...wage peace

Through war-torn streets where hope is dead,

Fly bombs and anger ‘round our heads.

We raise the cry, “God hear our plea

And guide our feet in paths of peace.”

Through homes where love cannot to be found,

And violence spreads the fear around,

We raise the cry, “God hear our plea

And guide our feet in paths of peace.”

Through lands where food just will not grow,

And streams of water never flow,

We raise the cry, “God hear our plea

And guide our feet in paths of peace.”

Through minds where illness takes first place,

And wholeness longs for any space,

We raise the cry, “God hear our plea

And guide our feet in paths of peace.”

Through challenges of this our time,

Through rage, neglect, greed’s paradigm,

We raise the cry, “God hear our plea

And guide our feet in paths of peace.”

When things seem worst, we hear the song

Hope sings above the din of wrong:

The song of One who hears our plea.

Christ guides our feet in paths of peace.

---Leigh Anne Armstrong, 2005

tune: FERNDALE

By God's tender mercies,

dawn will break on high,

bringing light to us who sit in dark,

in the very shadow of death,

to brighten the way to the path of peace.

---Luke 1:78-79 (para. laca)

During my prayers and meditations this morning it passed through my mind that, though our individual and tribal agonies and tragedies seem freshly goring with each new wound, we have been hurting for a long time now. We have been needing peace, in our climate, in our world, in our homes, in our hearts and psyches, for so long. Most of the time we move through our days, numb to the violence around us, blind to the damage inflicted on our brothers and sisters by systems and power and pure plain meanness and evil. The world is engineered for numbness, for dulling the senses to the pain of others, even our own pain. 

And then sectarian and tribal violence turns into mass slaying of school children and college students. Or the pain of mental illness spills over into unspeakable tragedy on a massive scale. Or families have to take stock and rebuild love where it grows for their children. 

And through all of this, faint, is the song of hope. Not the kind of solid thing performed by a symphony orchestra with a festival chorus. More like the caught wisp of a melody, floating out of an open window on one of those rare, fine days when open windows might be acceptable in our part of the country. You might only catch a few notes, a rise and fall of phrase. But when you do. When you  do. It may just give you the courage to wage peace in this world, where all the violence seems continually new.

...peace-flung splendors

For lo, the days are hastening on, by prophet bards foretold,

when with the ever-circling years comes round the age of gold;

when peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendors fling,

and the whole world give back the song which now the angels sing.

---Edmund Sears, 1849

I won’t lie. The complete text of this hymn, written in 1849 by Massachusetts minister Edmund Sears, is one of the most incisive studies of peace, and how we destroy it, that I have ever read. Almost no hymnal includes all the verses, but you can find them complete on several internet sites, and I encourage you to do so (along with the entire text of ‘I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day’, from Longfellow’s poem ‘Christmas Bells’). Their power will affect you deeply; and in our world of commonplace, numbing un-peace, we need the angels’ song to shock us out of our complacency.

This verse looks forward to a time when the world will be set right, in tune with the song of the angels, at peace. Imagine, a time when peace, personified, flings its splendors over the whole world; a time when warring and internal turmoil cease around the globe; a time when we mortals can forget our war-cries and shouts of hate and fear, and fill our mouths and hearts to echo back the peace song the angels have sung all along.

Lo, the days are hastening on…

...is there peace?

It was as if an earthquake rent the hearthstones of a continent,
And made forlorn the households born
of peace on earth, goodwill to men.
And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong, and mocks the song
of peace on earth, goodwill to men!"
---Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1863

As important as any of the text quoted above (from the poem Christmas Bells, of which a large excerpt became the carol I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day) is the citation of the year of its composition. 1863. The bloody, fiery, hateful middle of our torn-up nation's Civil War. Longfellow's own household was not untouched by the war's devastation, as his oldest son, gone to fight against his father's will, was soon gravely wounded in battle. Top to bottom, the country watched and waited, impotent, as its youth played their parts, wounded and wounding, injured and injuring, bleeding and dying on killing fields that had only months before been yielding fields. Violence had broken society as surely as an earthquake might crack the hearthstones of a community's homes.

And still today, in the streets, the song of peace on earth is mocked by the strong semi-automatic fire of hate, by the casual disregard for the spark of the Divine in each human life. Still, disagreements escalate, and the hardware is easily accessible to create permanent solutions for temporary problems. Still, we live in a culture where we have failed to make known each person's value and worth. All lives don't matter, not in all circumstances, and despair is the result. There is no peace on earth.

But Longfellow, honest and despairing as he was, didn't end his poem there. And the story doesn't end there for us either. Because we await the coming of the Prince of Peace, ushering in a reign of peace. And the peace can change us. We can see each other, and ourselves, as beloved of God. And treat each other with goodwill. Lord, haste the day.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail, the Right prevail,
With peace on earth, goodwill to men."

...hope and fear

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by;
yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light;
the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.
---Phillips Brooks, 1868

I wonder, when I watch the news, or read history, or talk to friends, or sit alone with my own thoughts, whether fear is not the controlling emotion in our world, whether it always has been. Whether fear has not been the root cause of self-image spirals, jealousies and betrayals, greed and hoarding, wars and violence. Whether fear is not the reason we fail, so often, to summon up the courage to risk loving each other.

But in a little backwater town, a long time ago, stress fractures appeared in the fear chain. Tiny things, really; not so you'd notice, if you weren't looking. But in this little town, in the midst of fears --- both the everyday variety and the 'we're-having-a-baby-and-the-whole-world-is-spinning-out-of-control' kind --- hope touches down. In Bethlehem, with the otherwise unremarkable birth of a baby, each world-fear is met with hope. The insidious beachhead of fear is met by the tide of hope sweeping in, wave on wave.

It may take time, but little by little the beach can be eaten away by the tide.

AND...

They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks. 
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.
---Isaiah 2:4

There is a long and proud tradition in this world. If you are against something, and need to destroy it, burn it up! Off the top of my head I can think of burnings of subversive books (in real life, in Nazi history, and in Farenheit 451), rock and roll records (young readers, I'll explain records later), ugly Christmas sweaters (I kid you not), confiscated marijuana crops, Korans, piles of old tires (if you live out in the country in the past), bought-back illegal handguns, dead bodies during plague years, even 'witches' (alive, during dark days of our country's own history).
And when I read the prophetic message contained in Isaiah 2, I could picture the efficiency with which swords and spears, implements of war one and all, could have been gathered up into the world's largest and most justified bonfire. What better way to bring peace than to destroy forever the instruments of violence and hatred? And yet God's ways are so much higher than my ways, God's creativity drawing lovely circles around my crude connect-the-dots. Because destruction, even of pure evil, is never God's final word. God's final word is redemption, even of evil.
Another way top say this might just be AND. Like the Coke Zero ad campaign, it is not enough for violence to cease for God to call it a day. No, the impulses that give birth to violence must be transformed to yearn for the birth pangs of peace. The dreams of revenge must morph into dreams that include sufficient supply for all of God's children.
Those spears? Those swords? Don't destroy them. Transform them. Then use them to transform the world.
Peace the world. With AND.


so here we stand, whoever we are,
bathed in the light of a star...