Category: Lament

Turning the Tables on Big Oil

Who would have thought that a handful of Montana youth could successfully win their day in court and against Big Oil at that? But then, every once in a while, the young Davids of this world triumph over behemoths like Goliath. Now, other states are looking to these youth and their strategy as a blueprint.  

Does this mean fossil fuel is on its way out? Hardly. The clash between conservative ideologues seeking to shield fossil fuel industries from climate action and those advocating for renewable energy to limit the amount of carbon pumped into the atmosphere continues unabated. As with Texas, oil is considered the “lifeblood” of Montana’s economy…even though the state has warmed faster than the national average, heating up to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1950. [1] Nevertheless:

Montana has never denied a fossil fuel permit, whether for extraction, transportation, or burning fossil fuels. In a 2022 debate, then-candidate Ryan Zinke, now a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, proudly said he wanted no part of the clean energy transition… During this winter’s legislative session, state lawmakers tried to ban teaching scientific theories in K-12 education. They passed new laws that blocked cities from making policies that would encourage non-fossil energy sources. [2]

What these youths did and continue to lobby for is profound, which makes it all the more imperative that the rest of us support their efforts by continuing to press onward for a healthier and greener world. It isn’t just up to the young. They can’t do it on their own, nor should they. The peril of ecological devastation falls more heavily on them while inflicting future generations.  We all have work to do. We must join hands and do all we can to save our planet and God’s beloved Creation. As it is often said, “This is the only home we’ve got.”

Prayer: In your providence, Divine Creator, instill within us the conviction that the best way to cope with climate grief is to do what we can when we can, despite the obstacles and inevitable setbacks. Teach us to stand in solidarity with our children and youth, those of this generation and the next. Grant us your vision of hope; we pray so as to be faithful till the end. We ask this in all the holy names of God. Amen.

[1] Even a 1.8% increase in temperature spells trouble for our climate: imhttps://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/global-warming-18%C2%B0-f-1%C2%B0-c-seems-small-so-why-change-global-temperature

[2] https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/06/inside-the-unexpectedly-wild-landmark-montana-youth-climate-trial/

[3] On this 9/11 anniversary,  we hold dear the memory of all those who lost their lives while carrying the hope for a saner and more compassionate world.   

When We No Longer Know What to Do

“It may be when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work…”   Wendell Berry

What if the sense of powerlessness that comes with not knowing what to do, isn’t evidence of despair? What if it doesn’t even signify hopelessness, for that matter. What if it instead is a demarcation, a boundary heralding what you’ve crossed over to is liminal space?

Coming from the Latin word “limen,” liminal space is a threshold, signifying you are in an in-between time. Yet liminal space can be offputting; after all, who wants to be in that uncertain transition between where you’ve been and where you may be headed? Nor is there certainty when you’ll cross over to the other side.

Attesting to the potentiality of liminal space, poet, farmer, and environment activist Wendell Berry writes, “It may be when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work. And when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

Prayer: Holy One, in the wake of so much upheaval, remind us of your faithfulness. Teach us to discover that the work we’ve been given to do emerges not when everything is clear – but arrives amid the uncertain and disheartening.  May even the impediments on the journey summon us to sing your praises. We ask this in all the holy names of God. Amen.

[1] Wendell Berry from Standing by Words

 

 

 

 

“The Slaughter Right in Front of Us”

  A phrase attributed to Jesus states, “Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.”  While the never-ending violence comes from guns, not swords, I’ve long struggled with Jesus’ words.  Consider that those demanding or legislating the use of these weapons aren’t the ones slaughtered but the innocent: children in classrooms, young children and families in their homes, and shoppers at grocery stores and shopping malls. They are the ones sacrificed, not those responsible for their proliferation.

  Yet imagine if Jesus’ words weren’t directed solely at perpetrators but at those determined to keep it a way of life.   Those who blindly believe that the slaughter of innocents is a necessary price for freedom.   Those who vigorously dismantle any attempt to limit access to high-capacity rifles because they insist it violates personal rights.   Those whose goal is assuaging their base politically no matter the cost.

  Writes author Clint Smith, “I want to walk past the school where my son will attend kindergarten next year and see a place that will keep him safe. But this is impossible. We live in a country …where legislation is written — and erased — by the gun lobby. Where manipulations and distortions of Second Amendment rights prevent politicians from enacting any semblance of sensible laws that would at least attempt to prevent this. Where claims about what our Founders wanted supersede the slaughter we see right in front of us. Where the cocktail of easily accessible guns and the normalizing of extremist views makes nowhere feel safe.”

