Thank you to chris hedges and alice walker...

While we were away in Montreal (and Ottawa) earlier this summer, I picked up two very different books:  The World Will Follow Joy (Turning Madness into Flowers) by Alice Walker and Death of the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges.  Both are prophetic, both are two although one is as different from the other as night is from day.

Hedges, some may know, is the Harvard Divinity School alum turned reporter who spent 20 years as a war correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, the Balkans and Africa.  After a 2003 commencement address at Rockford College in which he said, "We are embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige and power and security," his employers at the NY Times urged him to cool his jets re: future anti-war rhetoric pertaining to Iraq. Soon thereafter Hedges left the paper.  Currently he writes a weekly column for TruthDig.com (check him out @ http://www. truthdig.com/report/category/hedges/) and serves as a Senior Fellow at The Nation Institute (see http://www.nationinstitute.org/)  His books about the personal and social consequences of war - War is the Force that Gives Us Meaning and What Every Person Should Know about War - are a jarring and biting indictment of the America's addiction to violence.  His current writing about environmental disaster, the erosion of dissent in post September 11th America and the corruption of social institutions by capital are bleak and all too true.

Alice Walker is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar and 22 other novels, collections of poetry and children's books. She is the first African American woman to have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction.  Her advocacy for the rights of all living beings is filled with wisdom and compassion - as is her commitment to radical healing and hope.  Recently she wrote about the murder of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of George Zimmerman like this: "So many murders of black men in my lifetime. The physical shock is astounding. I write this remembering that when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968 the shock to my system was so severe that I lost the child I was carrying."  (check out more @ http://alicewalkersgarden. com/2013/07/thoughts-on-our-sorrow-trayvon-martin-and-troy-davis/) Her wisdom and solidarity with the wounded of the world are inspirational and every bit as true as the words of Hedges.

Both Hedges and Walker are essential for me to stay grounded in the truth of the hour (with a healthy dose of Jesus, Ed Hays, Eugene Peterson, Kathleen Norris and Richard Rohr thrown in for good measure, too.)  Hedges refuses to pull his punches - and serves no master other than the quest for reality. 

The disparity between what we are told or what we believe about war and war itself is so vast that those who come back are often rendered speechless. What do you say to those who advocate war as an instrument to liberated the women of Afghanistan or bring democracy to Iraq? How do you tell them what war is like? How do you explain that the very proposition of war as an instrument of virtue is absurd? How do you cope with memories of small, terrified children bleeding to death with bits of iron fragments peppered through their small bodies,? How do you speak of war without tears?  (Death of the Liberal Class, p. 58)

Walker is equally sober even when she articulates a hope born of the ashes of our suffering.

What makes the Dalai Lama
Lovable?

His posture
From so many years
Holding his robe with one hand
Is odd.

His gait
Also.

One's own body
Aches
Witnessing
The sloping
Shoulders
& Angled
Neck;

One hopes
He attends
Yoga class
Or does Yoga
On his own
As part
Of prayer.

He smiles
As he bows
To everything:
Accepting
The heavy
Burdens
Of
This earth;

Its
Toxic
Evils
& Prolific
Insults.

Even so,
He sleeps
Through
The night
Like a child
Because
Thank goodness
That is something
Else
Daylong
Meditation
Assures.

You could cry
Yourself to sleep
On his behalf
& He
Has done that
Too.

Life
Has been
A great
Endless
Tearing away
For
Him.

From
Mother, Father, Siblings, Country, Home.
And yet
Clearly
His mother
Loved him...
...............

That is not all
They see.

They see our suffering;
Our striving
To find
The right path;
The one with heart
We may only
Have heard about.

The Dalai Lama is Cool
A modern word
For
"Divine"
Because he wants
Only
Our collective
Health
& Happiness.

That's it!

What makes
Him
Lovable
Is
His holiness.

Every week I find I need to spend time with hard, true and unsentimental reflection on the agony of this world - and you can't get better than Hedges.  I also need moments of beauty and humility in poetry and music - and Walker is one who finds ways to lift my spirit even in sorrow.  What do you do to feed your soul?  Nourish and cultivate the practices of reverence?  Rest in both the sorrow and the celebrations?  Please tell me...