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Walter Thiessen
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“Send us on our way with your peace” – Parting Blessings

Some ruins and a Celtic cross and the sea beyond

Our main liturgy has used a beloved version of St. Patrick’s Breastplate (from the Northumbria community) for many years now as a blessing prayer before the closing. It seemed hard to imagine that we could find something different for the Alternate Liturgy that had a similar depth and beauty. Then we were reminded of the Prayer of St. Brendan – the Celtic saint famous for setting off in a coracle for places unknown some 1500 years ago. The prayer below, attributed to him, is one of those that seems to get more relevant every time we pray it, in spite of (because of?) its ancient origins.

Now, as we are encouraged and united in your love,
Send us on our way with your peace.

Help me to journey beyond the familiar
and into the unknown.
Give me the faith to leave old ways
and break fresh ground with You.
Christ of the mysteries, I trust You
to be stronger than each storm within me.
I will trust in the darkness and know
that my times, even now, are in Your hand.
Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,
and somehow, make my obedience count for You.  
(Prayer of St. Brendan)

It’s followed by a blessing from Northumbria’s morning prayer (from Celtic Daily Prayer), though we recently adapted the pronouns, emphasizing that the Trinity has plurality (communality) as well as unity  and freeing us from distractions of gender attributions to God.

May the peace of the Trinity go with you,
wherever They may send you.
May They guide you through the wilderness,
protect you through the storm.
May They bring you home rejoicing
at the wonders They have shown you.
May They bring you home rejoicing
once again into our doors.

And that wraps up this series exploring the Alternate Liturgy – I hope it has conveyed something of that weekly journey of connection and renewal that has made the Celtic Service such a life-giving time for me and many others.

Some ruins and a Celtic cross and the sea beyond

Walter Thiessen
In Articles

“Welcome to the Table” – A focus on participation in love

Communion is celebrated under olive trees

(Exploring the Alternate Liturgy, Pt. 5)

The centrepiece of the Celtic Service is a weekly time of Communion (or Eucharist). In both our main and alternate liturgies, we’ve avoided the standard “words of institution” just as we’ve avoided hierarchical and formulaic means that may be supposed to determine any “validity” to what we are remembering and celebrating. We trust in the Presence of the Spirit of Christ in our midst as celebrated and welcomed by the hearts and intentions of those meeting together.

And so the words, as we approach and celebrate Communion together, are primarily words of welcome and invitation. The New Testament passage (1 Cor. 11) that is often misinterpreted as a reason to guard who participates is meant to convey the opposite – “unworthy” participation does not refer to those who aren’t sure what they believe but those who participate divisively based on class differences: feasting on a full meal while the poor are elsewhere with a meager Communion.

The heart of our Communion is a time of experiencing the taste of our Welcome – a time of participating together with gratitude in the love that draws us together. The self-giving Love of Jesus forgives, enables and empowers us communally and individually as we are symbolically nourished by the bread and wine.

The words in this section of the Alternate Liturgy are perhaps a quirky blend, and specific origins have not been well-traced. Some are traditional (Book of Common Prayer – perhaps to make up for our avoidance of formulae), some are borrowed and tweaked bits from liturgies of the Iona community, and some are original to us:

(Approaching the Table)
Welcome now to the unity of God’s table,
Friend and stranger, saint and sinner.

Listen, all you who gather here:
Come with hope or hesitation,
Come with joy or yearning.
All you who hunger,
All you who thirst for the fullness of life:
Come.

Generous God and gracious Saviour,
Touch us through your Spirit.

Knowing that God delights to liberate and forgive,
We embrace our identity as God’s Beloved.
Let us lay down the burdens of sin and shame
that we no longer need to carry.

God of love and justice,
Have mercy on us.

Hear now the teaching of Jesus,
That as we confess our sins and weakness,

We are set free
and invited into the life of the Spirit.

(Holy Communion)

Liberated and reconciled,
We participate in God’s welcome to the world.
Together in suffering,
Together in love.

[Leader lifts and breaks the bread.]

May we know your Presence
In the sharing of this bread and cup,
So that we may know your same touch
In all of our lives.

[Bread and wine are shared.]

We celebrate the life that Jesus has shared
Among his community through the centuries,
And shares with us now.

