No War: A Moral Call for a Christmas Truce | Bishop William J. Barber, II

 

Some recent posts from Nazarenes United for Peace

 

"One of the most distressing aspects of the current political and social crisis we are experiencing in the USA is the rising passion of White Christian Nationalism. The virulent racism embraced by folks who claim Christ as their savior and lord denies everything Jesus stood for, what he gave his life to overcome, and what he poured out his Spirit to enable in his Church.

White Christian Nationalism is a reincarnation of what the Roman Emperor Constantine foisted on the Church of Jesus Christ 1,700 years ago. He used the Church to attempt to conquer the world, and to eliminate those who opposed him, who were not like those he preferred. It was grotesque, destructive, and utterly unChristian.

When Christians rely on any government to give them permission to “be Christian” something is terribly awry. When we allow people of other races, cultures or religions to be oppressed and marginalized we have become the antithesis of all Jesus taught and lived.

To be holy is to be being perfected in love, for all people, living a transparent holiness, protecting the rights and the welfare of others, even if it is not profitable for us, or if we disagree with their choices.
This was the vision of the Wesleys, the early Nazarenes, and the best of our church around the globe, even now.

Co-suffering love, selfless service to others, robust courage to live Christlike lives in a broken world, and the refusal to demonize anyone who differs with us — that is holiness!!" -- Jesse C Middendorf, General Superintendent Emeritus, Church of the Nazarene.

The Reign of God...

 

Chair praise with hands clapping---Pastor Kalina Malua Katoa

I find Pastor Kalina to have a special gift for creating calm and bringing us peace as she teaches. I hope that this simple exercise that you can do in your chair brings you some joy. I can't imagine being with her, even on the Web, and not smiling. This is part of a series that Pastor Kalina does, and this series and many of her wonderful sermons can be found on YouTube. 

  

"When we allow people of other races, cultures or religions to be oppressed and marginalized we have become the antithesis of all Jesus taught and lived."

Taken from Nazarenes United for Peace:

"One of the most distressing aspects of the current political and social crisis we are experiencing in the USA is the rising passion of White Christian Nationalism. The virulent racism embraced by folks who claim Christ as their savior and lord denies everything Jesus stood for, what he gave his life to overcome, and what he poured out his Spirit to enable in his Church.

White Christian Nationalism is a reincarnation of what the Roman Emperor Constantine foisted on the Church of Jesus Christ 1,700 years ago. He used the Church to attempt to conquer the world, and to eliminate those who opposed him, who were not like those he preferred. It was grotesque, destructive, and utterly unChristian.

 
When Christians rely on any government to give them permission to 'be Christian' something is terribly awry. When we allow people of other races, cultures or religions to be oppressed and marginalized we have become the antithesis of all Jesus taught and lived.

 
To be holy is to be being perfected in love, for all people, living a transparent holiness, protecting the rights and the welfare of others, even if it is not profitable for us, or if we disagree with their choices...

Co-suffering love, selfless service to others, robust courage to live Christlike lives in a broken world, and the refusal to demonize anyone who differs with us — that is holiness!!" -- Jesse C Middendorf

Is peace possible?

I'm not as inclined to pacifism and individualism as Rev. Barbara Prose is, but I think that she makes some excellent points here. I have been thinking much this week of hearing a priest say on Sunday that "The world is broken, but all that is broken may be mend---not by time, as the saying goes, but by intention. The broken world is waiting for your light in order to heal" or words to that effect.

Is peace possible? Rev. Prose says yes if, or when, it starts with us and after we have learned certain disciplines and come to desire peace. I think that our light gets brighter as our intentionality becomes organizing and as our organizing builds a movement for social change and demands that people come before profits.     

On Memorial Day

I do wish that we had a day to recognize the sacrifices and courage of people who refused to fight in unjust wars and who were peacemakers and justicemakers. It's right to represent the sacrifices made in battles and to reflect on what "sacrifice" means and what actually was sacrificed and what has been lost. It is also right to include those people who resisted joining in unjust wars and tried to build an alternative and to reflect on how most of the time we can create alternatives to imperialist wars that also also create justice.

