My perennial Memorial Day post

Every year I find myself cringing whenever most holidays roll around. Thanksgiving is plowed through to the great Black Friday celebration of cheap crap. Christmas is feted earlier each year as retailers try to increase our piety towards our greatest faith, Materialism.

I’m especially grumpy when Memorial and Veteran’s Day roll around. We don’t take war seriously, for most of us it’s a thing that happens to other people far away, and if we clap when we see military personnel walking through the airport or attach a bumper sticker to the car that’s our part done.

Image from Botana at Pixabay

Memorial Day is not about all military personnel (but it’s easier for us to just sort of make it a generic military appreciation day), it’s for the remembrance of those who served and have died. Death and war and the incredible difficulties that accompany military service are not as pleasant as mattress sales and long weekend TV marathons. But as long as we refuse to reckon with the ugliness of war, and the lasting affect on those who experience it directly, we will continue down a path of self-destruction. Ignorance may be bliss, but it’s a bliss that will lead to a massive debt coming due.

Take time today to remember those who have given their lives in military service. Think about those for whom war was an unwelcomed intrusion into daily life—threatening children, houses of worship, destroying homes and bringing famine. Really spend time thinking about the suffering that war causes-for all involved.

Then commit yourself to ending it and caring for its victims.

Micah 4:3

He will judge between many peoples and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide. 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.

They Died For Amazing Savings

When I was a child, shortly after the earth cooled, we were taught in school all about the US constitution with emphasis in the rights spelled out in it.

I’ve never understood the contradiction in our Great Democratic Principles and the reality that seemingly every protest is treated like an affront to the Constitution itself.

And so we see, again for the billionth time, how student protests require a militarized police response because heaven forfend! our overlords and their knights be perturbed by someone speaking truth.

We are bedeviled by our own ideals and it would be nice if for once we actually embodied them. Instead of letting weak minded warriors play “hero” by using force to shut up their fellow citizens.

I enjoy documentaries. But historical documentaries are sometimes sharper than I’d like, by which I mean they reiterate the many pieces—the chain of bad decisions—that have lead to the human world as it exists today.

With the current violence in the Levant (but is there any time when there isn’t violence there?!) I am particularly aware of how we got from A to B.

Jews were expelled from Palestine by Empires, not in a single swift action but gradually as the territory was conquered and colonized, rinse and repeat, leading up to an ignominious obliteration of the center of Jewish religion, the Temple in Jerusalem, in 70 CE. Doing so forced Judaism to evolve into a different form as the elaborate temple worship was no longer possible. And still isn’t.

Over time, the Roman Empire split into two, and the Byzantine half controlled Palestine which took on a gradually Christian majority until Muslims conquered the Levant in 638 CE. After that, Arabs began migrating to the area.

But who are the Jews? Who are the Palestinians? What about the Samaritans? To largely oversimplify the question, they are all descendants of the Canaanite people who lived there a long time ago. Much of the region’s population share common genetic makeup (with the possible exception of those Jewish communities whose genetic origin lie elsewhere).

All of this historical rambling is to make the case that Jews, Samaritans, Druze, Palestinians et al are all the indigenous people of the area. While modern Israel was forged with the blunt tools of Anglo-American imperialism, in part to encourage Jewish migration out of the Eurosphere, it’s irrational in my opinion to claim that only Jews (which inevitably excludes the other extant Israelites, the Samaritans) or only the Palestinians have a claim to the land.

I argue that they all have a right to be there, and to live without fear, violence, oppression, and war. There is literally no reason for it to be otherwise. There is no logical argument for one group over the other. When we prioritize the values of human rights above ethnicity, culture, race, religion, etc. we naturally create a place for all people to thrive. There has never been a reason for Israel to antagonize the Palestinians, who only slipped out from Ottoman rule in 1917. Why not construct a modern democracy for everyone in the former Mandate territory? Why do humans have to create stupid barriers?

God of grace, hear our prayer.

We pray for our suffering world. For enmity and strife between nations. For inequality and poverty that is affecting people of various backgrounds. We remember the victims of violence, discrimination and persecution — like the Yezidies, Muslims, Jews and Christians and LGBTQ people — in all forms in our world today. May the nations embrace that which we all aspire to: ‘nations shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruninghooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war or the strong dominate the weak any more’… but rather be compassionate and supportive to one another making peace as their ultimate goal.