Made one with Christ
And one with each other,
We offer ourselves
As a holy and living sacrifice.
Amen

The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts;
We lift them up to God.
Let us give thanks to God;
It is right to give both thanks and praise.

Lead us now O God
As we acknowledge your gift of grace
And live our lives as forgiven people.

Heaven and earth rejoice,
And the whole earth cries Glory through Christ our Lord.

Communion is celebrated under olive trees

Communion has been celebrated with our Celtic liturgy in many places including here under olive trees in Assisi.

Walter Thiessen
In Articles

“Loving God in Whom Is Heaven” – a poetic Lord’s Prayer

Linocut by Helen Soucoup - a figure has arms and cradling hands around a smaller figure by a stream with trees and a house

(Exploring the Alternate Liturgy, Pt. 4)

For the prayer and intercession section of our Alternate Liturgy, we had a bit of a dilemma. We weren’t sure that we wanted to lose the traditional element of including “The Lord’s Prayer,” but we wanted something fresher and more inclusive. I found something in a 1989 New Zealand Prayer Book, written to integrate Maori prayers and a beautiful and inclusive paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer by Rev. James Cotter.

The more I’ve used the Alternate Liturgy, the more that I’ve appreciated the depth and beauty of this poetic re-shaping of the prayer. Sometimes I choose the Alternate Liturgy just to be reminded of it. And, as a coincidental(?) bonus, the styling of the second half reflects back to that of our Invocation.

Eternal Spirit,
Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God in whom is heaven.
May the hallowing of your name echo through the universe;
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world;
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings;
Your dream of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth.
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory of the power that is love,
Now and forever, Amen.*

*Paraphrase of The Lord’s Prayer, originally J. Cotter, prepared by the English Language Liturgical Consultation (ELLC), 1988, held in the public domain, and found in A New Zealand Prayer Book, 1989

We follow that with the same intercessory prayer that we use in the main liturgy, partly because the focus here is for nothing to distract giving our compassionate attention to those who are hurting:

We join with all who suffer and ask, “How long?”

(Slowly)With compassion,
we remember those who endure the pain
of violence,
poverty,
illness,
loneliness,
loss,
and despair.

God, in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.

Linocut by Helen Soucoup - a figure has arms and cradling hands around a smaller figure by a stream with trees and a house

Linocut by Helen Soucoup – “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you”

Walter Thiessen
In Articles

“Joining” (Invocation)

Paul Day sculpture of commuters on a bus

The next section of the Alternate Liturgy serves as a unique form of invocation – an invitation for us to be aware of the Presence of God, to acknowledge the connection that we often forget is at the centre of our lives.

I believe that this section is all original to our community, but I wouldn’t be shocked if a phrase or two was recalled from elsewhere. An earlier version of this began the liturgy before we added the Thanksgiving Address to the beginning, and we’ve made a few improvements along the way as well.

A key priority in this section is for us to start with a mindful and honest acknowledgement of “how we are coming” to the service, particularly with an awareness of how often the conscious experience of Presence and connection drift away from our attention as we live our lives.

About two thirds of the way through, we turn our attention from our starting place, and “call out for help.” Here is the invocation proper, when we invite God to meet us in our need and help prepare us to face life well. Here is the “Joining” section:

From where we are,
We begin the journey

We sense that we are often disconnected
From our bodies, from ourselves
From each other – those near and those far away
From the dirt beneath our feet, the sky above us
From You, our God – ever present, often hidden
Manifest and silent

Now, we are here
We are here together
Now, we take a step
we reach out, we take a breath

Together, we wait
With our doubt and our faith
We look up, raise our voices, and call out for help

When we hurt and when we grieve
Walk with us
When we are stubborn and rebellious
Soften us
When we are mired in self-pity
Free us
When we hide in shame
Find us
When we are anxious and afraid
Encourage us
When we see only ourselves
Open our eyes

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Walter Thiessen
In Articles

“The Words Before All Else” – Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address

(“Exploring the Alternate Liturgy” – Part 2)

Many of you will remember the friendship of Kanatiio, a wise Mohawk (Kanien’kehà:ka)  man whom the Peskotomuhkati invited to St. Stephen for a few years to help them in their process of gaining official Canadian recognition. While he was here, Kanatiio once visited our church and led us in “The Words Before All Else,” also known as the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address. He stood before us and improvised a brief (about twenty minute) sharing of thanks for “all our relations.” This acknowledgement of our “duty of gratitude” for all the facets of a good Creation sets a tone of positive humility and service.

