I wish to walk gently
On this earth-lightly
As a Pilgrim
Seeing, absorbing fleeting images
Listening, open to the sounds
Of this world
Learning from pain, from smiles
And laughter -dancing of shadows.
Carrying with me, always
Wistful longing
For my soul's return
To its rightful home.
Lightly, hopefully
I wish to walk gently
On this earth.
-Solveig Dale Eskedahl
Le Mée Studies
Reflections From Solveig
Jesus and Non-Violence
Walter Wink in The Powers that Be: Theology for a New Millennium, New York: Doubleday, 1998, pp. 110-111.
Jesus is not advocating nonviolence merely as a technique for outwitting the enemy, but as a just means of opposing the enemy in a way that holds open the possibility of the enemy's becoming just also. Both sides must win. We are summoned to pray for our enemies' transformation, and to respond to ill treatment with a love that is not only godly but also from God.
The logic of Jesus' examples in Matthew 5:39b-41 goes beyond both inaction and overreaction to a new response, fired in the crucible of love, that promises to liberate the oppressed from evil even as it frees the oppressor from sin. Do not react violently to evil, do not counter evil in kind, do not let evil dictate the terms of your opposition, do not let violence lead you to mirror your opponent-this forms the revolutionary principle that Jesus articulates as the basis for nonviolently engaging the Powers.
Jesus, in short, abhors both passivity and violence. He articulates, out of the history of his own people's struggles, a way by which evil can be opposed without being mirrored, the oppressor resisted without being emulated, and the enemy neutralized without being destroyed. Those who have lived by Jesus' words-Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, Muriel Lester, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, César Chavez, Hildegard and Jean Goss-Mayr, Mairead (Corrigan) Maguire, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and countless others less well known-point us to a new way of confronting evil whose potential for personal and social transformation we are only beginning to grasp today.
Jesus is not advocating nonviolence merely as a technique for outwitting the enemy, but as a just means of opposing the enemy in a way that holds open the possibility of the enemy's becoming just also. Both sides must win. We are summoned to pray for our enemies' transformation, and to respond to ill treatment with a love that is not only godly but also from God.
The logic of Jesus' examples in Matthew 5:39b-41 goes beyond both inaction and overreaction to a new response, fired in the crucible of love, that promises to liberate the oppressed from evil even as it frees the oppressor from sin. Do not react violently to evil, do not counter evil in kind, do not let evil dictate the terms of your opposition, do not let violence lead you to mirror your opponent-this forms the revolutionary principle that Jesus articulates as the basis for nonviolently engaging the Powers.
Jesus, in short, abhors both passivity and violence. He articulates, out of the history of his own people's struggles, a way by which evil can be opposed without being mirrored, the oppressor resisted without being emulated, and the enemy neutralized without being destroyed. Those who have lived by Jesus' words-Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, Muriel Lester, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, César Chavez, Hildegard and Jean Goss-Mayr, Mairead (Corrigan) Maguire, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and countless others less well known-point us to a new way of confronting evil whose potential for personal and social transformation we are only beginning to grasp today.
On Intercessory Prayer
Walter Wink in The Powers that Be: Theology for a New Millennium, New York: Doubleday, 1998, pp. 184.
In the integral worldview, however, prayer becomes once more absolutely central. The spiritual is at the core of everything and is therefore infinitely permeable to prayer. In this view, the whole universe is a spirit-matter event, and the self is coextensive with the universe. We are not like solitary billiard balls, as materialism sees us; from the very beginning we are related to everything. Every drop of water in me has been in every spring, stream, river, lake, and ocean in the world during our earth's billions of years of existence. We are related to every other self in the universe. In such a world, we no longer know the limits of the possible. Therefore we pray for whatever we feel is right and leave the outcome to God. We live in expectation of miracles in a world reenchanted with wonder. Intercessory prayer is a perfectly rational response to such a universe.
In the integral worldview, however, prayer becomes once more absolutely central. The spiritual is at the core of everything and is therefore infinitely permeable to prayer. In this view, the whole universe is a spirit-matter event, and the self is coextensive with the universe. We are not like solitary billiard balls, as materialism sees us; from the very beginning we are related to everything. Every drop of water in me has been in every spring, stream, river, lake, and ocean in the world during our earth's billions of years of existence. We are related to every other self in the universe. In such a world, we no longer know the limits of the possible. Therefore we pray for whatever we feel is right and leave the outcome to God. We live in expectation of miracles in a world reenchanted with wonder. Intercessory prayer is a perfectly rational response to such a universe.
Silence is Betrayal
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered this address from Riverside Church, New York City, April 4th, 1967.
