Ministers Musings
Seeking Hope in a Time of War
HEADLINE: March 3, 2008: U.S. Troops find 14 bodies shot in the head in Iraq
HEADLINE: March 6, 2008: Pair of bombs kills 53 in Baghdad
HEADLINE: March 8, 2008: Mass Grave found in Iraq, estimated at 100 bodies
How did that feel to hear these headlines from this past week? How does it feel to you on a daily basis to have this information about the suffering of others served to you by the media? Obviously, these headlines and their accompanying photos are aiding a growing anti-war movement. That movement is taking hold in our Unitarian Universalist congregations, but I’m not presumptuous enough to assume that we are all on the same page about when and how this war should end. Today, I leave that conversation to our forums, coffee –houses and blogs.
What I’m wondering about is how all this information, the headlines that give us daily death toll of U.S. soldiers, Iraqi soldiers and Iraqi citizens, the nightly news that routinely show ravaged, bombed out areas of Baghdad, the pictures of fallen military men and women that are aired in silence on the PBS News Hour – I’m wondering what the impact of that is on our soul – on your soul. That’s the religious question that has roused my curiosity.
Even George Bush, probably the biggest proponent of this war, told Democratic leaders over a year ago in a private session that the War in Iraq is ‘sapping the soul’ of the nation.
What is happening to your soul?
Each of us chooses, consciously or unconsciously how to respond to the world around us. But there is no doubt that each of our body/spirits are responding in some way.
This past Thursday, I happened to be in my car at the top of the hour for the NPR news update. In a time span of about three minutes I heard about the 53 people killed and 125 wounded in Baghdad, 8 students killed in at a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem, and 5 people killed by twin suicide bombers in a naval village in Pakistan.
For me, it was an inferno of information.
In this story, the Parrot asks itself: “What is a bird to do in times like these?”
And I ask you a similar question: “How are you responding to the inferno of these times?”
Are you like the Parrot – needing desperately to do something, rushing around throwing drops of water on the inferno in the form of petition signatures or attendance at rallies? Do you live with a sense that you have to do something?
Or are you more like the gods above it all – comfortably analyzing the situation, with two newspapers under your arms and podcasts of all the major news programs running in your ears?
Do you feel like one of the animals of the forest, running away as fast as you can from the suffering that comes at you every day?
Or are you like the animals unable to move, paralyzed by the heat of the flame of the blaze?
Truth be told, more often than not, I respond like a paralyzed animal, an ostrich to be exact. Most days I just need to keep my head in the sand. I’m pretty sensitive to the onslaught of reported atrocities, and fall into the camp that needs to limit consumption of information to prevent the wearing down of my soul.
And, I have to admit, my daily life is pretty insulated from the tragedies half way around the world – be they in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or the Gaza strip. So, maybe I’m more like an ostrich living safely across the river. I don’t know anyone serving in our US Military, and I don’t have any family connections in any war zone. In my day to day life of dropping kids off and picking them up, keeping the refrigerator stocked and the laundry clean, buying birthday gifts for 6 year olds, making doctors and dentists appointments and remembering to show up, and ministering to this congregation, I can easily be lulled into a passive state of living in sunny Colorado, especially when I shield myself from the media.
But I don’t want to live like that. I don’t want to let the comforts of my life shield me from the pain that exists elsewhere. Because that in and of itself causes another form of pain.
Franz Kapka wrote:
You can hold yourself back from the suffering of the world: this is something you are free to do, . . .but perhaps precisely this holding back is the only suffering you might be able to avoid.
What he’s talking about is the pain of separation. My soul knows that we are all interconnected. That the suffering of one is the suffering of all. Great teachers have repeatedly come with that message. And more than that – I know that the comfortable life that I enjoy is part of the reason that others suffer around the world.
So, every so often, I do come up for air, and often find myself operating like the Parrot as long as my little wings and my tender heart can stand it. But that busyness can also work to prevent me from really feeling the impact of the suffering on my life. Deep down, neither of these responses addresses the aching of my soul.
But if we look at the Buddhist story closely, we see that the real change happens when the Hawk is moved to tears. While the other Gods are cynically discussing the situation from above, and the Parrot is busy doing anything to halt the suffering, it is the Hawk’s capacity to let the tragedy into his heart that stops the inferno and regenerates the forest.
I think the soul of our nation is feeling sapped because we haven’t found a way to individually or collectively be moved to tears by that which we are witnessing, no matter where we stand politically. The blogs, the banter, the debates that dominate the airwaves have the tendency to keep us engaged from the neck up, to encourage us to be polarized and blaming, rather than feeling the impact of the world’s pain and examining what we can do to heal our world.
In a critique of the US, the Dalai Lama said:
Never give up,
No matter what is happening,
Never give up.
Too much energy in your country
is spent developing the mind
instead of the heart.
