Understand the Fuss

It was just shy of 20 years ago at a leisurely breakfast table in County Roscommon, Ireland. We had finished our porridge, scrambled eggs and scones after a solid night's sleep at the Bed and Breakfast. The other guests had just departed, some dressed in auto-racing jackets. The room still glowed with the warmth of travel tales, Irish brogues and easy laughter as Teresa and I enjoyed a quiet cup of coffee before we, too, would hit the road. The innkeeper cleared dishes and doted on us.

As we prepared to leave, we complimented our host on her hospitality and the quality of the breakfast conversation we had just enjoyed as the lone Americans among a dozen Irish guests.

"Yes," she said in her marvelous lilt, nodding her head slowly. "They're just like us, aren't they? I don't understand the fuss."

Reading our baffled looks, she explained herself.

"The Northerners, I mean. They're no different than us."

Visiting from the other side of the ocean, we two Yanks hadn't recognized that half the guests had been Catholic Irish, and the other half Protestant Northern Irish. This was a vital distinction to those closer in, but Teresa and I missed the whole conflicted under-current.

I've often reflected on this small treasure of a memory from my particular spot on the tiny, spinning rock all humans call home. I imagine all the vital distinctions dividing our race would be quite imperceptible to any visitor from beyond our  fragile atmosphere. Still, this is the soup inwhich we swim... our reality.

I mention this because we have just passed Veterans' Day. I know some people are quite uncomfortable with this and the Memorial Day holidays. Some believe these observances are turned into a promotion of the military-industrial complex and the glorification of war. The point does have some resonance for me. War is undoubtedly the worst of human innovations: a true mark of abysmal failure in EVERY case.

War is hell.

I heard an interview recently with a soldier who had done multiple tours in Iraq. He, like many, had been placed in a position where he had to kill other human beings. He is certain that he killed several. He said that near the end of his final tour he had started to think before each patrol that he just wanted to make it home, no differently than any person likely to be in his gunsights that day.

That is hell.

I hold other stories, but they aren't mine to share. They came out in hoarse whispers late at night when others had gone to bed, or within concrete walls after staff and family footsteps had long since trailed away down long hallways. They are harrowing memories, and mostly involve what must be done to survive amid unspeakable carnage. Such stories are not welcomed from lofty pulpits or flag-bedecked platforms erected on village greens.

That is hell.

Let's never forget those who go through hell.

It is not lost on me that many who chant "freedom isn't free" are turning a hefty profit waging war. Also, somehow, it is never their sons and daughters shooting and being shot -- nor, typically, the sons and daughters of the elected officials they own. The parting wisdom of President/General Dwight D. Eisenhower should be carved on every forehead in America. He called it, didn't he?

But two days a year I still choose to publicly recognize en masse the horror we have elected to put many of our brothers and sisters through. Phone calls and/or visits are made, too. I don't wrap it in flags and patriotic platitudes. I recognize horror, hardship and sacrifice. Don't even dream of suggesting that's not appropriate.

It is so tragic what we humans put ourselves through.

The Fear Monster

A few years back I used to write articles for Rochester, NY's City newspaper. I thought I'd republish a few here and see what gronks...

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. – John 14:27

When I was a child I marveled at the prospect of someday being big – courageous, strong and free of all fear, like Mom and Dad. The dark depths under the bed, the eerie silence behind the closet door, even the twisted shadows reaching through the window held no power over them. Life without fear held such promise!

At age 42, I’m still hoping to someday be bigger than my fears. Like most of us, I merely traded my childhood fears for mortgage monsters and well-being ghouls that sometimes overwhelm, robbing me of sleep far more aggressively than did any imagined threat of my youth. I haven’t learned my lesson: It is not a monster I fear; my fear IS the monster.

Fear is the opponent of peace. It constricts the flow of blood to our brains and narrows our thinking. It is the basis of all anger, crime and conflict.

Peace as the world gives – usually defined as the mere absence of war – is fearfully inadequate. Instead, let us with our children embrace a higher personal standard: peace as the absence of fear. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Do not let them be afraid, that wonderful man said. Examine and understand. Cast enlightenment on your darkest fears. It is what fear does to us in the darkest recesses of our hearts that leads to all that goes terribly wrong on this beautiful planet among these beautiful people.

Work through your nightmares and our world sleeps better tonight.

A Whereness of God

But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! – 1 Kings 8:27

So Solomon begins his dedication of the massive temple he built in Jerusalem, the first of its kind for a God that had first been encountered by humanity somewhere around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (we think), and who had led men, women and children to wander across borders of far-flung nations, in and out of slavery, self-rule and exile for millennia.
This is the God who compelled Abram to pull up stakes in Ur and travel all the way to Canaan. Who led Joseph and his brothers down into Egypt…Moses and his followers back out. This was a God of nomadic herdsman, itinerant workers, strangers in strange lands and vagabonds. Now Solomon would push a pin into the infinite map of the universe and say “this is where we will meet to encounter God.”
Solomon, in his wisdom, immediately recognizes the irony of the moment: How could the God who created the heavens and the earth, whom our ancestors met everywhere they turned, be contained in this one spot? Nonsense! Solomon’s Temple was not built to narrow the scope of God, but to focus the vision of God’s people.
A church is not built to corral God, but to corral us: God’s wandering, ADHD followers. If we simply stated that we would meet Sunday morning where we most encounter God, some of us would be up in the hills or down by the lake, others in an inner-city soup kitchen, a maternity ward or a Habitat for Humanity construction site. A couple of us would meet at the church, and a few of us wouldn’t even leave our homes.
We are followers of a God who supplies to us no name beyond Yahweh -- I Am. Christ’s given name, Jehoshua, literally means Through God I am Free. Christ sends to us the Spirit whose name means wind (ruah).
But sometimes for us finite, mortal beings, AWARENESS of God requires A WHERENESS of God; a specific place we set apart as communally holy, where we can come together, share our experiences and turn to our God as one to offer praise and worship. Building and maintaining a church are profound acts of worship: a reaching out for God, a humbling of our human intentions. Attending a church is an expression of love to God, an act of faith and sacrifice. From the moment you turn to begin your trip to a house of worship, you have begun a holy pilgrimage, not because you are moving from where God isn’t to where God is, but because you have set your mind and the coming hour on Christ, and are journeying with others to turn together to our God who is everywhere. It is the beginning of our offering before we put anything in the collection plate!
May your church always provide A WHERENESS of God. And, wherever you go outside the church, may you recognize your brother, Christ, in the freedom of will you enjoy, and take in the Holy Spirit in the very air you breath.