revolutionary love, patience and the beloved community in 2020...

Almost every morning I am greeted by two online poems. Yesterday this one by W.S. Merwin showed up: "Remembering Summer."

Being too warm the old lady said to me
is better than being too cold I think now
in between is the best because you never
give it a thought but it goes by too fast
I remember the winter how cold it got
I could never get warm wherever I was
but I don’t remember the summer heat like that
only the long days the breathing of the trees
the evenings with the hens still talking in the lane
and the light getting longer in the valley
the sound of a bell from down there somewhere
I can sit here now still listening to it

It is both fun and fitting to read this poem this morning as a wintry mix of snow, sleet, and freezing rain starts to coat this part of creation in a stunning and slick blanket of dangerous slop. There are a few vehicles out on the road, notably the sand and salt trucks, but most folk have chosen to play it safe and stay inside. I like getting poetic reminders like this that reconnect me to the true rhythm of life. It is so easy to be seduced by the buzz and rush of popular culture and politics that I forget how slowly everything - myself included - really changes. Before going to bed last night I read this from Fr. Richard Rohr:

We are bookended in a personal love - coming from love and moving toward and ever more inclusive love. Why do I think this is so important? Frankly, because without (this perspective) we become very impatient with ourselves and others. Humans and history both grow slowly and often move three steps forwards, two steps back. We expect people to show up at our doors fully transformed and holy before they can be welcomed in. But growth language says it is appropriate to wait, trust that change of consciousness, what the Bible calls in Greek,  metanoeite, can only come with time. This patience ends up being the very shape of love. Without an evolutionary worldview, Christianity does not really understand, much less foster, growth or change. Nor does it know how to respect and support where history is heading. (Center for Contemplation and Action)

I draw sustenance from trusting the presence of God in nature. I am nourished and strengthened by the counter-cultural wisdom of revolutionary love. But only if I practice resting into the flow of reality's slow moving heart; otherwise, I forget, become frantic, and violate the rhythm of change at the core of creation with my thoughts, words, and deeds. And in a time such as our own, when people of compassion are compelled to resist the fear, hatred, and violence, it is so easy to become lost. To live re-actively, unmoored and overwhelmed, rather than grounded in the guidance of God. That is clearly why today's weather and yesterday's poem point me toward a sacred alternative - one in which God is ever present, albeit moving slowly - with a love that saturates life, death, and life beyond death with grace. St. Paul asks us to remember that God's presence never gives up:

It cares more for others than for self, doesn’t want what it doesn’t have, doesn't strut, doesn’t have a swelled head, doesn’t force itself on others, isn’t always “me first,” doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, doesn’t revel when others grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts the rhythm of creation always, looks for the best, never looks back, and keeps on going to the end - and beyond. (I Corinthians 13, The Message)

Yesterday and today the cycle of news in the USA has been filled with reactions to the new epidemic of antisemitic violence. Some of us have expressed shock that such evil still lurks just below the surface in our country. How this this be? Aren't we better than this in 2019? I suspect that those who feel this were among the millions stunned by the current regime's victory in 2016: incredulous and grief-stricken as our optimistic worldview crumbled. Today many of us are angry and afraid. Some are even so cynical to claim that nothing has really changed. But that's not entirely true. Of course there is nothing new under the sun. The wise old preacher of Ecclesiastes back in 935 BCE understood nature and human nature better than many of us on the cusp of 2020 CE. 

One generation goes its way, the next one arrives, but nothing changes—it’s business as usual for old planet earth.
The sun comes up and the sun goes down,
then does it again, and again—the same old round.
The wind blows south, the wind blows north.
Around and around and around it blows,
blowing this way, then that—the whirling, erratic wind.
All the rivers flow into the sea,
but the sea never fills up.
The rivers keep flowing to the same old place,
and then start all over and do it again.
Everything’s boring, utterly boring—
no one can find any meaning in it.
Boring to the eye,
boring to the ear.
What was, will be again,
what happened will happen again.
There’s nothing new on this earth.
Year after year it’s the same old thing.

What has changed, and will continue to change incrementally but authentically and in God's own time, is our commitment to incarnational solidarity. Radical love beyond theological distinctions. What Dr. King called the Beloved Community. We know that we are all in this together. We know that whatever happens to one part of the human community effects us all.