A time comes when silence is betrayal. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainly. But we must move on.
Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems to close around us.
We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers. I think of them, too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
American, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities over the pursuit of war.
This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, clan, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.
We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves in the long and bitter, but beautiful struggle for a new world. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
May our country, on the brink of war, take to heart the final refrain of "America, the Beautiful": "America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law."
A time comes when silence is betrayal. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainly. But we must move on.
Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems to close around us.
We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers. I think of them, too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
American, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities over the pursuit of war.
This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, clan, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.
We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves in the long and bitter, but beautiful struggle for a new world. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
May our country, on the brink of war, take to heart the final refrain of "America, the Beautiful": "America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law."
From T. S. Eliot in The Wasteland
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The Day I Met God
It was a chilly fall day and the sun was shining from a somewhat remote blue sky. The leaves on the trees were yellow and brown and here and there they were softly falling to the ground, ready and willingly toward the earth in this endless cycle of death and rebirth. The day was good. I was walking toward the Quaker meeting and felt the energy and spirit of my body and enjoyed my strength and health and well being.
And then all of a sudden, I saw him. He seemed to appear quite suddenly, this street person. He was tall. He had blondish hair and a face which had many wrinkles and seemed to have weathered many a storm. But his eyes, they were clear and very blue. As we walked toward each other a young couple came out from a side street. I noticed that they took a long turn so as not to come too close, perhaps afraid that he would ask them for money.
I heard like a voice softly saying, "God manifests himself in form." At that moment it seemed to me that it was God walking toward me, so poor, so sad, and homeless. He seemed to represent the millions of poor and homeless, the destitute of our world. He was now very close, his eyes looking straight at me. There was no judgment. I wanted him to ask me for something that I might feel better (My mood had changed to profound sadness) but he did not and I passed him.
Did he remind me that we are a family? How do I share with my less fortunate brothers and sisters? God appeared and I passed him by. How often do we see him blind and struggling, old, in prison? In the meeting I wanted to share but again I was silent. Open my heart, God so I can see with the eyes of the Spirit, feel with your heart, see your light within all things and beings. Awaken me God so that I will never be silent but speak the law of love always. Amen.
Truth is God
[Gleanings from the writings of Mahatma Gandhi bearing on God, God-Realization and the Godly Way] by M.K. Gandhi. Compiled by R. K. Prabhu. Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad-380 014, India.
There is an indefinable mysterious Power that pervades everything. I feel it, though I do not see it. It is this unseen Power which makes itself felt and yet defies all proof, because it is so unlike all that I perceive through my senses. It transcends the senses…
I do dimly perceive that whilst everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying all that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves and re-creates. That informing power or spirit is God. And since nothing else I see merely through the senses can or will persist, He alone is.
And is this power benevolent or malevolent? I see it as purely benevolent. For I can see that in the midst of death, life persists, in the midst of untruth, truth persists, in the midst of darkness, light persists. Hence I gather that God is Life, Truth, Light. He is Love. He is the Supreme Good.
But he is not God who merely satisfies the intellect, if He ever does. God, to be God, must rule the heart and transform it. He must express Himself in every smallest act of His votary. This can only be done through a definite realization more real than the five senses can ever produce. Sense perceptions can be, often are, false and deceptive, however real they may appear to us. Where there is realization outside the senses it is infallible. It is proved not by extraneous evidence but in the transformed conduct and character of those who have felt the real presence of God within.
Such testimony is to be found in the experiences of an unbroken line of prophets and sages in all countries and climes. To reject this evidence is to deny oneself.
This realization is preceded by an immovable faith. He who would in his own person test the fact of God’s presence can do so by a living faith. And since faith itself cannot be proved by extraneous evidence, the safest course is to believe in the moral government of the world and therefore in the supremacy of the moral law, the law of Truth and Love. Exercise of faith will be the safest where there is a clear determination summarily to reject all that is contrary to Truth and Love…
I know too that I shall never know God if I do not wrestle with and against evil even at the cost of life itself. I am fortified in the belief by my own humble and limited experience. The purer I try to become, the nearer I feel to be to God. How much more should I be, when my faith is not a mere apology as it is today but has become as immovable as the Himalayas and as white and bright as the snows on their peaks? Meanwhile I invite the correspondent to pray with Newman who sang from experience:
Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on: The night is dark and I am far from home, Lead Thou me on. Keep Thou my feet, I do no ask to see the distant scene; one step enough for me.
-Young India, 11-10-‘28
© Jean & Katharine Le Mée 2006