Someone who is close to me wrote on her blog:
At a recent holiday dinner, I heard a man with a red moustache say,
"My house belongs to the Lord. And so does my car. So if Jesus wants to take them, that's okay with me."
I don't believe him.
I wonder what that means, "If Jesus wants to take them"? It made me think that maybe if this guy were carjacked by Jesus, he'd be OK with that, but if anybody else tries it, he's definitely pressing charges.
WWJC?
The last thing my wife said to me last night when she came into the bedroom after turning off the computer was, "They killed Saddam." This morning I awoke to the story all over the newspaper, and to all the questions that are being asked. Will Saddam's execution bring peace? Will it bring about greater stability? Will it be the end of one chapter in Iraq's history, and the beginning of another, better one?
Everyone seems to agree the answer is "probably not."
I saw profound irony in the statement of President Bush, that Saddam received "the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime." In fact, this kind of "justice" was all too prevalent under Saddam's reign. His execution is just another killing, and all the trappings of officialdom cannot make it otherwise. His death, like all the other deaths that came before and all the deaths that will come after, will not bring peace.
Lately, as a part of my morning reflections, I have been reading the sermons of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. After finishing with the newspaper, I read his sermon "Loving your Enemies." The sense of tension and counterpoint in this sermon could not have been greater. Following are a few excerpts from; you can find the text in its entirety here.
Another way that you love your enemy is this: When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it. There will come a time, in many instances, when the person who hates you most, the person who has misused you most, the person who has gossiped about you most, the person who has spread false rumors about you most, there will come a time when you will have an opportunity to defeat that person. It might be in terms of a recommendation for a job; it might be in terms of helping that person to make some move in life. That’s the time you must do it. That is the meaning of love. In the final analysis, love is not this sentimental something that we talk about. It’s not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system...
It’s not only necessary to know how to go about loving your enemies, but also to go down into the question of why we should love our enemies. I think the first reason that we should love our enemies, and I think this was at the very center of Jesus’ thinking, is this: that hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. [tapping on pulpit] It just never ends. Somewhere somebody must have a little sense, and that’s the strong person. The strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil. And that is the tragedy of hate, that it doesn’t cut it off. It only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. Somebody must have religion enough and morality enough to cut it off and inject within the very structure of the universe that strong and powerful element of love...
Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, "Love your enemies." It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. That’s why Jesus says, "Love your enemies." Because if you hate your enemies, you have no way to redeem and to transform your enemies. But if you love your enemies, you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of redemption. You just keep loving people and keep loving them, even though they’re mistreating you. Here’s the person who is a neighbor, and this person is doing something wrong to you and all of that. Just keep being friendly to that person. Keep loving them. Don’t do anything to embarrass them. Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with bitterness because they’re mad because you love them like that. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies.
What might have happened if we had loved Saddam? What if, instead of breaking his neck with a rope, we had kept him alive in a place where he could do no further harm to others or himself, treated him humanely, allowed him to read, and offered him access to moderate Muslim clergy? Might he eventually have recognized the horror of his actions? Might he one day have repented? Yes, I know this is a one in a million chance, but such things do happen. A change in Saddam would have a chance of bringing about change in Iraq; then he might indeed have become a symbol of a new chapter in the country's history. Now, he is merely a symbol of the fact that the Shiites are executing Sunnis, instead of Sunnis executing Shiites.
Every person who commits acts of great evil contains within himself or herself the key to understanding that evil, and so to redeeming, transforming, and healing it. When we kill that person, the key is lost forever.
My morning meditation was from Mark 13:12-13, "You will be hated by all because of my name. The one who endures to the end will be saved." What does it mean to endure to the end? Perhaps it means, in the midst of hatred, to abide in love, not to succumb to hate or to the tactics of those who practice hatred. It means remaining steadfast in the confidence that love is, as St. John Chrysostom says, τό ισχυρόν, the greatest power, the strongest force on earth.
It doesn't come by the bullwhip
It's not persuaded with your hands on your hips
Not the company of gunslingers
The epicenter love is the pendulum swinger
If we're a drop in the bucket
With just enough science to keep from saying fuck it
Until the last drop of sun burns its sweet light
Plenty revolutions left until we get this thing right.
The Indigo Girls, "Pendulum Swinger," from Despite our Differences
We bought a house.
This is a first in the life of the she-guerilla and me. A friend of mine remarked that we'd be switching over to the Republicans any day now.
Lots of people have asked us, "So where did you move? What part of the city?" When we tell them, they often look a little surprised at first, but then quickly recover and say, "Oh, that's an up and coming area." At first, I felt a little twinge of pride when people said this (how smart we were to buy a house in an "up and coming" area! That kind of bear!). But after the third or fourth time, I started to get suspicious and began wondering what this phrase really meant.
