouth — in ways that I treasure. :-)

Kynn observes, clearly and reasonably:

I’ve heard a lot more outrage directed against the idea that a gay man, in a committed and loving relationship with both God and his chosen partner, could serve as a bishop in a church than I have outrage against an unjust war, against children starving in America, against 1 out of 37 citizens going to jail.

Funny. What did Jesus talk about? Let’s see, according to the Gospels, he spent approximately zero percent of his time talking about gay people, and nearly all of his time describing a new social order emphasizing care and love for all people, especially the weak and poor and outcast.

Yes. The acquiescence to violence, social injustice, economic injustice in parts of the Church Universal — all in direct disobedience to Jesus’ words and emphasis — for me eclipses the issue of homosexuality in the church. To splinter the Church Universal over homosexuality when you’re not forcibly addressing the larger picture of obeying Jesus in fundamental ways is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Kynn’s minister Randy Leisey — as quoted by Kynn from a June 2001 North County Times [San Diego and Riverside counties, California] article — brilliantly captures what I observe to be crucial, too:

“How a congregation perceives authorship of Scriptures has a lot to do with it. If Old Testament is the only basis, then it’s open-and-shut. It’s more theological than biblical.

“If you’re open to the spirit of God, then you come to a different conclusion.” …

“Biblical scholarship, like law, is based on precedence,” Leisey said. “The Christian perspective has respect for the law. But when you look at the Ten Commandments and the rules in Leviticus, it’s easy to come to certain conclusions. When you throw in Jesus and the Holy Spirit, you come to different conclusions.” …

Leisey said he has no dispute with the fact that admonitions against homosexuality are written in Scripture.

“The question becomes whether or not God is still speaking to us,” Leisey said. “Biblical literalists would say we have all we need. But if God is still speaking to us, the latest manifestation of the Episcopal Church sees a different view of our sexuality than the admonishments.”

Yes. God through his Spirit is still speaking to us. Scripture is vitally important, yes. Read it, study it, ingest it. But give it precedence over God’s living presence and “still small voice” among us? Surely that’s insulting to its Author and qualifies, in fact, as bibliolatry.

The Spirit of God whispers to us now. Be still. Be mindful of Jesus’ emphasis. Don’t react. Listen.