And always there are victims to remember.

I believe that there is a scene in the film "Matewan" where the main character is explaining to a young mine worker and preacher that he saw members of the Jehovah's Witnesses tortured in prison during the First World War for refusing to wear uniforms and how they refused to relent and how that taught him about solidarity. You don't have to be a pacifist or a JW to admire that or learn from that. And you can't say that anyone who experienced that was a coward. I knew some World War One vets; they were brave people, but the war they fought in was an extended family quarrel between European royalty that helped kick off a century of previously unimaginable brutality. The dead from that war and from the genocides of Indigenous peoples, of the Armenians, and in the Belgian Congo are still crying out to us.

I remember from my childhood a kind old woman who rented a tiny room in a house near us in the 1960s who was still mourning her brother who had been killed in France during the First World War. Grieving can take forever. But what has happened to grieving when Memorial Day means a holiday or a sale on barbecue grills?

Tony Herbert, whose book "Soldier" should be required reading, told the story of how he became a highly-decorated Marine by talking first about how he learned to think with a group by growing up in the Pennsylvania anthracite coal region and having mine workers all around him. He recalled an incident that occurred when he was a child when a playmate fell into an icy pond and boys jumped in to save the child without giving it a second thought although it cost several of them their lives. Mine workers think like that. Coalfield kids think like that. Soldiers think like that. Healthcare workers think like that. Teachers are being expected to think like that. Appalachia, the Indian reservations, and Chicano communities give the U.S. more soldiers, and more dead war heroes, than other sections of the U.S. when measured against population numbers. Let's recognize heroism and sacrifice where we find it. Wherever we find it. We find heroism and sacrifice in battles. And sometimes we find them on a picketline or in a jail cell in Alabama or during a school shooting or at an antiwar event.

Through the sagas of the wars there are real stories of sacrifice that rightly touch us because of their humanism and because they force to consider our own virtues and shortcomings and what we gained because someone else gave their life for us. Shame on anyone who uses those stories to encourage more killing. Here is one such moving story from Grace Baptist Church in Philadelphia, Pa. And following that is a photo of a memorial to mine workers lest we forget other sacrifices as well.

And following that are two memes to bring us back to the beginning...

This Memorial Day as we in America gather for barbecues and fireworks, we pause to remember those who gave their lives in service to our country. In "Faith Walks and Talks--The 150-Year History of Grace Baptist Church," one chapter is dedicated to the remarkable story of The Four Chaplains, pictured here in a stained-glass depiction that hangs in the Pentagon today. In the 2nd worst sea disaster of WWII four chaplains of 3 different faiths helped men find lifeboats an lifejackets, ultimately giving up their own lifejackets to men who couldn't locate their own. Nearly 2/3 of the men aboard, including the 4 chaplains, perished in the icy Atlantic on February 3, 1943, after being hit by a torpedo from a German U-boat. One of the four chaplains was the son of our pastor at the time, Rev. Daniel Poling, and the church decided to build an interfaith memorial in the lower floor of the church, The #chapelofthefourchaplains Rev. Poling himself also served as a chaplain himself often traveling to war zones and bringing home news of members' sons. Faithful members over the years have written letters in support of servicemen. One Sunday after teaching an adult Sunday school class I noticed the tarnished urns on the shelves and decided to take them home, one by one, to polish. They were in remembrance of sons and loved ones lost in the war. Today, we pause to remember. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13 #faith #remember

The most antiwar people who I have known were war veterans.

Please click on it if you can't read it.

"There is a great heaviness in truth..."

This is excerpted from a short post at the In Search of a New Eden blog. It assumes a level of belief that you might not share, but I know a few folks who can work with this. I don't share the dim views expressed here about what human beings can accomplish. This blog is about a hopeful universalism, In Search of a New Eden is different and more into mysticism. But it may help some folks to hear that their cries are being heard and that God actively engages in our sorrows. If it sounds like something that will help, give it a full read.

