At that time, I presented the same text as a sermon at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of New Bern, NC. While I am a Quaker and not a UU, I have a long-standing friendship with UUFNB and have preached there many times.

In presenting that message at UUFNB, I knew that there would be criticism. Not so much of me, personally, nor even specifically of the message I brought, but of the Christian faith itself. And, as it happened, some of those criticisms were raised. At that time, wanting to stay focused on the content of that particular message, I did not engage them in any depth.

Yet, they are valid. They deserve more dialog. I knew that then, but I didn’t know what form the dialog might take.

A week or two later, the December issue of Friends Journal arrived in the mail. The main theme of the month explored some of these same issues, and how Quakers are addressing, and failing to address, them.

One article in particular spoke to me. It was precisely the other side of the coin, which I wanted to acknowledge.

Rather than summarize or paraphrase, I simply read these powerful words to the congregation. Written by Eden Grace, a member of Beacon Hill Friends Meeting in New England, and Field Officer in the Friends United Meeting office for ministry in Kisumu, Kenya, the article is entitled, “I Beg Your Forgiveness.”

“About two weeks ago I was at Indiana Yearly Meeting, where the main speaker was Jan Wood, who is well known among Friends. Maybe some of you have had the opportunity to hear her speak. She’s from Northwest Yearly Meeting, and wherever she goes, she has a very powerful witness and message that she brings about the importance of confession and repentance, and how healing it can be to confess not only our personal sins but the sins of our people. This is something I’ve experienced in Rwanda, and I’ve seen how transformative it can be. From her ministry at Indiana Yearly Meeting I felt that my message to you this morning came clear to me, and it’s a message of confession.

“I think many people here carry deep wounds from damaging religious experience in our past. I know I do. Those wounds may be closed over, but for many of us I think there’s still some shrapnel trapped inside. Sometimes when we talk to each other as a community and we seek God’s will together, those wounds become activated. That shrapnel causes a new sharp pain. An old wound can become a new pain or a reminder of pain. I know that happens for me, and I believe that many of us have experienced religious trauma in our past that becomes a factor, an obstacle, or just something that we bring into this room together.

“Taking the challenge that Jan Wood presented, and that I felt God calling me to embrace, I want to confess to you the sins of my people. Who are my people? I identify as a born-again Christian standing in the evangelical theological tradition, and I want to speak to you today as a Christian and on behalf of my Christian people. Whether I agree with them or not, whether I have done any of these things personally or not, doesn’t matter, because these are my people and if I choose to stand in the river of faith and identify with it, then I bear the sins of my people as a personal responsibility.

“On behalf of myself and my people, I confess that we have denied the full humanity and spiritual gifts of those who are different.

“Therefore, on behalf of myself and my people, I confess that we have done terrible damage in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. On behalf of myself and my people, I confess that we have denied the full humanity and spiritual gifts of those who are different, that we have used the loving and liberating word of God as a weapon. On behalf of myself and my people, I confess that we have claimed that some people are not worthy to be used by God in faithful service. I confess that we have behaved as if some sins are graver than others and some biblical texts are more rigidly applied, bringing hypocrisy and inconsistency to our own biblical scholarship.

“On behalf of myself and my people, I confess that we have hijacked the symbols and texts of Christian faith and drastically narrowed their meaning. I confess that we have used violence in the name of the Prince of Peace. We have accused those who read the Bible differently than we do of not being loyal and obedient believers, or of not loving the Bible as much as we do. I confess on behalf of myself and my people that we have cared more for spiritual and otherworldly salvation than for justice and suffering and liberation from oppression. We have been consumed by our fear of how we might be contaminated by our fellowship with you. We have arrogantly believed that we have a full and complete understanding of the will of God and the proper application of the Bible in every context.

“We have been judgmental, uncompromising, harsh, and uncharitable. I confess that we have desecrated the name of Jesus by acting in ways of which He would be ashamed. I’m so sorry. I humbly repent and beg your forgiveness. In these and so many other ways, Christians, people who love Jesus, have presented a counter-witness. We have pushed people away from God, from the love and the liberation of God, instead of drawing them closer.

“On behalf of myself and my people, I beg your forgiveness.”

Text of  ”I Beg Your Forgiveness” ©2011 Friends Publishing Corporation. Reprinted with permission. To subscribe: www.friendsjournal.org

Introductory paragraphs ©2012 Bruce R. Arnold, New Bern, NC

I’m defining corruption fairly widely, perhaps, so I better explain what I mean.  There are many forms that corruption can take. The most obvious is taking money to do something you shouldn’t, or to refrain from doing something you should do. This is the sense we use the word when we talk about the corruption of public officials: exchanging favors for material benefits.

Similarly, they might exchange favors for something intangible, like sex, influence or power. Most of us don’t have these temptations,  or maybe not so magnificently.

But maybe we do it in little ways,  like when we look the other way at some office shenanigans for the sake of remaining on friendly terms with the shenaniganistas. Maybe we cut corners on our taxes. Maybe that harmless flirting is more of a thrill than we let on. And so forth.

I’m not saying we should or could be  better than this.  I’m saying, let’s just admit it. Let’s not pretend that things are going to get a whole lot better. We could see the dawn of a completely non-racist,  non-sexist, non-homophobic, non-violent society,  and there would still be ways in which people would be corruptible. And I’m not expecting to see that so-much-more-perfect society in my lifetime, anyway.

Well, then why bring it up? Here’s why: politics. Now, I promised myself I wasn’t going to get into politics on this blog. First thing you know,  my only readers would be people who have the same political outlook – and even if there were some, which there aren’t, how boring would that be? For me, I mean.

So I’m keeping that promise. No politics. So why am I bringing it up? Not to raise a political opinion,  that’s for sure. I want to talk about the process of political discourse. Meta-politics, if you please.

Next, I’m not taking about political discourse between politicians. I expect them to be crass, short-sighted,  self-centered,  and fundamentally dishonest. I’m talking about you and me.

Conservatives,  for instance, put a lot of faith in the free market. It will regulate itself,  because of self-interest. People will stop doing business with crooks and incompetents, and they will fade away. As if. How does that explain Enron or the sub-prime mortgage fiasco? Sure,  those idiots were eventually caught,  but millions suffered – are suffering – as a result. That’s not okay. And since people are corruptible, it will happen again, and again,  ad infinitum.

