Coming to our senses after senseless violence

"Coming to Our Senses after Senseless Violence"

On Monday afternoon, I was on Cape Cod with Lucas. We were out in the canoe on a pond, fishing for trout. We had pulled ashore to look at a herring run. Aside from our not catching anything, it was a wonderful afternoon. At 3, I was putting the canoe on top of the car when a guy came roaring in to the landing in a motorboat. After a smiling, waving hello, he went to get his truck and trailer. It only took a minute for him to back down. When he got out of the pickup, he called out to me, "Bombs have gone off at the Marathon."
"What?" I exclaimed, truly not believing what I had heard.
"Yeah," he said, shaking his head. "They bombed the marathon. It's on the radio right now."
"No," was all I managed.
"Oh yeah," he continued. "I'll tell you one (expletive) thing. They (expletive) bomb us and we are as sure as (expletive, expletive) are going to bomb the (expletive, expletive) out of them."
I didn't have anything to say to that. I don't think he was expecting me to say anything...maybe some combination of creatively combined and affirmative expletives of my own. But I thought to myself, "God help us. Here we go again with us and them eye for eye talk. We've been here before and it only seems to have gone from bad to worse since Oklahoma City, Columbine, September 11, Virginia Tech, Newtown, and all the other atrocious acts of senseless violence in between."
On Tuesday, I was listening to Tom Ashbrook's On Point. In the middle of forensic and explosive scientists giving expert opinions, Andrea from Cambridge called in. Andrea was not a criminologist or a counter terrorism specialist. Andrea was a 3 time Boston Marathoner who had finished 15 minutes before the explosions this year and was safely on Beacon Street when the attack occurred. And this is what she said: "Marathons are the time, and are often a moment, an event, an occasion that brings out the best in humanity and that is why I run them. I run them because complete strangers will come out and offer me orange slices and cheer for me and say "I'm proud of you;" and I'll never see them again. But they're there and they encourage me with respect to our own capacity to be good people and that's why I participate in these events. They are so inspiring. (Marathons) are almost an unequivocal good in our society...Yesterday feels like an attack on the human spirit...that's not going to help the investigation but that's how it feels to me as a participant."
Andrea's words really resonated with me. I have been thinking about them as I have struggled this week with sadness, feeling depressed and lethargic. I am tired of feeling futile and impotent. I do not want to just offer tearful prayers and preach sad sermons...again. I do not want to just forward some e-mails and Facebook postings, light some candles, shake my head, and then get on with my life. I do not want to just try to put this week put of mind and move on...again. I cannot bear the thought of pulling back and hiding out, perhaps not going to the next Marathon or championship duck boat parade. I will not radicalized my thinking, with entire groups of people demonized as potential monsters. I want to start actively promoting and defending the human spirit.
This is what I have been thinking about this week while I watched the prayer service at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. This is what I have been thinking about this week as I woke up to reports of gun battles, carjacking, fugitive Chechen-American students. I have been wrestling with what I will do next as a person of faith, because I feel that the time has come to do something. I mean really do something and keep doing something until the world starts changing. I have decided that I am not going to hunker down and wait for the next time.
I am going to run the Boston Marathon next year. I am going to push my middle aged, wobbly legs for all of the people who lost their legs on Monday. I am going to strengthen my desk job heart for all the people whose hearts have been broken. I am going to run for my 8 year old son and for everyone with 8 year old sons. I am going to drop 25 pounds and put in the hours and miles, suffer, for this cause. If my legs give out, I'll walk. I am going to make a flamboyant running suit with the words of 8 year old Martin Richard on them, "No more hurting people...Peace." If someone has to push me in a shopping cart, I'll make a flag.
This may sound like some sort of publicity stunt, and it is in a way. I am going to make a point, running around town here all this year and down Rt. 135 next April. I want people to know why I am doing what I am doing. I want people to join in in their own ways. I hope people see me training and have their own ideas. Maybe I'll start a non-profit and raise money. Maybe I'll invite all of my out of shape middle aged clergy colleagues to run with me. Maybe some of you will join me, teach me, lead me.
But the running is just the discipline for what I am really going to do. It is just the visible aspect of what I am going to become. My running is going to be sacramental, an outward and visible sign of an inner reality. I have decided that I am going to become a Shalom Activist. I am going to become a practitioner of Non-Violence. I am going learn how to facilitate restorative justice. I have absolutely no idea how to be a Shalom Activist, what a Shalom Activist does, how to practice Non-violence, what restorative justice will look like. Exactly like I have no idea how to run a marathon, what training for a year will be like, if I can actually physically do it without breaking not pieces, how challenging it will actually be, how making this public vow right now scares me. But I do know one thing. I know I will need real discipline to pull this off. It will be so easy to just drop this activism thing and get back to what I know how to do. So every day when I get up and have to force myself to lace on those shoes, it will be my reminder of my larger purpose. So every day when I have to spend an hour working on this rather than something else, I will remember my values and priorities. I will think of my children and their future and pain I want to spare them from. The pain I will feel will be a constant reminder of the pain of the people who have been hurt by senseless violence. The pain I will feel will open me to the pain of the people who perpetrate these outrages. Jesus calls us to be peacemakers, both as individual disciples and as the church, and if his example is anything to go by, suffering and persecution are going to be unavoidable, suffering and persecution are actually indicators of being on the right track.
I don't know what this path will look like or where I will end up, beyond crossing that finish line on Boylston Street on April 16, 2014. I want to do something for my children. I think everyone wants to do something for our children and grandchildren. I want to defend the human spirit. I am going to share my experience with you and encourage you to join me in whatever way you are spiritually gifted to do so. It might be as straightforward as committing yourselves to a daily practice of committing random acts of kindness. You could spend the year praying with me the prayer that will be my touchstone, my training manual, the Prayer of St. Francis:
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.
Amen. Let it be so. And Amen.

I have been aware of that prayer for 20 years or more, and have prayed it from time to time. This week was the first time I realized what an activist prayer it is: help me do this God, help me do that Lord. Unless I am seriously mistaken, every one of us wants peace in the world, our community, our families? Love? Pardon? Faith? Hope? Light? Joy? Mohandas Gandhi once said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." I have felt like our society has been back on its heels since at least Oklahoma City and certainly since 911. We send out our soldiers to get the bad guys before they get us, we rely upon Homeland Security, the FBI, and local police to try to catch the bad guys before they do something and catch them once they have, and God bless them they have largely protected us. But what have we done? What are we doing to be the change we wish to see? I have reached the point where I am no longer willing to wait for others to do my work for me. I am going to offer up my privilege of time devoted to other things and my privilege of living here in our little town where this sort of violence is probably never going to come and find me so I could just ignore it, I am going to give some of that up to work on the kingdom of God, of shalom, healing, wholeness, peace, sufficiency. It is beyond my power to bring Martin, Chrystle, Lingzi, or Sean back from the dead as Peter brought Tabitha back from the dead in our lesson this morning, but our vocation as disciples of our risen Lord is certainly to oppose death and the forces of death in whatever way we are able and in what've place God has placed us.