So, if you find yourself feeling a heaviness in your heart, don’t assume that means you are off track. If you find yourself mourning for the state of the world, then you are mourning with Christ. Do not fight the sadness, do not run from it. Be at peace with it. Be comfortable in it. And know that it is fleeting just like our meaningless lives. Learn to rest in the beauty of the Divine Sorrow. For not only are we empty in our being but God is just as much grief as love. If we are not tangibly soaked in the tears of Christ then we are not living in the truth. This is the sacred sorrow.

When it comes to sadness, as with all things, the presence of the sacred can be known by the presence of peace. Divine sadness is a peaceful sadness, a heavy sadness. If the sadness you are experiencing is accompanied by anxiety or anger then it is not the sadness of the Lord. There is something so pure about the sadness of Christ because it does not worry. After all, anxiety too is meaningless. Therefore the sorrow of God is peaceful and even beautiful. It is the reason the autumn colours which herald the season of death and bitter cold, captivate our hearts and eyes so well. It is a magnificent sadness worth relishing in!

Understanding John 14:5-7 with Jim Palmer

The following comes from Jim Palmer's Facebook page and has been lifted without permission. I hope that readers will find Jim Palmer's Facebook page and engage with him.

Question: Jim, there's the verse where Jesus says, "No one comes to the Father except through me." I don't believe that verse anymore, but I don't know what to do with it.

Response: The entire statement attributed to Jesus in the Book of John reads, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

The message of Jesus to the world was that there is no separation between ourselves and the ultimate reality that is at the heart of all things, which we most experience as love, peace, happiness and belonging.

When Jesus said, "I AM the truth", he was saying that he was a human expression of this ultimate truth and reality. Jesus wanted humankind to know that we are not separated, divided, or in conflict with this transcendent reality we touch and feel deep within our hearts.

When Jesus said "no one comes to the Father except through me," Jesus was saying that the entire paradigm of separation - separation from love, separation from belonging, separation from worth, separation from hope, separation from wholeness - is a farce. We will never know these realities fully in that paradigm of separation, which requires striving to achieve them. The only way of knowing them is through the truth that Jesus demonstrated, namely that these realities are knit into the very nature and essence of our being.

The Christian religion often makes it difficult to understand verses like these because it built a religion based upon the separation paradigm, which was largely constructed by the teachings of Paul, who shoehorned Jesus into it.

The way the Christian religion interprets John 14:6 typically comes off sounding like this: "Listen up everyone! You know all those other religions and religious leaders and their teachings about God? Well, guess what? They are all deluded and wrong! It's me and my way or the highway to hell. You can only be right with God if [insert Paul's elaborate theology or denominational requirements for salvation]." That interpretation couldn't be any further from the truth of what was meant by these words of Jesus.
Jesus was basically saying, "You strive to be right with God, yet I have shown you that you and God are not separated but one. There is no other truth to invent or scheme up. Even if you tried, you could not ever come up with anything better than the way it already is."

Jesus said, “I AM the truth.”

He didn’t say “I KNOW the truth,” as if truth is a piece of knowledge held by the mind. Neither did he say, “I HAVE the truth,” as if truth is a possession you can pass along to another. Jesus said, “I AM the truth.”

Truth is a reality at the level of being.

Truth is not something outside to be discovered, it is an actuality inside to be realized. What is this actuality? Oneness with God. This is your true Self.

Jesus is the Truth that God and humankind are one. This is the Truth that sets you free.

Hope that helps.
Jim

P.S.: The relevant verses from are here:

5 Thomas said to him, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”

6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth* and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

7 If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

8 Philip said to him, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.”

9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works.

11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves.

12 Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.