My liberal friends think the solutions all lie in government. They think there is some kind of virtue in the state that will eventually,  if we just do it harder next time,  lead us to the promised land. Somehow, we will install a class of politicians and bureaucrats who have only the public’s best interest at heart,  who really know what that interest is, and know exactly how to accomplish it. Wow. Does that fly in the face of observed behavior! I know devout Christians with less faith than this.

Here in America, the presidential campaign is in full swing. We’re going to hear a lot of gabble from the candidates. They are all going to promise us the Sun, Moon and stars.  They are all going to pretend to be principled, dispassionate tribunes of the people’s welfare, however their particular version of that utopia may run. We don’t have to take them seriously.

Support who you like. Vote for the best vision you are offered, even if you know it can’t be fulfilled. Let’s just not pretend that our guys are all good, while theirs are all evil. C’mon. We are all corruptible, and the greater the temptation, the more will fall. After all, they have to get re-elected, don’t they?

First, the fact is that I was raised in a Christian home in a largely Christian country, in the Western culture that was formed largely within a Christian context. That alone predisposes me, whether I wish it or not, to certain ways of perceiving, feeling and thinking that are characteristic of the Christian faith. Even people who do not consider themselves Christian, who grew up in this cultural milieu, have many of those same outlooks and perceptions.

Second, I find that the life of Jesus is a watershed in human history. I hardly think that the most objective observer from any background would deny this. The nature of the Christian religion, and its spread in its various forms all over the globe, has had an enormous impact on people everywhere, Christian or not. I have no doubt that Buddhists would see the life of Gautama in the same way; or Muslims, the life of Mohammed. I have no quarrel with that; in the same objective way, I would have to agree. I don’t see any of them as the watershed in human history; they are all tremendously significant. Given my personal history and cultural heritage, I have to honestly state that, as much as I love or respect other faiths, the life of Jesus is more pertinent to my life than the others. See #1.

Third, I have long felt that, no matter what you think of Jesus, for such a simple man to have had such an enormous impact on history, there had to have been something extraordinary about him. People like this just don’t live in every generation, every century, every millenium. In religious matters, you’ve got Confucius, you’ve got Buddha, you’ve got Moses, you’ve got Jesus, and you’ve got Mohammed. Outside of those five, who else?

Fourth, I find that most people’s views of God and Jesus, whether believers or not, are essentially those that gained dominance during the medieval period. There are large admixtures of superstition, magical thinking, and the uncritical acceptance of legendary elements in those viewpoints. Many people who consider themselves atheists have in fact rejected superstition, yet do not know that there are non-superstitious ways of conceiving of the Divinity. Many people who consider themselves staunch Christians still maintain those old viewpoints. If educated, they have adjusted them somewhat to the post-Renaissance world view, but not much. Perhaps, for instance, they do not have an anthropomorphic idea of God, but beyond that, it’s pretty vague. Of the recognition that there is equal value in the teachings and practices of other religions, there is mostly lip service, if at all. As a post-Renaissance person, I find that the Christian religion still has great meaning, although I do not think of it within those medieval boundaries. I don’t think that the sun goes around the earth, that you can fall off the edge of the ocean, or that kings rule by divine right, either.

Fifth, I don’t believe in some of the old Christian stories, such as the virgin birth or the resurrection; at least, not as historical fact. Agreeable with Carl Jung, I acknowledge that the archetypal value of those stories transcends the question of historicity. Yet the same myths are found in other cultures; Christianity does not lay exclusive claim to virgin birth or the resurrected God. The parallels between Jesus and Mithras, whose religion was as prominent as Christianity in the Roman empire until the time of Constantine, are astounding. They celebrated the feast of Natalis Sol Invicti (The Birth of the Unconquerable Sun) on December 25, for instance. Candidates for initiation were bathed, similar to full-immersion baptism. There was a meal associated with the worship, not unlike Communion. Descent into and return from the Underworld is characteristic of other sects, such as that of Orpheus. This, to me, does not discredit Christianity; it highlights the power of those archetypal elements. While I don’t find the Genesis account of the Creation to be literally true — the fossil record is pretty convincing in that regard — there is no denying the narrative power of the story, and this is significant in its own right. I am not going to elaborate on the importance of archetype here; it is too complex for a brief exposition. Let me just say that, since the pioneering work of Jung, followed up by such brilliant scholars as Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell, calling something a “myth” does not mean that it is any less profound or powerful.

Sixth, I do believe that Jesus is an exemplar of the way God can act in people’s lives. He is wholly divine and wholly human, because his surrender to God was complete and without reservation. Yet, unlike those in the mainstream of Christianity, I consider Jesus to be the Great Example, and not the Great Exception. He is not the only Son of God; he shows us the way to a birthright which we all share. If, through Jesus, the Word became flesh, so too can any of us be that Word that God utters in this moment. The more we surrender to that, the more Christ-like we become.

Seventh, I do not believe that Jesus’ death on the cross and the myth of the resurrection have anything to do with remission of sins. Even as a child, I could not imagine a God who would condemn to hell all the people who had never even heard of Jesus and thus could not accept him as their savior. For that matter, I have never believed in heaven or hell. I don’t believe in a punishing God, nor in original sin. People — all people — have a capacity for great goodness and great wickedness. That’s the way it is. We can be more one than the other, partly by our own choice and partly by accepting the guidance of the Spirit which is in all of us. Jesus set a uniquely revealing example of what it means to live a spirit-filled life to the fullest. God didn’t drop a dime on Jesus to set him up to be tortured and killed so his blood could somehow magically wipe my slate clean. I’m responsible for my own transgressions. Better get on with making my amends.

Eighth, there is that Spirit in all of us, what Quakers call the Light Within. It is a rule and guide, a comforter, a source of inspiration, a healer, and many other functions. In Hindu philosophy, the Atman is the individual expression of (not separate from but identical to) the Brahman, the undifferentiated Source of all existence. This is my experience also, as close as it can be put in words. If we remove all ideas, feelings, illusions, etc. that separate us from full immersion in that inner Light, then we find ourselves as we most truly are, nothing other than that Light, which is none other than That One which is beyond all name and all description. Thus each of us is an incarnation of the Divine, whether we know it or not, experience it or not. Jesus shows us what it is like to be fully That, and invites us to follow. This is more clear in the Gospel of Thomas than in the four canonical Gospels, which contain significant alterations for the benefit of the powerful elite. For instance, in Thomas, Jesus says, “… the Kingdom of God is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father.”

