Daily Dose (September 16 – 19)
TUESDAY SEPT 16 — “We live in times when polarization seems to be one of the words of the day, but it’s not helping anybody,” Pope Leo XIV said yesterday in an interview.
And this week in Sabbath Moment, we are asking, how do we move forward in a world where fear and dread (of polarization) are real?
How do we honor our better angels, and lower the anxiety temperature?
How can we sow love, and be an instrument of peace?
This I know: In a world where there is fear and anxiety, we need holy shadows, as they repair and heal.
Okay, sign me up. What’s the secret?
Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”
And Simon Peter said, “Do we have to write this down? Are we going to be tested on this?”
Spillage (Holy Shadow) begins when we give ourselves the permission to be at home in our own skin. We don’t wait until we have our act together.
There is power here. Now.
And from that place, we make a difference.
From that place we create and become sanctuary, a place of presence, renewal, empathy, inclusion and compassion.
From that place we are purveyors of charity, goodwill and mercy.
And the bottom line? “We are at our best when the strong do not exploit the weak.” (Jon Meacham)
I know that we repeat this frequently, but it bears repeating: the permission to be at home in our own skin, is not a race or a contest or a beauty pageant.
As long as I need to orchestrate my life (not that any of us wrestle with that problem…), I require some equation for this “Holy Shadow” (Sowing Love) life. You know, some kind of instructions about what I must do next. Or more certainly, what I lack that prevents me from living such a “holy” and meaningful life.
Nothing crushes our joy like the unmitigated weight of some guilt laden recruitment ploy to “well-doing.” And with that weight, we forget, and we do not see, the gifts of care and nurture and compassion and healing.
This may be an old story. But I love telling it…
As the old man walks the beach at dawn, he notices a young man picking up starfish and flinging them into the sea. Catching up to the youth, he asks a simple question, “Why are you doing this?’
The boy answers that the stranded starfish would die if left until the morning sun.
“But the beach goes on for miles, and there are millions of starfish. How can your efforts make any difference?”
The young man looked at the starfish in his hand and threw it to safety—into the ocean past the breaking waves. “It makes a difference to this one,” he said.
When you sow love, every single seed makes a difference.
And when we sow love, it reenforces Dr. Martin Luther King’s reminder, “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”
“My children, I will be with you only a little while longer. I’m giving you a new commandment so you’ll know where I am, and who I am: You must love one another.” (John 13:33–35, paraphrased by Richard Rohr)
WEDNESDAY SEPT 17 — How do we move forward in a world where fear and dread (of polarization) are real?
How do we honor our better angels, and lower the anxiety temperature?
How can we sow love, and be an instrument of peace?
In a world where there is fear and anxiety, we need holy shadows, as they repair and heal.
Gratefully, this heartfelt story comes to mind.
Glenn Adsit and his family spent years as missionaries in China. During the Communist regime change, they were under house arrest. One day a few Chinese soldiers came to their house, and said, “You can return to America.”
The Adsit’s were celebrating, when the soldiers told them, “You can take only two hundred pounds with you.” Well, they had been in China for years. Two hundred pounds? They found the scales and started the family arguments. Each—wife, husband and the two children—had an opinion. Must have this vase. Well, this is my new typewriter. What about my books? What about my collection? And they weighed everything, took each item off the scales, weighed and re-weighed until finally, right on the dot, they had two hundred pounds.
The soldier asked, “Ready to go?” “Yes.”
“Did you weigh everything?” “Yes.”
“You weighed the kids?” “No, we didn’t.”
“Weigh the kids.”
And in a moment, the special vase, the new typewriter, the collections, all of it, became “trash.”
Secondary. Just stuff.
Using this story to nurse regret is a waste of time. But the story (and its permission to hit the pause button), invites me to hear the crucial question for me (and for us) today: “Did you weigh the kids?”
Which begs the question: How do we measure—to carry and honor—what really matters?
This I know: As long as success is measured by keeping score (weighing or honoring the wrong stuff), we lose track of most everything that makes us human and therefore, glad to be alive:
–small gestures of kindness
–acts of inclusion or community or dignity to someone left out, or someone on the fringes (extending a hand of healing or acceptance to someone who hurts)
–reveling in the gifts of the senses and resting in a moment of gratitude
–sharing laughter, a smile, camaraderie, joy or hope
“You can change or stay the same; there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.” Benjamin Button (Movie voice over; letter to his daughter)
THURSDAY SEPT 18 — How do we move forward in a world where fear and dread (of polarization) are real?
How do we honor our better angels, and lower the anxiety temperature?
How can we sow love, and be an instrument of peace?
In a world where there is fear and anxiety, we need holy shadows, as they repair and heal.
A rabbi once asked his students: “How do we know when the night has ended, and the day has begun?”