We bought a house in a minority neighborhood. Our new home is in a part of town traditionally associated with African-Americans. We are right next door to a predominantly African-American church, shared by a Latino congregation that meets on Saturday nights. One of our neighbors is from Ghana, a woman who lives with her daughter and at least one other tenant, also from Ghana. Another neighbor from across the street, Brian, is African American; he has a big, beautiful son named Rasheed, with deep ebony skin. We chose this neighborhood because we weren't comfortable in the lily-white upper-middle class part of town where we were renting, and wanted a place where there was diversity and a sense of community.
It's an up and coming neighborhood.
I suppose "up and coming" is probably the nicest possible way of saying "down and out with possibilities." You can't exactly call it a nice (read "white") neighborhood, but maybe in time it will get nicer (i.e., more nice white people will move there and drive the housing prices up so the minority and low-income people will have to leave and find someplace else to live). In saying this, I'm acutely aware that I am a part of this process of gentrification. I think I'd feel differently about being here if we had bought the house from an African-American family, but we did not. Our coming didn't change the demographic.
Today I was reflecting on Jesus' teaching in the Gospel of Mark with regard to the Son of David. Jesus asks the question, "If the Messiah is the son of David, how can David call him Lord?" The traditional exegesis is that Jesus is speaking about his own divine status as the Son of God. But perhaps there is something more to this passage.
David was the perfect example of an "up and coming" ruler, a man of deep-seated ambition. David was a winner. He never lost a battle. He successfully engineered the downfall of Saul, after marrying Saul's daughter so as to have a clear claim to the throne. He successfully united the Northern and Southern Kingdoms of Israel under his rule, and began a dynastic succession of kings that spanned some twenty generations.
Jesus' point was that the Messiah would be something more, something greater than David, David's own Lord. But he would do so not by winning, but rather by losing, by an act of voluntary sacrifice. There is a kind of deep irony in the statement "Sit at my right hand until I place your enemies beneath your feet;" Jesus' enemies are placed beneath his feet only when he is lifted up on the cross.
Jesus was a down and out Messiah.
The scribes expected a Messiah like David. And who could blame them? Everybody loves a winner. Isn't that what we expect at the Second Coming: the Heavenly Winner? I wonder why are we so hard on the Scribes and Pharisees for seeking that which we ourselves so eagerly desire?
We made a conscious decision to move to this neighborhood. So please don't pity us, and spare us the whole "up and coming" thing. We didn't choose this place in spite of the diversity, but because of it. We came seeking a sense of connection to a wondrously diverse human community.
We're glad to be here.
A post I've been saving for awhile. This grew out of an X-Files DVD binge last year.
Although perhaps first I should answer the question "where the hell have you been?!?" that a few of you have been kind enough to ask...
Answer: Out. Busy.
Ah, that's my inner teenager talking. It's never too late to have a rebellious adolescence.
The short of it is that we are in a new location, and I have been doing some new things. At some point I may write about this, but not now. Tonight, this is what I want to talk about:
For the past several years, we have tried to invite the poor to be a part of our lives, and we have found various ways of doing so in a couple of different locations, both rural and urban. As I said to my son today, I think religion goes bad when it grows far from the poor. But in our new location, we have not yet found a way to do this. We currently are living in an overly residential location with little or no sense of connectedness or community. We have found some opportunities to volunteer our time, but not a niche. Not a commitment.
So tonight it was food for the soul for us to go to the local Catholic Worker House and share a potluck vegetarian meal with people who define their ministry as one of "hospitality and resistance." We ate together, and talked about what we are doing and what we would like to be doing. We agreed to come back for the potluck next month. And we are looking at the possibility of being "house-parents" from time to time, coming over to the house to cook dinner, talk with the guests, and give members of the core staff a night off.
As the she-guerilla put it, "we found our tribe."
I think many of us are looking for precisely this. We are not looking for another volunteer opportunity. We are looking for a tribe, a community, a group of people with whom we hold values and a vision of the world in common, with whom we can share, not just work, but cooking and laughter, washing dishes, working in the garden together. We are seeking a sense of belonging, a connectedness that overcomes the isolation that has been imposed upon us by race, by class, by gender, and by a thousand others meaningless distinctions, the ways by which we size up others and say, "like me" or "not like me."
I think there are many, many people out there who are still looking for their tribe. Some of you have been looking for years.
I hope we have found a niche, a place to hang a longer-term commitment.
But in any case, tonight I am happy. And glad to be back.
For more information about Catholic Worker Houses, including a listing of locations, see http://www.catholicworker.org/.