This Thanksgiving Address has also become well known through Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass. She writes that the Address not only “sets gratitude as the highest priority” but also serves as a “lesson in Native science.” She recalls being told frequently that the words are meant as a gift to the world and are to be shared freely.

We had wondered at times about using a land acknowledgement – a great idea, but one that can often come across as rote or incomplete when tacked onto a meeting. The idea came that integrating a version of this Thanksgiving Address would both acknowledge relationship and engage us in integrating a key foundation of an Indigenous worldview that is a good beginning for living well on this land that for many millennia has been, and still is, the homeland of the Peskotomuhkati people.

I adapted a very brief taste of this Address as an opening for our Alternate Liturgy and received Kanatiio’s blessing for using it in this way in our services:

Today we have gathered, and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty and responsibility to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give our greetings and our thanks to one another as people.

Now our minds are one

We are all thankful to our Mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life. She supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she continues to care for us as she has from the beginning of time. And we give thanks to all the waters of the world for quenching our thirst and providing us with strength. Water is life. We acknowledge the fish and all the creatures in the waters, and we give our thanks.

Now our minds are one

Now we turn toward the plants. As far as the eye can see, the plants grow, working many wonders. They sustain many life forms. We are grateful to the animals on the land and all the birds in the sky. We are thankful for the four winds and the four seasons, for the rain and the sun, the moon and the stars. With one mind, we give our greetings and our thanks.

Now our minds are one

We consider those who have gone before us, our elders and our teachers, who have gathered and shared wisdom. When we forget how to live in harmony, they remind us of the way we were instructed to live. We give our listening ears and thanks. And we turn our thoughts to the Creator, and we send our greetings and our thanks for all the gifts of Creation. Everything we need to live a good life is here.

For all the love that is around us, we gather our minds together as one and send our choicest words of greetings and thanks to you, Creator.

Now our minds are one

Our hope is that beginning our Alternate Liturgy with these words will help us acknowledge our fundamental unity as part of a living, connected Creation – grateful to Creator and to all our relations. And we hope also that they remind us that the friendship and welcome of Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island is crucial to our living here well, and for us, particularly, the welcome of the Peskotomuhkati here along the St. Croix (Skutik) watershed.

(Click here or on the “Articles” tab at the top of the page to see the intro to this series and follow along this week as I introduce the other sections that make up our “Alternate Liturgy.”)

Walter Thiessen
In Articles

Exploring the “Alternate Liturgy”

AN INTRODUCTION

In 2007, SCC started an experiment: a second service upstairs in the café with an informal liturgy inspired by Celtic communities like Iona and Northumbria. It has proven to be an enduring experiment! From the beginning, we (especially Katie Gorrie and Joel Mason) borrowed bits from those communities and elsewhere, added our own original touches, and shaped a short service that would meet a more contemplative need than our usual services.

In the following years, we updated our liturgy regularly, removing bits that didn’t feel right and trying out new additions. We moved toward more inclusive language while holding onto some traditional phrasing. About ten years ago, we realised that we had so fallen in love with the liturgy that we didn’t really want to part with any “bits” anymore.  More and more, visitors had been touched by services and carried booklets home with them across the world. It felt like something special to think that similar words might be used in scattered communities in faraway places. Since then, the only changes we’ve made to our regular liturgy were minor tweaks to improve the flow or experience.

But we still wanted to have the room to experiment with new liturgical expressions to see what they could add to our life together. We decided to create an “Alternate Liturgy” that leaders could choose to use occasionally for something different. We now use it around once a month. It may be “alternate,” but it is also starting to “feel like us”!  As this new year begins, I wanted to introduce more folks to the sections that make up this “alternate liturgical journey” that we’ve been travelling, now and then, for ten years. So for the next couple of weeks stayed tune here to explore the different sections that make up the “Alternate Liturgy.”

