Advent Four: Reality, Grief, Hope

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
     (Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1885)

The darkest days of the year are here. As I gather food for dinner, a great horned owl calls from the tree behind my house. Later, my husband heads out in the dark to deliver compost to the pile beside our shed. The owl calls again, alone in the dark.

Saadallah, Aleppo

In Aleppo more than 400,000 people have died since fighting began in 2011.  My mind balks at the number:  that's more than the population of Iceland, or Belize.

More than all the towns and cities of my county combined.

More than Pittsburgh. Or Cleveland.

Yesterday, driving home from the grocery store, I caught part of President Obama's final press conference. 

The world as we speak is united in horror at the savage assaults by the Syrian regime and its Russian and Iranian allies on the city of Aleppo,” he said. “We have seen a deliberate strategy of surrounding, besieging and starving innocent civilians. We’ve seen relentless targeting of humanitarian workers and medical personnel, entire and neighbors reduced to rubble and dust. There are continuing reports of civilians being executed. These are all horrific violations of international law.

 Someone from the press pool asked: "Do you feel responsible for the deaths in Syria?"

What an awful question.

I could hear the grief in his voice as he answered: 

I always feel responsible. I felt responsible when kids were being shot by snipers. I felt responsible when millions of people had been displaced. I feel responsible for murder and slaughter that’s taken place in South Sudan that’s not being reported on, partly because there’s not as much social media being generated from there. 

There are places around the world where horrible things are happening and because of my office, because I’m president of the United States, I feel responsible. I ask myself every single day, is there something I could do that would save lives and make a difference and spare some child who doesn’t deserve to suffer? So that’s a starting point. There’s not a moment during the course of this presidency where I haven’t felt some responsibility.

What I heard in his voice was the helplessness so many of us feel.

In the face of atrocity, what can we do?

President Obama described the agonizing hours, days, weeks spent reviewing political realities, realistic options, uncomfortable conclusions.

As he said, more than once: in the face of evil, there are no magic bullets.

In a complex, dangerous world, darkness sometimes seems to win.

I have friends who tell me evil isn't real. Moral agency is one of those figments of our religious imagination. Things happen. No one's to blame.

I disagree sharply. People choose.

Yes, there are people who get trapped in ways they couldn't predict, small people held hostage by forces they can't control. They fall prey to evil and find themselves caught. Are they evil themselves, or simply prisoners of evil? Either way: evil exists. If you need evidence, I have plenty.

Then there are people who embrace evil, revel in it, leverage lies, prioritize power, mindlessly trample the weak. 

Hitler, by any measure, was evil. Stalin. Mao. Pol Pot. Bin Ladin.

Bashar al Assad? Putin?

Donald Trump?

Here's how Jeremiah defines evil:

Like cages full of birds,
    their houses are full of deceit;
they have become rich and powerful
and have grown fat and sleek.
Their evil deeds have no limit;
    they do not seek justice.
They do not promote the case of the fatherless;
    they do not defend the just cause of the poor. 

If we see a proliferation of evil leaders, what does that say of the people who promote and defend them?

As the days grow darker, I've been turning back to books that have helped me in the past.

Walter Brueggeman's Reality, Grief, Hope describes three essential callings.

The first is to bear witness to broken systems and distorted ideologies, to speak truth in a time of deception, to name the injustice and exploitation too often accommodated or embraced.

The second is to confront a culture of denial with insistent lament, "to embrace, model and practice grief in order that the real losses in our lives can be acknowledged."

Third, in the face of honest despair, is insistent hope, a hope beyond human agency, a hope that acknowledges and moves beyond our human helplessness.

Those themes are entwined throughout the prophetic books as God's messengers denounce a hypocritical religion that pretends to seek God while ignoring the requirements of justice and mercy: 

Woe to those who call evil good
    and good evil,
who put darkness for light
    and light for darkness.

Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure,
    and oppress all your workers.
Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
    and to hit with a wicked fist. . .
“Is not this the fast that I choose:
    to loose the bonds of wickedness,
    to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed[b] go free,
    and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry    and bring the homeless poor into your house.

 More than a year ago Tyler Wigg-Stevenson, author of TheWorld Is Not Ours to Save, wrote of the suffering in Syria. He wrote of the need "to bear witness to the images of drowned refugee children washing up on Mediterranean shores  – even though most U.S. publications couldn’t, wouldn’t, and perhaps even shouldn’t publish the pictures."

In a raw, honest reflection, Wigg-Stevenson fiercely confronted the challenge of reality, grief and hope: 

Alan Kurdi, photo taken by Nilüfer Demir

There is no politics that will give these children another life that does not end in terror and despair and cold water. (God, God, how does one write words like this?) There is no politics that will give their parents anything but the end they had: of going into the dark knowing that their dear ones were lost forever. 

All this is permanent. It is done and cannot and will not and will never be undone. And while I am all for good politics, which is to say I am all for a good future, and so I am all for doing better by the refugees that yet live, I also refuse to let the past go as if it were merely the gravel under the sub-foundation of whatever shiny tomorrow we happen to build next.

There is no politics that can redeem what time has irretrievably taken. To stand as witness to the past is to stand either in utter nihilism and despair, or in the desperate, desperate hope that in the end a Redeemer will walk upon the earth, who will bring forth those whose flesh was destroyed, to see and be loved forever by God.

In Advent we pause and name the darkness around us, grieve at the power of evil, the foolishness of the blind, the heavy weight of injustice, the mounting loss of life and liberty.

We work for solutions, pray for repair, live in resistance with kindness and grace.

And stand in determined, insistent hope: light is coming. 

Evil will one day be defeated.