  Will there ever come a time when enough is enough?   When truly good citizens will triumph over this madness and make our schools, playgrounds, and markets safe again?   When those for whom the common good is not an alien concept but the ethical framework by which society flourishes?

  Thoughts and prayers are not enough.   Nor will those who continue to prolong this carnage ever change.  We need not “live by the sword,” but as responsible citizens and people of goodwill, we can choose to do all we can to rid our nation of this carnage.

   If your representative is beholden to the gun lobby rather than your child’s safety, the power of the vote is in your hands.  If your news station turns a blind eye or even promotes the use of assault weapons, you don’t have to follow them.   And for those who speak of “constitutional rights” as justification for this slaughter, you can rest assured they lost their moral compass ages ago.

   “Hope is a human virtue,” writes Rabbi Jonathan Sacks,  “…at its ultimate is the belief that God is mindful of our aspirations; [and thus] God has given us the means to save us from ourselves; so we are not wrong to dream, wish and work for a better world.”

  May it be so.  

[1] Credit…Léon Cogniet/Musée des Beaux-Arts, via Alamy

[2] The Gospel of Matthew 26:52

[3] Clint Smith, The Atlantic, No Parent Should Have to Live Like This, May 25, 2022

[4] Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations (London: Continuum, 2003), 207.

When You Can’t Pray….

“Often the longings of prayer, are diffused and muted longings,
that one barely feels at all.” [1]

How can one pray, when there isn’t the remotest desire or longing to do so?  For that matter, how can anyone fall back on prayer when they’re painfully aware of its insufficiency?    In the face of so much unnecessary suffering, exploitation, and violence, why even suggest this practice (other than not knowing what else to do or say)?

Writes author, James Finley, “There is, it seems, a deal that [our] heart makes with itself, so as NOT to admit that it harbors a longing so deep that it can’t continue…” [2]  What I think he speaks of here, is that ironclad agreement we make with ourselves – often without being consciously aware of it.   For when the mowing down of civilians is routinized; human and civil rights systematically usurped; forests, rivers, and its creatures plundered; institutions routinely violated, and fascism lauded by those in public office – is it any wonder we’ve learned to cope by shaking our heads and doing what we can to get through another day?

Yet when you’re worn out, and you can’t pray or even want to for that matter, could recognizing this be a new beginning?    Yes, the great sages and mystics throughout the ages gifted us with meaningful and beautifully composed prayers, but their stories are incomplete if we forget their own struggles. Perhaps, as James Finley has observed, “…despite their doubt and [disheartedness], through it all they perceived that God continued to love them anyway.”[3]

Prayer: Divine Maker, who knows me better than I know myself, thank you for continuing to hold me in love, even when I don’t believe in you.   Thank you for believing in me, even when I have lost faith in myself.   We ask this in all the holy names of God.  Amen.

 

[1, 2 & 3] James Finley, from Christian Meditation

Seeking Refuge: A Reflection & Prayer for the Peoples of Ukraine

 

“In scenes reminiscent of the Blitz, adults, children, and dogs hide from airstrikes, seeking refuge in bomb shelters and subway stations.” [2]

During World War II, an intense bombing campaign was waged against the United Kingdom by Nazi Germany.    For eight months, the Luftwaffe dropped bombs on London and other strategic cities across Britain, from September 7, 1940, through May 11, 1941.    Remembered as Black Saturday, on the first day of the Blitz alone, 430 people were killed and 1,600 were badly injured.

Wrote organizer, educator, and reformer, Saint Boniface, “O God, you have been our refuge in all generations.”  But what of those fleeing war’s aggression?  Or for those unable to take flight from the encroaching chaos and mayhem?    When wanton cruelty and its destructiveness encroach upon and violate the land, what recourse does the most vulnerable, human and creature alike, have?

Martyred in 754 by an armed group of robbers, the aged Boniface was murdered along with 54 others who accompanied him.     Still, his words attesting to God’s faithfulness in the face of aggression and terror remain: urging us to continue to demand justice and mercy for the oppressed, exercise unfailing advocacy for those distant as well as near, while praying that all of God’s children and creation itself, be afforded refuge’s blessing.

Prayer: God who dwells in places of refuge, be with the peoples of Ukraine, we pray.    Yet for those not in destruction’s path, compel us to be nothing less than fierce advocates and champions of the oppressed.   So that together with those distant and near, all may savor your refuge, under the shadow of thy wings and within the hallowed gates of sanctuary.   Amen.