Walter Thiessen
In Articles

Revelation

An image of the revelation of God and the word "Patmos: The Book of Revelation"[Here’s a different kind of blog post based on the creativity of Andre Lefebvre, who shares a musical interpretation with this introduction]: An image of the revelation of God and the word "Patmos: The Book of Revelation" “I see in Revelation a sort of “blueprint” of the decadence of mankind at certain points in History. Déjà vus of self-destruction, the self-inflicted consequences of building on the sand, not God hammering earth but coming through with an unveiling of Who he is and is doing in the spirit world. A message of hope that this is not all there will ever be.” Watch/listen here.
Walter Thiessen
In Articles

Resilient Christian Communities

Sign with "Welcome" in many languages

[After Alex Henderson gave a thoughtful introduction to the importance of resilient Christian communities at a “Second Breakfast,” I invited him to share his thoughts as a blog post for those who weren’t there. WT].

In my view, Christian resilience is not a heavy, enduring, self-sacrificial stance, but a patient and purposeful stance. It involves the audacity to hope for good things in the face of hardships. In scripture, we are promised times when we will have to endure unjust suffering, loss, pain, and hardship – this stuff cannot be explained nor said to be a result of any kind of a deserved consequence. Pain and hardship are inherent in the natural world, which can sometimes be utterly awful/cruel or amazingly good/beautiful. Like the rest of nature, the humans around us can be fickle. But resilience is possible despite that fact, and I think a Jesus-centered community’s resilience is built on an especially powerful 2-sided kind of hope: 1) a hope that if we humans treat each other and nature rightly (which can happen if Jesus changes people’s perceptions of everything), then we will be better positioned to weather the random crap that this world will throw at us, and we will later experience more of the goodness inherent within God’s green world; and 2) a hope that if plan #1 does not pan out due to fickle reasons, we can hope for goodness from God during our suffering, even up to and beyond the point of death.

In Psalm 85:10,12-13 the Psalmist says that God’s righteousness and our faithfulness are intimately intertwined, and this results in us having an experience of peace and goodness in the world: “…righteousness and peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven. The Lord will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest. Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way for his steps.”

In Proverbs 9:1-6, 12 the writer of Proverbs says that secure well-being is built upon wisdom and insight: “Wisdom has built her house; she has set up its seven pillars. She has prepared her meat and mixed her wine; she has also set her table.  She has sent out her servants, and she calls from the highest point of the city, ‘Let all who are simple come to my house!” To those who have no sense she says, ‘Come, eat my food and drink the wine I have mixed. Leave your simple ways and you will live; walk in the way of insight.’…If you are wise, your wisdom will reward you; if you are a mocker, you alone will suffer…”

In James 5:10-11, James says that goodness is realized through patience and perseverance through suffering: “Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.”

A big reason for being a ‘church-going’ Christian in the 21st century, in my opinion, includes the idea that the world is losing resilient communities.

Resilient Communities in the 21st Century.

A big reason for being a ‘church-going’ Christian in the 21st century, in my opinion, includes the idea that the world is losing resilient communities. Resilience in communities is possible with collective, sturdy, God-imbued values, like insight, wisdom and compassion and treating each other and the world with care. Communities that are full of fighting and selfish ambition maintain a kind of strength through domineering others and exploiting weaknesses around them. But these kinds of communities are not resilient when real trouble strikes – the people in these communities scatter to the wind. Many people lack a community entirely.

The world can be a scary place at times. The ‘humanity + technology’ power we see right now is revealing to many people that we can’t just modernize our way towards a bright future of collective resilience on earth. Maybe if we try Mars…? Technology without wisdom just amplifies human folly – example: the Manhattan Project. We see how with technology we have sowed unsustainable carbon emissions, and we are all reaping climate change. We have tech billionaire overlords with devoted consumeristic cults made up of sad, isolated humans worshipping their symbols and images in flickering blue screens in the dark.

Communities that value selfish ambition, exploitation, hatred of outsiders, vanity, or pride are not resilient to deal with human suffering, they amplify our suffering. Awful communities can obscure the goodness inherent within God’s green world. But since churches have been culpable of being some of the worst kinds of communities in this regard, so why should we continue to invest in them? Because “on paper” (by that I don’t just mean the scriptures) churches should be able to do this.