Ninth, I don’t believe in Jesus as “a good man,” a “great philosopher”, a “prophet.” I believe he was in fact a fully-realized Son of God. It’s just that I don’t think that possibility is his and his alone. While his death on the cross has tremendous significance for me, as evidence that God is not above or removed from our sufferings but shares them with us, I don’t see it as the central event in the life of Jesus. I’m not sure I want to pick a central event.

Tenth, being Christian is not the same thing as being Christ-centered, although I find that some people use these terms interchangeably. I am more Spirit-centered than Christ-centered, myself.

Eleventh, to have a dialog on this subject, both sides must acknowledge that there are is a wide diversity of beliefs which all call themselves “Christian.” No one gets to decide for you whether you are Christian or not, based on their own beliefs. There is a tendency within the Christian tradition to define in-groups and out-groups, and then to persecute the out-groups. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the witch-trials, etc. This goes on today, sometimes obviously and sometimes subtly. I don’t think Jesus saw things in this way. His life and ministry was inclusive, not exclusive. All those who would follow his way were welcome, even the Pharisee Nicodemus or the Roman captain.

Twelfth, as a modern Christian, I don’t find myself limited to the ideas or practices of my native culture. I have found spiritual nourishment in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. I find their outlooks more highly developed in many ways than those of the West. The Buddhist idea of how the world comes into manifestation, for instance, resonates with me on a profound level, deeper than the Genesis story. Then too, the practice of Yoga has led me into the most intimate association with the One Source of All. The sage advice of the Tao Te Ching and I Ching is as penetrating a guide to action as any that exists. I don’t think everyone ought to feel this way; I have a penchant for philosophical exploration. I don’t see why it can’t be acknowledged as a vital option by any Christian. It isn’t, by many if not most, but it could be.

Thirteenth, the theology of liberation gives me a way to reconcile my lifelong concern for peace and justice with my spiritual life. This gives outward meaning, depth, and relatedness to what, for me, would otherwise be primarily mystical, inward, personal. It also gives a context for that concern which is more loving and humane than the political ideologies I have been associated with before.

I feel I need to add this: These are not propositions I thought out in philosophical form. Each of them is an attempt at expressing the experience I have received of the Spirit, or the Light Within. I find it repugnant, in spiritual matters, to think up ideas (George Fox called them “notions”) first, and then try to prove them by experience. Inevitably, two things happen in the latter method. One is that parts of experience which do not accord with the previously adopted ideas are ignored. The second is that people tend to think they are right, and when people think they are right, they often want to enforce their ideas on others. Sometimes in vicious or brutal ways.

Saying that these expressions arise from my experience does not make them right for you. It does not give them greater authority. I have found that, when people are moved by the Spirit, differences in how they perceive or express that can often be reconciled. Not always, and to our sorrow, but often. Whatever the case, when experience precedes philosophizing, the process tends to be more genuine, authentic, or honest. Maybe even more humble; not so sure about that. These are tendencies, not absolutes.

Yesterday, Friend Johan Maurer posted an excellent piece on his blog, “Can You Believe?” This isn’t an angle I’d have thought of, but gave me something to think about. And, Johan seems to be asking some of the same questions that I have. Here’s the link:

“What Is Carnal”

Recently I had a conversation with a 2nd grade school-teacher. I presented this proposition to her, that a great deal of illness is fear-based. She did not accept the proposition, because “I look at the kids I teach and they aren’t going around scared all the time.” I wish the conversation had not been interrupted at that point. I would have liked to hear more of what she had to say in order to improve my own understanding of the frame of my mind which she represents. This is a person who is educated, observant, aware, and intelligent. Yet the role of fear in illness is hidden from her.

How is that?

For one thing, it is not necessary for fear to be apparent to be real. Suppose one of my friend’s second-graders has a phobia about dogs. She will have canvassed the whole neighborhood, probably subliminally. She knows where all the dogs are. She knows which ones are behind fences, and exactly how close she can get before feeling uncomfortable. She knows which ones stay inside most of the time but are let outside without a leash or chain at times. She knows which of her relatives has a dog, and does not go to their home, perhaps by becoming sick – not feigning sickness, but really becoming sick. All of this is very real. In some ways her life has become restricted on all sides by the presence of dogs in the world. She herself may not be aware how often she makes choices to go here or avoid going there because of canine infestation.

My friend, who only sees her at school, is completely unaware of this. They don’t have dogs at school. She has never been confronted with her student’s irrational fear of Fido. She thinks her student is a well-balanced child.

She is no more aware of her other students’ fears than she is about this phobia. Unless it has come up in her presence, there is no reason she would know. I am not blaming her. This is predictable; it is the norm. It is a rare child who is so fearful in general that many people in many settings would have the opportunity to witness it.

And that is just fear in general. Now let us turn to the connection between fear and disease.

Dr. Edward Bach said it very well:

“There is a factor which science is unable to explain on physical grounds, and that is why some people become affected by disease whilst others escape, although both classes may be open to the same possibility of infection. Fear, by its depressing effect on our mentality, thus causing disharmony in our physical and magnetic bodies, paves the way for invasion, and if bacteria and such physical means were the sure and only cause of disease, then indeed there might be but little encouragement not to be afraid. But when we realize that in the worsts epidemics only a proportion of those exposed to infection are attacked and that, as we have already seen, the real cause of disease lies in our own personality and is within our control, then have we reason to go about without dread and fearless, knowing that the remedy lies within ourselves. We can put all fear of physical means alone as a cause of disease out of our minds, knowing that such anxiety merely renders us susceptible, and that if we are endeavoring to bring harmony into our personality we need anticipate illness no more than we dread being struck by lightning or hit by a fragment of a meteor.” ( Edward Bach, Heal Thyself)

Let’s be clear that we are talking about projected psychological fears, not the natural instinctual response to actual danger which is a healthy mechanism of survival.

Some of these fears are particular to certain individual people. Not everyone, for instance, fears germs so much that they wash their hands 30 times a day, although every seasoned psychotherapist has seen people of this kind. Some people may worry more about cancer, while others worry about strokes. For that matter, some may worry more about illness, while others worry about financial insecurity. The latter are making themselves susceptible to illness in just the same way as the former. However, fear of illness itself is a most powerful suggestion to the subconscious that will likely result in illness of some sort.

