Wishing you a Blessed New Year and Giving Thanks

Wishing you a blessed New Year and giving thanks for all the ways God will transform the world through your presence in it!

 
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You have been in my prayers and I carry you in my heart.  I hope you had a beautiful Christmas.  I assume your Christmas, like mine, was more than a little different this year.

I remember a year ago at this time when I was certain that 2020 would be a really “special” year. While I cannot use the word “special” for this past year, I am trusting that in hindsight it will have been significant, enlightening, and transforming.  I have been reflecting on a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and I carry this quote as my mantra for the year 2021.

“Be loving enough to absorb evil and understanding enough to turn an enemy into a friend.” 

Loving enough to absorb evil.  Understanding enough to turn an enemy into a friend.  There was a time several years ago when I thought I needed to understand evil to confront it.  Gradually I learned what Julian of Norwich wrote so many centuries ago. Evil is nothing…no thing.  It makes no sense…is nothingness.  What deserves my whole-hearted attention, study, practice, and commitment, is LOVE.

 This past year has revealed that there is a great need for love that can absorb evil and turn enemies into friends.  Overcoming the coronavirus requires more than a vaccine.  It will only be defeated by our commitment to each other in the choices we make.  The division and hatred and bigotry and racism will dissolve when we love others as our other-selves.  Economic injustice will disappear when we realize the abundance that is unleashed when we care for the common good.  And our environmental crisis will evaporate when we live out our oneness with each other and our mother earth.

 Seems like a tall and impossible order. It has been a dream of humanity for a long time. Is it utopian and foolish to consider?  Only if we fail to dream and to put the dream planted within us into action.

Partly this involves claiming the gift of the past year—the invitation to go inward and to meet ourselves; to discover the fear and the violence in our own hearts that controls us; to grieve the losses in our lives and as a result to live more gratefully.

For me, this means being deliberate about time for meditation, for reflection on scripture and other reading, for journaling, and for putting into practice what is revealed.  I must confess to you, that I am in a pretty messy state right now as all the inner work I have failed to do and all the self-knowledge I have avoided has begun to bubble up to the surface.  But spending more time with the gospels and reflecting on the words and the lives of people who exemplify LOVE continues to make this inner journey one of learning to love myself also.  It is not about self-criticism; it is about freedom and JOY.  I am not anywhere near being “there” yet whatever “being there” might look like, but I am so grateful for you and your commitment to your own journey…and your willingness to accept me as I am.

Reflecting on the quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. prompted me to explore his speeches and his letters.  I have been committed to nonviolence for a long time, but the truth is, I am just beginning to understand and to live out what it means. King effectively taught nonviolence based in love because he first did his own inner work.  Nonviolence is not passive.  It is actively loving.  It does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding.  Any attack is addressed against the evil, not the person who commits the evil action.  There must be a willingness to accept and absorb suffering without retaliation.  And the capacity for nonviolence is birthed and nurtured by addressing any internal violence of the spirit.

The love that absorbs evil is not a sentimental or affectionate love.  Dr. King taught that it was best expressed by the Greek word agape, meaning redeeming love for all others.  It involves loving others for their sakes rather than for personal benefit.  And it begins with the need of the other.  It is interesting that Dr. King, in explaining the kind of love that absorbs evil, focused on the story of the Good Samaritan.  This is the same starting place, the same story that Pope Francis offers us in his recent encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, and his reflections as we look ahead to 2021.

So, as we say “Happy New Year,” it is now with the realization that those are not just words, or just a wish, but actually a commitment. Happy New Year is really a commitment to what Dr. King called the Beloved Kingdom. Our world, our country, our churches, our neighbors, and our families need this commitment. To commit ourselves to this agape love, in Dr. King’s words,

“will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in.”

Happy and blessed New Year!

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Executive Director