[1] Image from Daily Mail Online

[2] Adapted from CNN’s Chief International Correspondent, Clarrisa Ward

The Hour of New Clarity

 

You must give birth to your images, they are the future waiting to be born. [1]

 Just as the unborn child will not tarry when its time has finally arrived; nor can the artist, the writer, the poet, the musician, the mystic, or the prophet.  Speaking in the imperative, Rilke emphasizes, “You must give birth to your images.”  Not when you’re feeling like it, or when the occasion seems right.    Not when others dictate the appropriate time.

But what if the future isn’t necessarily completely out of our hands?   What if images and ideas; plans, and proposals; and even dreams and visions, are not only conceived within imagination’s interior but nourished and incubated in a process of growth and maturation?  What if our individual and collective future(s) are far more akin to pregnancy and birthing than we allow for?

With uncertainty overwhelming our capacity to cope and teetering on the point of exhaustion, Rilke counsels, “”Fear Not the strangeness you feel… Just wait for the birth, the hour of new clarity.”  When normality has fled and you find yourself submerged in darkness, hang on to the transparency that can usher in the new.   Focus instead on the impending birth.

In this Season of Advent, when obscurity clouds our thinking and fear has the upper hand, fill us with expectation, Divine Maker, as we await the hour of new clarity.  “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son given.  And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” Amen.  [2]

[1] Rainer Maria Rilke

[2] Isaiah 9:6

 

 

 

 

All We Can Do…

“All we can really do is love people.   We can’t change them or make them do things they’re not ready to do.  But we can love them…sometimes its from afar, but we can always send love their way.”   Vienna Pharaon

Some years back, Robert Redford directed a film called, A River Runs Through It.   The setting was in Montana, in the early years of the 20th century.   It is a story about a father and his two sons.

A Presbyterian minister, the father taught his sons fly-fishing while telling them stories about Jesus and his disciples as fishermen.    As his sons grew into manhood, fishing grew to be a mutual bond and avid practice amongst all of them.  Yet the youngest son’s unwillingness to let go of dimensions of himself that were self-destructive led to his early death.

“All we can really do is love people,” ponders one.   “We can’t change them or make them do things they’re not ready to do.”    Indeed, for every grieving parent, sister, brother, husband, or wife unable to help those whom they love; for those struggling to save a beloved companion or friend from the throes of addiction; for those separated by COVID, distance or alienation; for every counselor, physician, nurse, minister or first responder striving to ease suffering; there are those whom we cannot reach, those whom we cannot help, much less retrieve from harm’s way.

“But we can love them.”  Towards the end of the movie, the father and minister was portrayed preaching before his congregation.   By all accounts, it was another Sunday service and sermon.  But for this father, his words spoke volumes.   He spoke for all of us.

“…It is true that we can seldom help those closest to us… But we can still love them… We can love—completely—even without complete understanding…. [1]

In this Season of Advent, where darkness lingers and those whom we love are out of our reach, be with us, Divine Maker, so that we can love them as you would have us do.  Amen.

[1] Dialogue from, A River Runs Through It, directed by Robert Redford, 1992

A prayer of lament

image of lament.jpeg

Holy One, you audaciously call us the “salt of the earth,” but who can hear you above the deafening roar of retaliation and mayhem?   You say that your followers are “the light of the world,” but what do you make of us, we who stumble in the darkness of despair?   You insist that “our light shines before others, so that they may see our good works and given glory to God in heaven,” but what if our efforts are insignificant when compared to the degradation and injustice that confronts us?

O Lord, in the face of suffering across our planet and this land now veiled in darkness, can you even hear the cries of your people?    Do you perceive the injustice committed in your name?   Are you aware of the cruelty committed against all your creation, but nevertheless justified by those who pervert your Word?

Yet you have promised that we are your children and will not forsake us – even to the end of our days.   You have sworn to be faithful, even when we have abandoned you.    You have suffused us with grace, so that we may set our sights on your hope once more.

Could it be when even a single voice is raised in opposition to wholesale complicity, it becomes salt for those weary of fabrication and incivility?   What if acts of kindness, however seemingly remote in the face of cruelty, become the illumination that lifts up the discouraged and disheartened?   Imagine if even the seemingly little that we strive to do becomes yeast, expanding the possibilities of what had seemed unlikely at best?

Hear our prayer, Divine Maker.   In your mercy, heed the distress of those who suffer – human and creature alike.   Hear the cry of those who despair of waiting in vain.    In these weary times, cover us with thy grace.  Come and come quickly, we pray.    Amen.

 

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