Yes, violence remains. Yes, some Christians continue to fear and hate Jews. Yes, the wounds of the mothers and fathers are still being passed on to the children of the third and fourth generations. And, at the same time, some Christians and Muslims are putting their bodies on the line to protect their Jewish cousins. We are speaking out in public. We are reaching out in private to share solace and sustenance. And we are living into the sacred change of direction - what the Bible calls in Greek, metanoeite - that is the antidote to the poison we inherited from the shadow side of our European Christianity. Even 50 years ago such solidarity would have been outside the Christian imagination. It wasn't until November 1963 that Vatican II clearly changed course by insisting in the treatise on ecumenism that Jews were NOT responsible for the death of Jesus.

Part of the fourth chapter that stirred most attention deals with the issue of the responsibility of the Jews in the crucifixion of Christ. Newspapers, in their desire to convey the point as strikingly as possible, were not always felicitous in their brevity. The schema states that "the responsibility for Christ's death falls upon sinful mankind." In other words, the blame falls on both Jew and Christian. The part the Jewish leaders of Christs time played in bringing about the crucifixion does not exclude the guilt of all mankind. In addition, the personal guilt of these leaders cannot be charged to the whole Jewish people either of Christs time or today. There is a practical conclusion to this. According to the November 8 release: "It is therefore unjust to call this people deicide or to consider it cursed by God."

The Jesuit magazine, America, summarizes this momentous act of theological clarity. Noting that Vatican II did not "enunciate any new doctrine" in this text. Rather, it removed "the source of a ghastly ambiguity. Down the centuries, this ambiguity has allowed the popular mind to associate Christianity with some of the most lamentable episodes in human annals."

How many Christian fanatics, surely not moved by the spirit of Christ, fed upon the legend of the "Christ-killer" in the belief they were doing the will of God. How many were there who, caring little for Holy Writ or the liturgy, were all too ready to quote it sanctimoniously to justify their passion, their hate or their greed! The most despicable kind of anti-Semitism is that which invokes the sacred Passion of Christ. The time had already come, even before the Nazi excesses, for the Christian world to banish this scandal. The expression "Christ-killer" or "deicide" is heard less in some parts of the Christian world than in others. But wherever it is used, the draft declares: "The sacred events of the Bible and, in particular, its account of the crucifixion, cannot give rise to disdain or hatred or persecution of the Jews." We think that the president of the American Jewish Committee was right, along with others who made the same commentary, when he concluded: "Acceptance of this decree will make it impossible for anyone to instigate hatred for Jews and claim sanction or support in Christian teaching or dogma." (https://www.americamagazine.org/ issue/100/jews-and-vatican-ii)

Patience is the shape of God's love in time, in history, and in our hearts. Most of the time we are grateful for this when it applies to our own hearts. It is much harder to be sanguine when wrestling with the wounds of our culture. But I submit to you that patient love is ripening and spreading throughout the human community. Our small family here in the Berkshires has made a commitment to become allies with Valerie Kaur and others in the Revolutionary Love Project. They know that it is not just Christians, Jews and Muslims who are turning the words of radical love into flesh: there is a ripening cadre of Sikhs, Buddhists, Taoists, atheists, artists, and those who trust that love greater than themselves yet practice their compassion from outside any of the traditional religions that are banding together. 

Fifty years ago Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel marched together arm in arm in solidarity. They proclaimed that while human nature doesn't change, it can be healed. It can be nourished and directed towards that which is holy, true, noble, beautiful, and of peace, or, it can foment fear, violence, hatred and division. Ms. Kaur's commitment renews and deepens the old blessing:

We want to stage a cultural intervention in 2020 — Imagine a critical mass of artists, activists, faith leaders, and thought leaders using their voice, art, music, stories, and platforms to call people to action with love. We can shift consciousness from what we are fighting against to what we are laboring for. We can equip people to make love the ethic in more of our homes, schools, and movements.

I am learning that while the weather is keeping us inside today, it would be so foolish and dangerous to do otherwise, this is part of the sacred rhythm of God's love. I trust that there is a place for rest and action. A place for trust as well as silence and even dancing. A place for grace to grow within and patiently nourish the Beloved Community beyond. Please check out the Revolutionary Love Project here: https://revolutionarylove.net.