Be compassionate
Engaging from the neck up is an understandable response, for I think we fear that our hearts would break if we took it all in. But compassionate response requires the engagements of our hearts.
We can try to run around it, we can try to duck under it, but I’ve come to believe that the work of sustaining hope requires that we allow ourselves to feel our own response to the suffering we are witnessing, even if, or perhaps especially if, we live comfortable lives that appear to be disconnected from the violence perpetrated half a world away.
In 1995, I was privileged to work with Joanna Macy, a Buddhist social activist and scholar. The world was significantly different in 1995 – the World Trade Center was still standing and no one had heard of al Quaeda. At that point, the Iraq War was thought to be an historical event.
Still, Joanna’s work then and for the decades that preceded my work with her, was to help people come to terms with the emotional toll of the times in which we live. In what she terms “despair work” Joanna used an experiential process to reawaken my senses to not only the pain I was carrying around, but to the possibility of healing. Moving through the pain allowed me to realize that my own sadness was an indicator of the deep reverence that I feel for life.
I remember one ritual we did – called the Truth Mandala. First we made a large circle with four quadrants out of stones. In one of the quadrants, there was a stick, to symbolize anger; in another dry leaves, for grief; in the third, a large stone, for paralyzing fear; and in the last, an empty bowl –deprivation and need, our hunger for what’s missing.
As we felt moved, we entered into the circle and moved around to those objects that called us. One after the other, we named our deepest concerns for the world – global warming, environmental degradation, cancer and other health issues, violence we’d experienced or witnessed . . . after each person had finished, we simply said. “We hear you.”
When the ritual ended we were reminded of the flip side of each of these symbols and emotions – the expression of anger is a path to justice; we only grieve and mourn that which we care deeply about, on the flip side of fear is the courage and trust to name it, and that empty bowl with its yearnings is space to be filled with hope and renewal.
The results of these and other exercises were profound. My sense of solidarity with my other classmates and the world was heightened, as was my love for and commitment to being a healer in our ailing world.
It’s easy to feel hopeless in these times. But, hope has a chance to survive when the shackles of isolation and despair are loosened through heart-to-heart engagement.
Cornell West writes:
A community that genuinely emphasizes the spiritual dimension and is characterized by real questioning, dialogue, and compassion toward its own members and toward people who do not yet share [its] views has a good chance of sustaining itself.
I say that such a community, while rare, does more than sustain itself, but models a method of peace-making and compassion that our world sorely needs.
And, I believe our congregations are uniquely suited for this work. As Unitarian Universalists, we are called to seek truth, even uncomfortable truths, even truths that lie buried in our hearts. If we are to be a caring community for one another, we must trust each other to bring our feelings about the state of the world into sacred space with one another.
Can we invite one another to share our deepest fears about what we see and experience around us? In addition to keeping up with the politics of the war, and doing what we can to build beloved community in as many forms as possible, can we also create rituals that allow for healing tears to flow? Could this be part of what we call ourselves to do and be for one another in our Small Group Ministries or Adult Religious Education? Can we structure our forums to engage our hearts as well as our minds?
Engaging our hearts with one another in this way might feel risky at first. Acknowledging our own fears, anger, despair or hopelessness is never easy.
But imagine the gift it might provide to our congregations if we dared to name the sadness we tightly seal away. Imagine the release of energy that might be available to us if we allowed ourselves to ‘fall apart’ over the state of the world. Scary as it may seem, we really won’t break.
Imagine if we opened our doors to the wider community not for discussions about issues, but for candle-light vigils where people are invited to bring into the silence their feelings of anger, despair and hopelessness.
Imagine what it might feel like to you to hear someone else speak words that resonate with your own soul.
Can we regenerate the forest from its inferno of despair?
Like the Parrot, we must never give up doing our part to keep hope alive. Like the Hawk, we need to allow ourselves to be moved to tears to reap lasting benefits.
This, I believe, is the work our souls are yearning for.
This, I believe, is the work for our congregations.
May it be so.
Please join me in this responsive reading, in the spirit of prayer: (as responsive reading)
RESPONSIVE READING “May our eyes remain open even in the face of tragedy”
—The Terma Collective
May our eyes remain open in the face of tragedy.
May we not become disheartened.
May we find in the dissolution of our apathy and denial, the cup of the broken heart.
May we discover the gift of fire burning in the inner chamber of our being – burning great and bright enough to transform any poison.
May we offer the power of our sorrow for the service of something greater than ourselves.
May we endure; may sorrow bond us and not separate us.
May we realize the greatness of our sorrow and not run from its touch or its flame.
May clarity be our ally and wisdom our support.
May our wrath be cleansing, cutting through the confusion of denial and greed.
May we not be afraid to see or speak our truth;
May the soul’s journey be revealed and the true hunger fed.
May we be forgiven for what we have forgotten and blessed with the remembrance of who we really are.
—The Terma Collective