Here We are Again

Then they are again as before all suffering

and sleep deep sleep and have no glory

and their souls are white as silk,

and from the same longing both tremble

and are frightened by their heroism.

-Ranier Maria Rilke, Martyrs

When you stretch out your hands,

I will hide my eyes from you;

even though you make many prayers,

I will not listen; 

your hands are full of blood.

-Isaiah 1: 15

It's gone deeper America.  A few years ago, you may have been able to solve this problem with laws and regulations: more thorough background checks, reasonable regulations on what kinds of guns people could own, better mental healthcare. You might still try those things, but you would be like one of those medieval doctors trying to treat cancer by bleeding the patient with leeches, it might seem like the thing to do, but it's not going to cure anything.  The rot has gotten to the bone.  We have been denying our fear and hatred for too long, even the ones who preach love, we have been too easily duped into thinking that this problem of our violent hearts could be settled with rules and scraping around on the surface.

I should have known, when someone shot up an elementary school and nothing happened that it had gotten that bad.  Our laws could use some fixing, but until we change our hearts this is just going to keep going and there will be more and more martyrs to our violence and hatred.  Let's face it, the thing that motivates people to kill crowds of strangers, whether they use bombs, guns or airplanes is the idea that those strangers are their mortal enemy.  Yes, it takes a certain derangement to make the leap from a stranger to an infidel or an invader, but derangement never seems in short supply. The desperation that afflicts many who are young, poor and disenfranchised can easily be twisted to violence with some well placed propaganda, all the better if they have been raised to believe the world owes them something better than what they have. Stir the mix with a leader or leaders who confirms and legitimizes what often seems like a natural born fear of the other, and plays to the notion that they are the true victims, and the toxic cocktail is nearly complete.

Then it's just a matter of the tools for the job, which is the place where we usually take up the debate, but that's not good enough, not now.  Now is the time for lament, to rend our hearts and not our garments.  Now is the time to admit that we don't have a solution to the real problem, but not to ignore that there is a problem and what it is.  The problem is that we are taught to believe that there is not enough to go around, not enough food, not enough shelter, not enough freedom, not enough security, not enough dignity.  There is a fundamental flaw in the human heart that never trusts that there is enough, even though all our most "enlightened" teachers from Buddha to Jesus tell us that there is, in fact, enough.

The politicians, the emperors, the tyrants and the fascists will all tell us that there is not enough and we need to fight for our share.  The mystics and the holy people (if they are truly holy) will tell us that we need to cooperate because we're all connected and this fighting over "our share" is what creates all this suffering and pours innocent blood into all of our hands.  Even those of us who would "never" consider mass violence are guilty, because we believe the fundamental lie of scarcity instead of abundance and that lie prevents us from truly loving our neighbor let alone our enemy as Christ commends.  Indeed if the ones who desire to hold power do not want us to realize that true power is in being free of the fear they use to hold us in their thrall, the best thing they could do is to keep us focused on symptoms rather than the disease.  Offer us panaceas, or convince us that nothing can really change; sell us the notion of sweeping reform, or inviting us into the slow futility of incremental and shallow changes, or tell us that nothing really can be done; the grip of the principalities and powers tightens around our throat.

So what's the solution?

First of all, refuse to be afraid, and if you are afraid practice courage.  Second of all, refuse to hate, and if you are tempted to hate practice love most powerfully in that very place.  Third of all, be kind to one another, especially when you feel justified in meanness.  Each step builds on one another. I began with a poem and a prophecy, I will end with a similar pairing:

For God's sake, be done

with this jabber of "a better world."

What blasphemy! No "futuristic"

twit or child thereof ever

in embodied light will see

a better world than this. though they

foretell inevitably a worse.

Do something! Go cut the weeds

beside the oblivious road. Pick up

the cans and bottles, old tires,

and dead predictions.  No future

can be stuffed into this presence

except by being dead. The day is

clear and bright, and overhead

the sun not yet half finished

with his daily praise.

-Wendell Berry, The Future

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;

remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes;

cease to do evil, learn what is good;

seek justice, rescue the oppressed,

defend the orphan, plead for the widow.

Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord;

though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow;

though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land;

but if you refuse and rebel,

you shall be devoured by the sword;

for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

-Isaiah 1: 16-20

-Spoiler alert, that is the sermon text for Sunday