Fear is not the only emotional precursor to illness. Anger, grief, confusion, boredom, or any other strong emotion takes a physical toll in stress, decreased immune response, and so on. I have experienced them in extreme measure, as has virtually everyone. I know they had a powerful effect on my physical economy. So why focus on fear?

For one thing, fear creates physical results. Adrenaline, increased blood pressure, rapid heart rate, acid stomach, and other bodily changes accompany fear. These may be valuable when faced with an actual danger, but our body responds the same way to any anxiety, warranted or not. It cannot tell the difference. These reactions have both short and long-term consequences for health. That is one side of it.

The other side is that fear is founded in a lack of trust and security. Fear assumes that something bad is going to happen. Because emotions have such a powerful effect on our mind, fear has the characteristic of spurring the imagination to picture unpleasant or unwanted outcomes. Due to the intensity of the emotion, the subconscious will often take this as an important suggestion, and go to work to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The lack of trust and security go to the heart of the problem. Fear assumes that what is happening should not be allowed to happen. It feels out of control. It drives people to seek to assume an illusory control over events that can never be attained. This disruption of the harmony of the spirit, for it is spiritual as much as it is emotional, must result after some time in disruption of the entire organism, as all of the healing systems we have reviewed have demonstrated. The vital force will exhaust itself in trying to overcome this spiritual debility, and then the person will be open to disruptions of every sort, physical, emotional, cognitive, etc.

It is not only fear of illness that creates illness. I would like to emphasize this point. Living in fear of any sort will derange the physical economy. Consider the example above, of the little girl who is afraid of dogs. When she has to go where dogs are unavoidable, she may become really and truly sick. Her fear has been able to manifest this condition as a protective mechanism. An ineffective and constricting protective mechanism, to be sure, but it solves the immediate problem. This is not hypochondria or even faking. It is real illness. This is something that happens all the time.

If she does not become sick, then the fear floods her body with adrenaline, her blood pressure goes up, her fine motor dexterity goes down, etc. Can anyone doubt that repeated episodes of this will have a lasting effect on her body as well as mind?

It is amazing to see the grip that fear has on people’s outlook. I recently had a conversation with three well-educated people. One is a teacher, one is a health educator, and one is a retired businesswoman. They were talking about weight, diet, cholesterol levels, and how these affect their health. I suggested that the single most potent change they could make would be to eliminate fear from their ideas about health, so that they would be able to make sensible choices rather than fear-based choices. Each wanted to know more. Each said things that showed they had understood the idea that was presented. One said that she was aware that most of today’s medicine is based on fear. And then they went right back to talking about weight, diet, cholesterol levels, and how these affect their health, in the same fearful way as before.

Fear is a powerful emotion, and it has a powerful hold. We cannot expect that people will let go of it just on the basis of intellectual agreement (although this has its place in the process.) It also takes determination to recognize it and root it out. And it takes the practice of something such as contemplative prayer, yoga, meditation, or tai ch’i, which will allow one to experience the vital force directly and become used to letting it take the lead in such matters. We need never fear, when we are following the rejuvenatory and evolutionary power of the vital force, working with rather than against it.

Finally, I would like to point out that it is not only obvious illness, such as hypertension or influenza, which is associated with fear. I would like to present an example from my practice of a man who we will call Marvin. Marvin’s wife was an intelligent person who worked for years in government service. They loved to travel and play bridge and many other activities. Late in life, she developed dementia. As they had retired to a town where they had no family, he became the primary caretaker. During the first year, things were not so bad, but Marvin could see the steady deterioration. He became despondent, and this is when he started coming to see me, to help him maintain his own balance. We worked well together and he found his spirits and his energy much improved.

With every change in her condition, the despair would re-emerge, and we would have to go through the process once more of recognizing what she had lost, what he had lost, and how it affected them. With each new change, I would recommend steps he could take to help the situation, such as getting someone to help with chores and cooking. At each step, I would ask him to consider the eventual need for her to be on a dementia unit, and whether sooner might not be better than later. And at each step of the way, he balked. Not because of anything rational, but because of fear. Fear that if he admitted he could not handle this particular step, he would have to admit that he could not handle the whole process. I tried as best I could to address that fear. He had some awareness of what he was doing, and we found humor to be very effective in this regard, as he was willing to make fun of both my efforts and his resistance.

He would always agree to the particular recommendation about six months after it became needed. This also happened to be about two months before the next stage of deterioration would occur. So in effect he got two months worth of real benefit out of each bit of help he received, and then, while the help was still needed, it would not be enough to get the two of them through the next part of what was going on. After a chore helper, and then a helper/cook, we added an LPN who could help with bathing and other activities of daily life. Somewhere in there was a person who could come take Mrs. M. out to get her hair done and so forth, just to give Marvin a chance to get away on his own.

Eventually, he had to accept what his doctors, his daughters, his helpers, and I were all telling him: it was neglectful not to admit her to a dementia unit where she could be properly and safely cared for. He found one right here in our town, not 15 minutes from where he lived, so he could visit her every day. She no longer knew who he was, but he felt he had to continue. I have been to this facility. It is very pleasant, well-staffed, well-run. After an initial adjustment, she settled in well. She died a month later.

In those two short years, I watched a man go from a healthy and active life to a shell of his former self. His fears had made him unable to deal with reality, or make practical choices. He paid a huge toll for it in the reduction of his own vital force. The change was remarkable to all who knew him. He became physically frail and emotionally querulous. He ceased to take the kind of care of himself and his home that he always had. And it was not long before he passed away. He had not contracted some specific illness. He just overspent his vital force and was unable to replenish it, and died as a consequence.

This kind of fear has an important underpinning which may not be well-recognized. The core fear in all of these examples is that “I will not be loved.” If the dog bites me, it doesn’t love me. If I don’t treat my wife a certain way, I will be unworthy of her love. And both of these assume that the universe is a very unloving place.

We focus so much on the importance of loving others, but we are so often blocked in our ability to receive love. Giving love doesn’t make us lovable; we are lovable simply because we are.

The parts of ourselves that we fear are unlovable — secretly or not — are exactly the places where are unable to love anyone else. Instead, feeling unloved, we try to make up for it with experiences that make us “feel good.” But feeling good is no substitute for being loved, and the efforts we make to feel good twist and distort our relationships with others and ourselves. Among other things, they produce fear. Fear that love is in short supply, and we will not get enough of it.