In history, Christian communities have had an uncanny knack for surviving in the face of persecution, wars, and pestilence. In the past and today, resilient Christian communities served like lifeboats to needy people around them, especially in cases or times when society fails. How were these Christian communities sustained under such intense pressure without being rooted in a deep, powerful and mystical resiliency that comes from ‘going all-in’ on Jesus Christ? It’s possible, and so I think we should strive to build a community built upon Rock and not on sand as the storm surges really begin to kick up.

– by Alex Henderson

Walter Thiessen
In Articles

Jesus, the Lousy Politician: An Easter Story

Once upon the time, there was a young man named Jesus who cared deeply about people and wanted to improve the way they lived their real lives in his community. So people told him, you should run for an election! We’d vote for you!

But Jesus said, “I don’t think that would be a good idea. I’d rather just tell stories to people and love them and show them that there is a better way to live and be whole.”

But people insisted: “But you’d have so much more power if you were a politician! You could change things!”

Jesus sighed. “I don’t like the idea of changing things with that kind of power. I think I have as much authority as there is love in my heart, truth in my stories and integrity in my actions.”

“Oh, bless your heart,” they said, “but that won’t get us anywhere. You’d be no better than a poet.”

Some of these people were mainstream politicians, and they said, “Come, meet some of our corporate lobbyists – I mean friends – and they can support your campaign.”

But Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor and woe to the rich. And I don’t have a campaign.” These friends didn’t find that very helpful.

concrete memorial cross

Cross misused at Spanish fascist memorial

Other people were populists, and they said, “Look at these crowds! They’re angry and want change! Tell them – and the other corporate lobbyists – what they want to hear. It doesn’t even have to be true! And we’ll be a huge voice together.”

But Jesus said, “I don’t think these crowds are really committed to the kind of love and challenge that I’m trying to encourage. Following me is hard on the ego – kind of like dying. I don’t want anything to do with an angry mob.”

Instead, Jesus kept telling stories and healing the sick, and he lived so much in solidarity with the poor that when he saw injustice, he did things like flip over the tables of exploitation. But he also kept telling people not to make such a big deal about who he was – and that everyone could do the kinds of things he was doing, if not better! He even said they shouldn’t even call him good!

But people were getting upset by it all anyway. So much so that the people in power decided he was their enemy, even if he wasn’t running for office. They threw him in jail, then mocked him and killed him – just to make sure that nothing big got started.

“Wow, what a lousy politician,” people said when they saw him dead – just hanging useless on a tree.

 

But then a funny thing happened. The women and men who had really been following Jesus were discouraged at first, but soon they started saying that Jesus was still with them!  And with some real enthusiasm, they were saying it was true that they could live with the kind of love and trust that Jesus had. That the Spirit of Jesus (which was the Spirit of God!) lived in everyone and made that possible. This started getting people’s attention again.

Then the people in power said, “Ah geez. You got to be kidding us. They’re just going to be a pain in the butt.” So, they started persecuting and killing the followers too. But it was like playing “Whack-a-mole”; the more they tried to eliminate them, the more they kept spreading – somehow without any campaigns or angry mobs. And without any help from corporate lobbyists. It seemed impossible!

This kept going, more or less, for a couple of centuries until an Emperor finally gave up. “Forget it,” he said, “Let’s stop killing them because it’s just a waste of money. In fact,” he said brightening, “Let’s brand our Empire with their logo! It seems like it’s trending!” It was like he didn’t even remember that the cross was a symbol of suffering and dying at the hands of Empire.

Jesus would have rolled over in his grave, if he’d still been there.

Sadly, the Emperor’s re-branding did more to wipe out the following of Jesus than all the persecution did. In a generation or two, people seemed to forget what a lousy politician Jesus had been, and they used his name to back up their own power, while conveniently forgetting that his love had been especially for the poor and hurting.

On the other hand. just like Empire kept getting mixed up in faith, the radical love of Jesus kept showing up in the stories and symbols that they were using, even when they were being used for the opposite purposes. From time to time, little communities of life and love would spring up and start spreading a healing message again.