13 And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

14 If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.

The Wagler Sisters---I'll Meet You In The Morning

 

Some wonderful random thoughts about God and life

 

The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston: "Our community is grounded in serenity, but not in passivity. It is a place where people can think, cooperate and take action..."

"Let us be clear: we are building a community. A place where people of all walks of life can come and be respected for who they are as people of value. We are constructing a haven for them, for ourselves, for any who will join us. Our community is grounded in serenity, but not in passivity. It is a place where people can think, cooperate and take action. We are an active community, intent on making a difference in this world. Our space is the vast expanse of the internet. Our agenda is peace and transformation. Our membership is no membership: only a welcoming hand to any who still believe in the power of love and hope."

--The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, Native American/Indigenous Ministries of the Episcopal Church

"Lord, make me an instrument of your peace..."

 

AN EASTER PRAYER: TO RECOVER THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX TRADITION OF PEACE (Michael Centore in religioussocialism.org)

Taken from ReligiousSocialism.org. Please support them. I believe that Michael Centore's article is especially important right now. 

For those of us with a deep love of Russian Orthodox spirituality, the events of the past two months, heartbreaking enough on their own, have brought additional grief. We mourn the warping of the Russian Orthodox faith for nefarious nationalistic ends. We see Patriarch Kirill’s longstanding capitulation to the violent messianism of Vladimir Putin as a tragic case of succumbing to a false god.

We are not alone in this. In March, nearly 300 Russian Orthodox clerics issued a statement decrying the war and comparing Russia’s actions against Ukraine to Cain’s fratricide of Abel in the book of Genesis. Archbishop Leo of Helsinki, the spiritual leader of the Finnish Orthodox Church, challenged Kirill to “wake up and condemn this evil.” Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams made the case for expelling the Russian Orthodox Church from the World Council of Churches. Pope Francis has been unequivocal in his criticism, breaking protocol to appeal directly to the Russian Embassy in February and exclaiming during a general audience on April 6, “Let the weapons fall silent! Stop sowing death and destruction!”

Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, which has a hierarchical leadership structure centered on the person of the pope, Eastern Orthodoxy exists as an association of 16 (or 14; there are still internal debates over the status of two) autocephalous, or self-governing churches. Many of these are organized as national churches—think of the Russian Orthodox or Bulgarian Orthodox Churches, for example. Though modern ideas of the nation-state and its relationship to ethnicity did not exist when many of these churches were founded, some members have anachronistically applied them to advance nationalistic agendas.

This is precisely what Kirill and Putin are doing when they invoke “Holy Russia” or the “Russian world” as justification for the invasion. In a dangerous alliance of church and state that links up with a longstanding vision of Russia as the “Third Rome,” imperial heir to the Byzantine Empire and defender of “Christian civilization” against a decadent, secular West, they are proposing what the authors of a dissenting open letter at the website Public Orthodoxy describe as “a transnational Russian sphere or civilization . . . which includes Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (and sometimes Moldova and Kazakhstan), as well as ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking people throughout the world.”

Read the rest here.

From the 1980s---Still Relevant

From the USSR in the 1980s

 

Rest in peace?

 

Champagne for a few or...

 

The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston on faith, strength, and the sacred---From the Native American/Indigenous Ministries of the Episcopal Church

This could be the story of this blog...

"The more uncertain the world becomes, the tighter my grip on the faith that sustains me. I am not necessarily brave by nature. I am not even strong. But I have a deep confidence based on experience. I know where I need to be when the storm clouds gather. In the Spirit is my life grounded. In the heart of the sacred I will take my stand. The storms may rise and howl, but I will not turn from them, for I have the power of mercy above me, and the source of every hope by my side. I give my trust to the unseen that I may behold more clearly the coming of peace, the presence of peace, in the lives of all who love."

The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston

We're in this together...

 

A prayer and photo from Palestine

Good morning with all the goodness and happiness of the morning prayer. Peace be upon you Mary full of the grace of the Lord with you blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb our Lord Jesus Christ Saint Mary mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

 Amen.