The fear that we are unloved is the most profound fear there is. All other fears are derived from it. Not, as said above, those real fears we might experience during an automobile accident or over the serious illness of a loved one, but all those other fears, the fear of things that mostly never happen. We tell ourselves that we are worried about This or That, when underneath we are really afraid that we will not be loved.

There are two ways to approach fear. One is to treat it. There are specific symptoms of anxiety and they can be treated with medication and counseling. The other is to heal it. If we find out what causes the fear, and alter the character of the person who feels it, then it will cease to be an outlet for disharmony. However we approach this healing process – whether from traditional psychotherapy or from a spiritual view – the same outcome will take place: the person who felt the fear will become more resilient, more secure, more trusting. In other words, they will experience faith.

This may or may not be faith in a particular deity or creed, but it will be faith in something – something which is infinitely more comprehensive than the ego which suffers from the fear. It must be something larger than the ego, because the ego can manipulate anything less, and will, since it is part of the ego’s nature to be the top dog in whatever is going on. This has been well-shown by the 12 Step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, which prescribe faith in a “power greater than myself” to their members, and for exactly this reason: the ego is too wily to give up control or power to anything less. “Ego deflation” is a necessary part of the process of working the 12 Steps.

That all this is so is nothing new. We have not just recently discovered this concept. Our great brother Jesus of Nazareth said much the same thing, 2,000 years ago. In his famous Sermon on the Mount, he said,

“Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, what shall we eat? Or, What shall we drink? Or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek; for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” (Matthew 6:25-34)

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Haven’t we enough to do, just taking care of what must be done today, without building great castles in the sky, or dungeons more like; things over which we spend our vital force in agonies of worry, which never come to pass? And doesn’t all this worry rob the day of its savor? And doesn’t it introduce tension, and excess of adrenaline, acid, and bile, and don’t these have consequences in our physical as well as mental well-being?

Bach points out that the answer to spiritual malaise is not to fight against it or try to remove it, but to so flood the mind and spirit with the opposite, positive emotion that there is no room for the negative one. In the case of fear, it is faith that will supplant it. In keeping with the understanding of the healing systems we have reviewed, the end result is that we have strengthened the organism to handle life on its own, rather than making it dependent on outside assistance for its security. “For example, should there be cruelty in our nature, we can continually say, ‘I will not be cruel,’ and so prevent ourselves from erring in that direction; but the success of this depends on the strength of the mind, and should it weaken we might for the moment forget our good resolve. But should we, on the other hand, develop real sympathy towards our fellow-men, this quality will once and for all make cruelty impossible, for we should shun the very act with horror because of our fellow-feeling. About this there is no suppression, no hidden enemy to come forward at moments when we are off our guard, because our sympathy will have completely eradicated from our nature the possibility of any act which would hurt another.”

The same thing is said in the I Ching, in Chapter 43, entitled “Breakthrough” in the Wilhelm/Baynes edition. It says,

“In a resolute struggle of the good against evil, there are, however, definite rules that must not be disregarded it it is to succeed. First, resolution must be based on a union of strength and friendliness. Second, a compromise with evil is not possible; evil must under all circumstances be openly discredited. Nor must our own passions and shortcomings be glossed over. Third, the struggle must not be carried on directly by force. If evil is branded, it thinks of weapons, and if we do it the favor of fighting against it blow for blow, we lose in the end because thus we ourselves get entangled in hatred and passion. Therefore it is important to begin at home, to be on guard in our own persons against the faults we have branded. In this way, finding no opponent, the sharp edges of the weapons of evil become dulled. For the same reasons, we should not combat our own faults directly. As long as we wrestle with them, they continue victorious. Finally, the best way to fight evil is to make energetic progress in the good.” [Emphasis mine.]

Love is not in short supply. It is not a zero-sum game. More love for you does not mean less love for me. The more love there is, the more love there is, and no one need fear that there is not enough.

No.

The Second Commandment goes on to talk about not making carved or graven images, and to not bow down or serve them. If all the Commandments were talking about were idols such as the Golden Calf, then there would not be two commandments. The First Commandment is separate from the Second. The Second is not a continuation or explanation of what was meant by the first. It stands on its own. So what is the First Commandment talking about?

Well, there are a lot of things that we make into false gods. Let’s start with money, or material possessions in general. We may not think we worship that new vehicle we just brought home from the dealership, but if we spend more time thinking about it, washing it, driving it, talking about it, than we do tending to our spiritual lives, that’s a pretty good clue that we have lifted it up to a greater status than it deserves. No, we may not invest it with divine properties such as omnipotence. Nonetheless, if we think that new SUV is going to make us happy, we have invested it with a power it does not have.

Let’s consider fetishes and totems. By fetish I am not referring to the psycho-sexual neurosis first explained by Sigmund Freud, where a non-sexual object (such as a shoe) becomes necessary for a person to achieve sexual satisfaction. There is a larger sense in which the fetish is any object which is imbued with some form of power it is not usually recognized as having. So, if we think that a cross has the ability to keep vampires away, we have fetishized it. A totem may have the sort of powers attributed to a fetish, but their primary purpose is to identify a group. So, if you were in the Turtle clan of the Iroquois tribe, you would know not to marry another Turtle, and turtles (both real and artistic depictions) would be held in special reverence by your clan — but not by members of the Wolf clan.

So it is easy to understand how money can be a fetish for many, a false god. It does have some power — you can buy things with it — but many think that it has the power to make them happy or secure, and it does not. But a material idol doesn’t have to be expensive. A peace sign hung around my neck may have the power of a totem to unite me with other like-minded people — and this may not be a bad thing — unless I think that I therefore have the power to know God’s will in all circumstances, because I have the power of Peace.

If you have spent any time around the peace movement at all, you must have seen examples of this kind of arrogance. I’ve been pretty arrogant myself.

I’m not trying to pick on “peaceniks” here, so I will give another example. Take, for instance, the Constitution of the United States. Now, let me say up front that I have the greatest respect for this document. I think it is the greatest instrument of governance yet designed. I think that the men who wrote were, in some part, divinely inspired. But the document itself is man-made. I have respect for it, not reverence. There are many for whom it has the power of a talisman to ward off evil. This is a form of fetish.

Enough of materialistic things. Let’s turn to some other idols.