The students thought they grasped the importance of this question. There are, after all, prayers and rites and rituals that can only be done at nighttime. And there are prayers and rites and rituals that belong only to the day. So, it is important to know how we can tell when night has ended, and day has begun.
So, the first and brightest of the students offered an answer: “Rabbi, when I look out at the fields and I can distinguish between my field and the field of my neighbor, that’s when the night has ended and the day has begun.”
A second student offered his answer: “Rabbi, when I look from the fields and I see a house, and I can tell that it’s my house and not the house of my neighbor, that’s when the night has ended and the day has begun.”
A third student offered another answer: “Rabbi, when I see an animal in the distance, and I can tell what kind of animal it is, whether a cow or a horse or a sheep, that’s when the night has ended and the day has begun.”
Then a fourth student offered yet another answer: “Rabbi, when I see a flower and I can make out the colors of the flower, whether they are red or yellow or blue, that’s when night has ended and day has begun.”
Each answer brought a more severe frown to the rabbi’s face. Until finally he said sadly, “No! None of you understands. You only divide. You divide your house from the house of your neighbor, your field from your neighbor’s field, you distinguish one kind of animal from another, you separate one color from all the others. Is that all we can do – dividing, separating, splitting the world into pieces? Isn’t the world broken enough? Isn’t the world split into enough fragments? Is that what Torah is for? No, my dear students, it’s not that way, not that way at all!”
The shocked students looked into the sad face of their rabbi. “Then, Rabbi, tell us: How do we know that night has ended and day has begun?”
The rabbi stared back into the faces of his students, and with a voice suddenly gentle and imploring, he responded: “When you look into the face of the person who is beside you, and you can see that person is your brother or your sister, then finally the night has ended, and the day has begun.”
Yes, and Amen. We are indeed—whether we see it or not, whether we like it or not—walking one another home. We are on this journey together.
Yes, as brother and sister. Not to exploit, or demean, or diminish.
Easy? No.
Indispensable? Absolutely.
(The Rabbi story is told in, Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerators by Thomas L. Friedman)
FRIDAY SEPT 19 — How do we move forward in a world where fear and dread (of polarization) are real?
How do we honor our better angels, and lower the anxiety temperature?
How can we sow love, and be an instrument of peace?
In a world where there is fear and anxiety, we need holy shadows, as they repair and heal.
Let us take heart in the truth that, “In the shelter of each other the people live.”
And it is story time. My head (and my heart) find solace in this story from my memory, about connection and shelter, both present and healing, even in a sad and terrifying incident which occurred during the tragic Sarajevo war.
A reporter, covering the fighting and violence in the middle of the city, watched a little girl fatally shot by a sniper. The reporter threw down whatever he held, rushing immediately to the aid of a man who knelt on the pavement cradling the child.
As the man carried the child, the reporter guided them to his car, and sped off to a hospital. “Hurry my friend,” the man urged, “my child is still alive.”
A moment or two later he pleaded, “Hurry my friend, my child is still breathing.”
And a little later, “Please my friend, my child is still warm.”
Although the reporter drove as fast as was possible, by the time they arrived at the hospital, the little girl had died. As the two men were in the lavatory, washing the blood off their hands and their clothes, the man turned to the reporter and said, “This is a terrible task for me. I must now go tell her father that his child is dead. He will be heartbroken.”
The reporter stood speechless. He looked at the grieving man and said, “I thought she was your child.”
The man shook his head. “No. But aren’t they all our children?’
Yes. They are.
We live in a world that can be cruel and merciless. And brutalizing.
And there are a heap plenty of people and systems to blame. (Although it is always some “other” people, and some “other” system.)
But the truth is that we wound one another.
We wound with real wars, and real bullets.
And we wound with words, with hatred and resentment.
And we wound with intolerance and small-mindedness (some of it in the name of “love” and God).
So. Let us pause.
And let us not forget Mother Teresa’s reminder, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
Well, if we do belong to one other, then “they”—the “least of these” and those without voices—are indeed, our children.
Ours to care for.
Ours to listen to.
Ours to see.
Let us take heart in the words of The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston. “We are not done yet. Not with building a fear-free world. Not with restoring dignity to every human being. Not with empowering people rather than imprisoning them. There is a great deal yet to do. We have lost ground in some areas and need to recapture the momentum of justice. We need to hold up the light of hope even higher. We are not done yet. However long it takes, however difficult it may be, we are determined to carry on until the shout of liberation fills the air. For us, community is not a pretense, but a promise: one that we intend to keep for all people. We are not done yet.”
Prayer for our week…
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi (Prayer for Peace)
Enjoy it here with Sarah McLachlan.
Photo… “Terry, The Milky Way. My grandson Preston, who is 16 and an artist in many ways, just took this picture.” Mona Priest… Thank you Mona and Preston… and thank you for your photos, please send them to tdh@terryhershey.com