From Remembering Genocide , modified.

#RootAndSource

Loren McGrail, Israel/Palestine John 12:1-11

While the reading falls traditionally on Monday of Holy Week, this prayer may be used throughout the year.

Anointing and blessing God help us to recognize you in all your glory and humble disguises including the poor of the world who are your body.

When we meet you may we fall to our knees, offer you all that we have, meet your lavish grace with extravagant love.

Loren, a minister, lives and works in Palestine.

Worship Words

#RootAndSource

Or so the old saying goes.

I was recently in a minor conflict with a…let’s say colleague? who has decided that I am Satan incarnate because…well I don’t know actually. She has a reputation for being terribly unpleasant. It’s sad because I see someone who, at the last phase of life, is miserable and in some kind of pain…emotional or physical or psychological or maybe a combination.

In the days of my youth I would have eviscerated her via email outlining the many ways she’s wrong and has incorrectly accused me of things that she, actually, is responsible for. But now I just don’t have the same interest in defending and proving myself. For the most part I will simply ignore her, an idea that came to me from one of my favorite stories about the Buddha.

http://bodhilights.com/buddha-how-not-to-accept-others-anger

This, coupled with metta meditation is a powerful antidote to unwanted hostility.

Worth a try!

It’s universally taught across humanity that lying is wrong. So standard that it’s essentially cliche, and so easily ignored. This is especially true for adults (see my article “Suffer the Big Babies) who think that they can get away with it because they’re adults.

When I was a kid, nothing was more irritating to my dad than lying. It wasn’t until I grew up that I fully understood why.

Before I go on, let me be clear: I’m not talking about little white lies (“Gee, you DO look thinner!”) or big good lies (“OK Mr. Nazi, there aren’t any Jews hiding in my attic!”) Those are different creatures than the ones I’m addressing.

Soap operas, and drama in general, are excellent exhibits on why lying is bad. I would guess at least 99% of soap opera storylines are based on a lie and the subsequent damage it creates. Most of my favorite shows are indeed built on the idea of lies as massively powerful drivers of intrigue and entertainment.

What’s true about lies? Pardon the pun.

Lies create a burden on us-we have to remember what we said, and to whom, and when…and it’s stressful. Lies are ravenous. They need to be fed all the time. The stress of giving them our mental energy makes it harder for us to excel.

Lies are also expensive. Think of how much we spend on criminals and politicians (redundant?) to expose the truth. Think of how much their lies cost in other ways. Look at how much money we waste on political campaigns, which are sometimes just flat out lies.

Lying creates increasingly hardened barriers and breeds mistrust between people.

One of the worst things a lie does is take away the ability to make informed choices. They warp the ability to make good decisions. This, I came to understand, was the crux of my father’s hatred for lying. How can a parent protect a child when the child is feeding them false information? How can voters and consumers make good choices for themselves and their community when they are told that 1 plus 1 equals 5? Denying the right to informed choice can be deadly. And political lying is a direct attack on the heart of democracy.

Jesus famously told his followers “And you will know the truth, and that truth will set you free.” Pontius Pilate responded to Jesus’ saying that he was a “witness to truth” with the seemingly flippant quip “but what is truth?”

I suppose it depends on what your definition of is, is.

Truth indeed sets us free. Free of the burdens of lying. Free of the tangle of secondary problems created by lying. Truth, even when it’s hard and painful, can accompany humility and vulnerability which in turn can lead us to deeper connection.

Truth is the remedy for lies as well as the preventative medicine for lying’s destruction. Truth can repair breaches between us. Truth is more powerful than lies.

I will close with this powerful and simple statement from the Hindu Mundaka Upapanishad. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyameva_Jayate)

  सत्यमेव जयते
  satyam-eva jayate
  Truth alone triumphs.

Originally Posted: 2008-12-31

No matter the tribal/sectarian/nationalist label, the battle is always between good and evil, even sometimes within each side of a conflict, simultaneously.

 Spirit, open our hearts and minds to do good in this world, and to end our senseless killing.