Watch as the presidential campaign ramps up over the next year. Fetishes,totems, graven images and idols of all sorts will emerge. Watch your own attitudes. Are you looking for the person who will create some kind of golden age? Do you invest politicians or the political process with power to make you happy, secure, or prosperous that they do not have?

What about doctors and medicine? Do we expect them to cure all our ills? Do we think that pills, so often called the Magic Bullet, actually have superpowers? Do we treat physicians like gods?

And then there are even more intangibles. Cannot love itself be an idol? When we sing “All You Need Is Love”, does that cast an enchantment that is, in fact, not true? As important as love is, and as important it is for our fulfillment as human beings, there are people who love each other who commit acts of disrespect, degradation, or outright violence against each other every day.

OR Power. We think that the more power we have over a situation, the more security we have within it. This is wrong. No human brains have the ability to collect and comprehend all the necessary information in any given situation, just for starters.

And then there is God. That sounds pretty funny doesn’t it? How could God be a false idol? Of course He isn’t. But our ideas about God sure can be. We may be so certain about who God is, what He wants, where He’s leading … all of these lead us away from the real relationship with Him which is what the First and Second Commandments are all about. Let’s face it — all those people who are so certain about God’s will can’t all be right. But they all think they are right. Somehow, they have made an idol of their certainties.

I don’t know what to tell you to do. I’m still working through my own idolizations. I want my faith where it belongs, not in magical thinking.

Faith and Practice. Our Quaker tradition has always emphasized the interchange between the two. Our practice is informed by our living faith, the actual experience of being led by the Spirit as we have divined it within our Meetings. That faith is nurtured and developed in its turn by the experience of seeking to live up to it in the world. I say “we” to emphasize the communal basis of this faith and this practice. It is an ancient Quaker discipline to test one’s leadings for clearness among other seasoned Friends, and within the wider Friends fellowship.

The Theology of Liberation as it has grown in Latin America and elsewhere has these same traits, given certain important cultural differences. Practice is informed by faith; faith is informed by practice; theological reflection requires participation in both, and within a community of the faithful. This is called “praxis.” Not an academic exercise, but the give and take of prayer, inspiration, creativity, reflection, repeated within relationships with their brothers and sisters in faith. This circle of activity, from the inner to the outer and back again, is known as praxis.

Theology thus comes out of a living faith — out of the struggle to embody our faith in our choices and actions. This is the only authority for doing theology. Everything else is notional: talk which resembles gossip about theology, not the doing of theology itself.

This undertaking is not easy, and only humility makes possible any measure of success. Simplistic answers, formulaic responses, and self-righteous certainty all display an aggressive, domineering attitude that produces only more oppression. Insistence on the prominence of certain scriptural texts, rather than viewing each in the light of the whole of scripture, for instance, is a sure recipe for the disaster which we see, enacted by our fellow humans every day all over the world. It leads to the failure of love and the imperium of ego. The thrust toward certainty is so appealing, so seductive, so misleading. Faith is not about certainty; at least, not that kind. The certainty of faith lies in knowing that God is with us even when all is dark and confusion reigns. A God whose will is known in every detail is no God at all, but an idol to our own narrow predilections, obsessions, and fears.

Humility tells us,always and everywhere, that it is better to be loved than to be right. Beware of those who tell you it is because they love you that they are telling you what to think or feel, as they put you on the rack.

To find fulfillment, a theology of liberation must address the needs of the middle class as well as the poor. This is not to contradict the “preferential option for the poor” which has been the hallmark of liberation theology since its inception. On the contrary, the middle class must learn to adopt that stance for themselves, within their own lives, in order to have an authentic faith. Not by pretending to be poor, not by a Lady Bountiful approach to charity, but by learning how to stand in solidarity with the poor, the outcast, the despised. the forgotten, the neglected.

The middle class should take joy in their opportunities for health, education, meaningful work, sufficient income, material comfort, relative freedom of choice and of behavior. The poor want these things for themselves, and by right should have them; to discount them would be to discount the reality of the struggles of the poor to achieve them.

From what, then, is the middle class to be liberated? From our complicity in the structures which which maintain oppression and privilege. From the smug self- absorption that supposes that everyone shares our values, preventing us from having real relationships with others. From greed. From our own aggressiveness. From prejudice of all sorts. From anxiety, the fear that no matter how much we have it is never enough. From feeling unloved and alone.

Liberation, though, is not just “freedom from.” It is also “freedom for”: for joy, for contentment, for love, for a sustainable prosperity. And there are the “freedom of’s”, natural to the citizens of a republic: of speech, of assembly, of religion, of the press, of being secure in our person and property. This is by no means an exhaustive list.

To enjoy any of these freedoms, we must work to see them extended to everyone. “An injury to one is an injury to all”, as the IWW preamble puts it.

This is a great question. But this is too narrow a definition of superstition. Put that way, there are many things, commonly accepted, which would have to be called superstition. For instance, the idea that a human being has inherent dignity and worth cannot be proven on the basis of facts. Given some of the people I’ve known, there is evidence to the contrary. LOL.

And what about the Quaker belief in the Light Within? Do we actually know that there has never been a single person who did not have it? Some poor, soulless person, with less compassion or humanity than a dog or a cat? Again, I’ve known some of those. Yet it doesn’t change my belief in the Light Within, although I cannot prove it with evidence or fact. Nor would we call that a superstition, although some might.

Merriam-Webster gives as its first definition “a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation,” and it is in that sense that I use the word. In that sense, there are ideas about God which are definitely superstitious, and others which are not.

This viewpoint changes over time. In the not-so-distant past, the Hindu pantheon was considered by most Westerners to be idolatry of the most superstitious sort. As we have come to comprehend the vast richness of the Hindu cosmology and the sophistication of its philosophy, we recognize that this polytheistic viewpoint is not based on “ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation.” Yet, without considerable study of the subject, most people can be forgiven if they are not familiar with that.

So it is, in my experience, with most Westerners who consider themselves atheists or nontheists. Most; not all, let me hasten to add. Most have rejected, rightly enough, claims about the nature of God which are in fact superstitious and even idolatrous. Look at some of what passes for theology, especially among some of our more fundamentalistic churches, and I cringe, too. I read a blog post by a fellow who wanted to push a street corner preacher away from the microphone and tell the crowd “God is not a monster.” Amen to that.

Having rejected such ignorant trash, however, does not therefore establish that there is no God or that all ideas about God are superstition. Again, most can be forgiven for not having been exposed to some of the sublime conceptions of God which are anything but.