Some people said it was getting confusing because Jesus and his symbols were so often being used by different groups for opposite purposes. But others said, it might not be that hard to tell them apart because true followers of Jesus were the ones actually trying to follow Jesus – by loving and serving others the way he did, even though he was a lousy politician.

Walter Thiessen
In Articles

Thomas Merton adds a PS on “Loving Enemies”

pic of Thomas Merton

When I was preparing the second week of my workshop on “Loving Enemies in a Time of Polarization,” I was struck by a sense that I should pick up my copy of Thomas Merton’s Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1968), my favourite among many favourites of Merton’s. It’s probably not overstating to say that this is one of the handful of books that has transformed my life, confirming a contemplative direction integrated with peacemaking.

I browsed through the countless dogeared pages that marked passages I never wanted to lose. Before long, pic of Thomas MertonI knew why I had needed to pick up this book. Of course, in a few pages, he was saying things more profound than my notes. When I summarized my workshops in earlier posts, I took this section out because I decided that I would just let Merton stand alone. So, without further ado, here are some of Merton’s thoughts on why we need our adversaries (all of the many emphases are mine and I’ve chosen not to update all the unfortunate male pronouns):

The basic falsehood is the lie that we are totally dedicated to truth, and that we can remain dedicated to truth in a manner that is at the same time honest and exclusive: that we have the monopoly of all truth, just as our adversary of the moment has the monopoly of all error. We then convince ourselves that we cannot preserve our purity of vision and our inner sincerity if we enter into dialogue with the enemy, for he will corrupt us with his error. We believe, finally, that truth cannot be preserved except by the destruction of the enemy – for, since we have identified him with error, to destroy him is to destroy error. The adversary, of course, has exactly the same thoughts about us and exactly the same basic policy by which he defends the “truth.” He has identified us with dishonesty, insincerity, and untruth. He believes that, if we are destroyed, nothing will be left but truth…

The one who can best point out our error, and help us to see it, is the adversary whom we wish to destroy. This is perhaps why we wish to destroy him. So, too, we can help him to see his error, and that is why he wants to destroy us. In the long run, no one can show another the error that is within him, unless the other is convinced that his critic first sees and loves the good that is within him. So while we are perfectly willing to tell our adversary he is wrong, we will never be able to do so effectively until we can ourselves appreciate where he is right. And we can never accept his judgment on our errors until he gives evidence that he really appreciates our own peculiar truth. Love, love only, love of our deluded fellow man as he actually is, in his delusion and in his sin: this alone can open the door to truth….

We are all convinced that we desire the truth above all. Nothing strange about this. It is natural to man, an intelligent being, to desire the truth. (I still dare to speak of man as “an intelligent being”!) But actually, what we desire is not “the truth” so much as “to be in the right.” To seek the pure truth for its own sake may be natural to us, but we are not able to act always in this respect according to our nature. What we seek is not the pure truth, but the partial truth that justifies our prejudices, our limitations, our selfishness. This is not “the truth.” It is only an argument strong enough to prove us “right.” And usually our desire to be right is correlative to our conviction that somebody else (perhaps everybody else) is wrong.

Why do we want to prove them wrong? Because we need them to be wrong. For if they are wrong, and we are right, then our untruth becomes truth: our selfishness becomes justice and virtue: our cruelty and lust cannot be fairly condemned. We can rest secure in the fiction we have determined to embrace as “truth.” What we desire is not the truth, but rather that our lie should be proved “right,” and our iniquity be vindicated as “just….”

No wonder we hate. No wonder we are violent. No wonder we exhaust ourselves in preparing for war! And in doing so, of course, we offer the enemy another reason to believe that he is right, that he must arm, that he must get ready to destroy us. Our own lie provides the foundation of truth on which he erects his own lie, and the two lies together react to produce hatred, murder, disaster.

― Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

To Merton and to readers, I apologize for ending this lengthy passage on a pessimistic note, fitting as it may be for our day.

So, perhaps I’ll just repeat some of the hope from the middle:

In the long run, no one can show another the error that is within him, unless the other is convinced that his critic first sees and loves the good that is within him. So while we are perfectly willing to tell our adversary he is wrong, we will never be able to do so effectively until we can ourselves appreciate where he is right.

If you missed the posts in this series, you can begin the first one here.