In the final analysis, though, faith in God is not about theology. It’s not about what we think or believe. It isn’t about which set of words are more true and which are more false. We do talk about things that matter to us, and so people will talk about God. But faith, properly put, is not the outcome of the words we use. The words are a pale attempt to describe the experience of faith. I might have difficulty describing the experience of eating a watermelon, of falling in love, of being overcome with grief at the loss of a loved one. It doesn’t mean that these experiences are any less valid for that. Addicts and alcoholics are constantly frustrated in their attempts to communicate what addiction is like to “earth people,” and yet just a few simple words in a 12 step meeting will bring about smiles of recognition, as the truth of his or her experience is shared by others who have been through the same thing.

The atheists and nontheists who I respect are those who admit freely that they have not had the experience of having a living relationship with God, and that it would be dishonest to pretend to believe even in the most philosophically defensible conception without such an experience. They do not claim that, on this basis, there can’t be a God, just that they have no way to say that there is. This has integrity.

Similarly, when I read your words “there really isn’t a non-superstitious way of conceiving of the Divinity”, I translate that in my mind to “I have not encountered a non-superstitious way of conceiving of the Divinity.” And I have no problem with that at all.

You know, I am a fan of “NCIS.” I started watching it because I always liked David McCallum, and was glad to see him back in a starring role on TV. I’ve seen Mark Harmon on many TV shows and movies, and always liked him, too. But the ideas I have of what either of those two men are like are totally based on performances they have given. They might be nothing like any of the ideas I have about who they are. They are actors; they portray a role. The actual experience of knowing them, as a friend or relative, might prove to be very different. Similarly, one who has not had the experience of a living relationship with God — and I don’t know you well enough yet to say whether this is true of you or not — will not find any of the words about God to be of much use, especially if they are honest with themselves about it.

When I talk about God, I feel as though I have left prose and moved into poetry, because all I know how to do is attempt to evoke the experience of God which I have. I don’t find I can say anything worthwhile about God in the way that we can describe natural processes such as the nature of light or Newton’s laws of thermodynamics.

There are ways of describing one’s relationship with the Divine which do not invoke a Deity at all. I am very drawn to them. While I am comfortable with the idea of  having a relationship with another living being and calling it God, I find great meaning in the Taoist notion of the Absolute which, while I would consider it to be divine or sacred in the broadest sense of those words, has absolutely nothing to do with any kind of entity. “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name.” Yeah, buddy. Truer words were never spoken.

I distinguish between faith and belief. I have many beliefs, like duty, honor, and country, as the old phrase has it. I believe in the Scout Law: A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, reverent. Like Robert Duvall said in “Secondhand Lions”, it doesn’t matter whether these are true. I believe in them because they are the things one ought to believe in.

Faith, on the other hand, is a word with a special meaning for me. Faith is not belief. It runs deeper than that. I could substitute one belief for another, and still be me. Beliefs are ideas. Faith is my deepest response to the world. It is who I am, reaching out to what is, and being touched by it in turn. It doesn’t matter what words I use to express it, or whether I use words at all.

I don’t need proof of the beauty of a sunset, or of the quality of fine silk, or of the way a loved one’s smile can make your day. I don’t need proof that love is more powerful than hate, or that the truth will set you free. I don’t need proof of Bonnie’s love for me, or mine for her (although all those little demonstrations are wonderful.) These things are, because I would not be me if they were not. Faith in God has the same quality. It’s not rational; neither is it irrational, no more than the smell of a magnolia is rational or irrational. A magnolia would not be a magnolia without its fragrance. And I would not be me, at the most profound level, without my faith in God.

Or, to be really clear, for doing philosophy.

The ancients understood that philosophy is the root of all understanding. What we now think of as “science” was called “natural philosophy” for instance. Yet the change in term, from natural philosophy to science, is revealing. Philosophy is not just about knowledge, it is love of wisdom. There is knowledge of a topic, and then there is wisdom about it. Much of our science has no wisdom at all. Our knowledge of how to do things has in so many cases far outstripped our understanding of whether or not they ought to be done. We can all think of numerous examples of technology gone haywire.

So, everyone does philosophy, whether they know it or not. Most people do applied philosophy — the search for understanding of one particular subject. When you learned to figure out unit prices in the grocery store — 4 quarts of milk costs twice what one gallon costs, although it is the same quantity — you were doing applied philosophy.

And then there is the kind of philosophy we think of when we commonly use that word: Socrates. Hume. Sankara. Nagarjuna. Wittgenstein. I’m not going to try to define it in this short post. No way. I’m just going to mention that and move on to the main point, having set it up.

So, tools for thinking. Tools for effective philosophy. Here’s one that is all too uncommon: the Legitimate Difference of Opinion. If I think a flat tax is the best way to balance the government’s need for money with the people’s ability to live free and prosperous lives, and you think that a progressive tax is a better way, we have an important difference of opinion. But it doesn’t mean that you are an evil usurper of people’s natural property rights, or that I am a greedy SOB who is insensitive to the human needs of my fellow citizens. You might care very much about fundamental rights as an important part of our national happiness, and I might be constantly on the lookout for ways to meet the needs of my neighbors. We just disagree about the way to get there.

All too often, in political debate especially but in most any arena you can think of, people do not recognize the legitimate difference of opinion. If you don’t agree with me, you are wrong, and furthermore bad. I see this all the time, in matters large and small. Among other things, such as displaying a certain kind of insecurity, and probably arrogance to boot, it is also intellectually dishonest.

And you can’t think straight — effectively — if you aren’t honest. Period.

Then things started to change. One thing led to another, and all of a sudden the water was gone and he was being compressed. A squeezing motion urged him along, until he emerged into a tumultuous world of light, of sensory stimulation, of new experience. Something happened and he started to breathe for the first time. Nothing ever returned him to that state of bliss, ever. Nursing and sleeping were pretty good, and he became interested in these kaleidoscopic new events, but it would never be quite like that again.

Something like this has a profound influence on a person. Not always traumatic, of course, but definitely not designed to make one think of the world as a place of peace and plenty. Many people, experiencing birth as a deprivation, spend the rest of their lives grasping for every kind of gratification they can, fearful that there will never be enough. Some of us are fortunate enough to have learned to be happy,

I imagine some part of that experience remains; more than a memory, perhaps a kind of primal urge. I imagine some part of us would like to go back there. I imagine …

Imagine gently floating
There’s nothing much to do
Nothing but warmth and darkness
and gentle motion too.

I imagine that many utopias have been built on those ancient, ancient memories. All of our needs met. No conflict.

This is not what peacemaking is about. True peacemaking sees the world as it is, not as some far-off misty dream of what it might be if everything were different from the way it is. True peacemaking makes sense of this wild world we are born into.

I have been fortunate to have known some of the movers and shakers of our times. Dr. Benjamin Spock slept in a room in my house when he campaigned for President on the People’s Party ticket in 1972. Cesar Chavez slept in that same room, a year later. I’ve met and worked with people as disparate as Stokely Carmichael of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine. As I detailed in a sermon a few years ago, I was fortunate that my life was touched by Philip Berrigan on a couple of occasions.

Peacemaking is an approach to situations of conflict. A peacemaker does not presume that, as a result of her activities, there will be no more conflict. Many of Gandhi’s best plans were based on the knowledge that they would be met with harsh conflict. Not to deliberately provoke violence, just the simple knowledge that violence would naturally ensue, and that the immorality of conditions would be thereby revealed for all of good will to see, and respond to.

The American Friends Service Committee was originally founded to provide alternate service for Quaker conscientious objectors during World War I. Seeing the misery and displacement the war had caused, they started to work with refugees. Eventually, as it evolved, its mission became to address the conditions which are the mother and father of war: ignorance, injustice, prejudice, and greed. There are those who have worked in the AFSC who believed that someday such efforts might eliminate war. There are many, many others –  in virtually all cases, those who were its most effective operatives – who believed that it was worth doing because it was worth doing, not because it might usher in some utopia. I have known some of them, too, such as John Looney of the Akron AFSC office in the late 60s and early 70s. John was one of the most peaceful people I’ve ever known, the very model of the modern Quaker. He rarely gave offense, and while he did not meekly accept offense, his approach to it was to resolve rather than to conquer it.

Phil Berrigan was cut from this same cloth. You never sensed that he despised the people who planned the wars or built the bombs. He was deeply afflicted by the tragic cost of violent conflict, but I never saw him cross the line into hatred.

This stood out in stark contrast to many others in the movement. I remember particularly well, at a founding meeting of the US Anti-Imperialism League, a young female communist who said “we are not the lovey-dovey peaceniks of our parents’ generation. We hate the injustice and violence and exploitation we see, and all of our plans are based on hate.” Well, there was more than a little truth in  what she said about the lovey-dovey peaceniks, who were all very nice to know but generally ineffectual in their protests. However, her answer to that is no less effective. Hatred does not replace Pollyannaism, if peacemaking is what you are after. A peacemaker has to know his opponents. He has to know that he has opponents. He has to understand that there is something entirely human which motivates them. He has to comprehend that unless those human needs are addressed, no resolution will be found.

I am so glad to have known men and women like this: real peacemakers, with clear eyes and strong minds and loving hearts, a will to action and a delight in recreation. Peacemakers who knew that they were not ushering in the Millenium, that the dawning of the age of Aquarius did not mean rainbows and unicorns and wandering gently over the meadow with Mao and Stalin or the guy who crunches an old lady’s skull on the sidewalk for her social security check. People who knew conflict, and met it time and again, without abandoning principle or purpose, even knowing that they would meet conflict again. This is bravery of the highest order, when there are no medals or uniforms or flags, no 21 gun salutes over the grave of the fallen or monuments on the courthouse square.

Those of you who know me, know how I respect and honor our military veterans. I often make use of casual contact with a soldier, sailor or Marine to thank them for their service. I mean it from the bottom of my heart. Jack Nicholson may have portrayed an unsavory character in the movie “A Few Good Men,” but he was exactly right when he proclaimed that “deep down in the places you don’t talk about, you want me on that wall.” Yes, I do. I have been to those places. I know the depravity of which the human heart is capable, and I want warriors willing to give their all to protect us from it. I admire them for it.

But there are other dark places in the human heart, too. Dark places which use words like honor, and freedom, and country, to perpetrate horrors which even today’s movie directors would flinch from depicting. And it is the peacemaker, not the warrior, who stands up against those. Not against the people; against the dark places that make people do terrible things. We know those dark places lurk in all people, and under the wrong circumstances, we are all capable of horror. It is for themselves, as much as those others, that the peacemaker does her duty.

I believe, just as surely as there should be days like Memorial Day or Veteran’s Day when we honor those who have served, and in some cases given life and limb, in our nation’s armed forces, there should be a day for the peacemakers, when we honor those who have served in these other ways. Many of them gave no less. We can start with the better-known, like Gandhi and King, who gave the last full measure of their devotion in service of the principles for which they lived. But what of the many unknowns? Unknowns such as my brother, who went into an uncertain and difficult exile rather than fight in a war which he believed to be wrong? Do they deserve no remembrance? When someone asks, did my brother serve in the Vietnam war, I reply, he sure did. He served the cause of humanity, and at such a cost to himself.

There is nothing that says that a member of the armed forces cannot be a peacemaker. Many of our greatest soldiers, sailors and Marines, having seen war first-hand, have been staunch advocates for peace. Likewise, there is nothing to prevent a peacemaker from being a warrior. When someone like the Quaker social worker Jane Addams goes into the most desperate neighborhoods of Chicago to help its residents lift themselves out of poverty, degradation and despair, there is a battle of a different sort being fought, but a battle nonetheless.

The first Mother’s Day, as we know it today, was celebrated in a church in Grafton, WV, in1908. Something similar had been proposed before, but it was on that day that our modern holiday became a reality. News of this occurrence spread across the nation, and by 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared the 2nd Sunday in May to be a day to remember all mothers, alive or deceased.

Could not the same thing be done for a Peacemaker’s Day? Those brave and hardy souls, men and women alike, who have given so much for the cause of human understanding, deserve a day on which their sacrifices can be honored. Their bravery, sacrifice, and dedication are fully as worthy of recognition, for while our military forces serve to keep us free, our peacemakers serve to keep us human.

“War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.” (John F. Kennedy, Letter to Navy friend)

(The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of New Bern, NC, chose the 3rd Sunday in December to celebrate Peacemakers’ Day. Advent seemed appropriate, because Jesus is the Prince of Peace.)