In our service today we sang a refrain we've been living into this Advent season:

Although we are weeping
Lord, help us keep sowing
The seeds of Your Kingdom
For the day You will reap them
Your sheaves we will carry
Lord, please do not tarry
All those who sow weeping
Will go out with songs of joy.

We weep.

We sow.

We wait for songs of joy.

Sacrificial love, once born as a fragile baby, will someday have the final word.

The people who walked in darkness
    have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
    on them has light shone.

For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
    and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

This is the fourth is an Advent series of four.

Earlier Advent posts:

Advent One: Post Truth?, Nov. 27, 2016
Advent Two: Shepherds and Strangers, Dec. 4, 2016

Advent Three: Repentance and Return, Dec. 11, 2016

Advent One: Hope beyond Terror, Nov. 29,2015

Advent Two: Listening in the Desert, Dec. 6, 2015

Advent Three: Blessed Singularity, Dec. 13, 2015

Advent Four: For You, Dec. 20, 2015

Advent One: Hope is Our Work, Nov. 30, 2014

Advent Two: Peace is Our Promise, Prayer and Practice, Dec. 7, 2014

Advent Three: Love is the Air We Breathe, Dec. 14, 2014

Advent Four: Joy is the Song We're Given, Dec. 21, 2014

Advent One: Rethinking Portfolios, Dec. 1, 2013
Advent Two: Resisting Idols and Injustice, Dec. 8, 2013
Advent Three: Redefining Home, Dec. 15, 2013

Advent Four: Rejoicing in Mystery, Dec. 22, 2013

Advent One: How Do I Know? Dec. 2, 2012
Advent Two: Outsiders In Dec. 9, 2012
Advent Three: Question. Fruit. Dec. 16, 2012
Advent Four: Sing Alleluia, Dec. 23, 2012

Advent One: What I'm Waiting for, Nov. 26, 2011
Metanoia,  Dec 4, 2011
Voice in the Wilderness,  Dec. 11, 2011
Common Miracles,  Dec. 18, 2011

Syria, Solidarity, Sorrow and Repentance

Syria's Nightmarish Narrative, Consortiumnews.com

 I would like to live in a simple world.

Simple. Safe. With easy answers. Do-able solutions.

A world where good guys smile and bad guys sneer and the difference is obvious and justice comes riding long before the credits roll.

A world free of persistent evil and crushing human pain.

I confess, I’ve been trying hard not to pay attention to the news of Syria.

Even as my time this summer in Finland and Sweden set me thinking about the hazards of small nations caught in the path of desperate power, I’ve kept my gaze averted from the swelling humanitarian crisis.

The ongoing story of bombs, burned houses, rebels, refugees.

It’s over there, wherever “there” is.

I’m here.

I have enough to pray and wrestle with.

Right?

An on-line conversation between two friends set me reeling earlier this week. 

One friend, a young mother of two, a dear sister in youth ministry, a conscientious, caring soul, posted on Facebook:

I've been crying today over the pictures of the Syrian child washed up on the beach in Turkey. Every time I see him, I see my own children. We cannot afford to believe that the immigrant and the refugee is other than us. They could be us. That boy is my baby.

The second, another sister in ministry, somewhat older mother of two, writer, thinker, determined activist:

I'm sorry to be such a skeptic, but I am not sure our sorrow, which is heartfelt, will change anything unless we are willing to advocate for change...to be the change. I say this not to discount your sorrow, or anybody else's, or my own, but as someone who has been writing about Syria for years and finally hardened my heart because our national indifference got to be too much to bear. Maybe I'm wrong. I want to be wrong. And forgive me if I sound arrogant or impatient.

What shook me was the sudden awareness of my own grave hardness of heart.

My own determination to look the other way.

My unacknowledged, almost crippling grief at our national indifference.

My deep sorrow and not-well-processed anger that those most determined to speak as “Christians” clap and cheer when presidential candidates use global unrest as political fodder and brag about what they’d do to shut out the homeless, tempest-tossed.

My doubt that change is possible.

I repent.

Not for the anger, although I may get there.

Not for the sorrow – although it’s probably misplaced.

I repent the hardness of heart, the determined disinterest, the doubt born of soul-deep weariness at living in this not-yet world, where injustice seems to rule the day and gentle civilians are trampled and torn by power-hungry bullies.

I’ve been repenting all week.

Praying, reading, wondering.

About causes, solutions, boundaries, borders.

Let my repentance go deeper: in my self-righteous impatience, I wondered why we, the US, don’t take up arms and stop the nonsense driving so many innocent civilians from their homes. Wouldn’t that be better than struggling to find homes for so many who would obviously prefer to live in safety in their own country?

Let me be more politically correct – I wondered why the UN Security Forces haven’t done what they were created to do: intervene. Stop the slaughter. Make Syria safe so the refugees can go home.

My first thought – in this as in so much else - is to look for someone to blame:

Arms dealers!

Russia!

The UN.

Assad.

Israel. 

ISIS.

Oh, sure, President Obama.

Am I missing someone?

I am, on a fairly deep level, a pacifist, yet I found myself tracking across the Internet, looking for military solutions. Surely that’s possible?

Maybe not.

I won’t try to sketch out the complexity of the issues in my targeted 1200 words.

The BBC offered a reasonable summary last March in “eight short chapters”. 

And I won’t set out, here, just war arguments, hesitations, cautions. Gerard Powers, Director of Catholic Peacebuilding Studies at the Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies , recently offered a quick overview of the just war discussion applied to Syria, and concluded:

There are no morally clear or clean answers to the moral conundrums the international community faces in Iraq and Syria.  

The United States, in particular, faces a serious moral conundrum. U.S. policy has suffered a double moral failure: it was immoral to intervene in Iraq in 2003, and in the years since, its self-serving, misguided, incompetent and sometimes grossly negligent policies have failed the Iraqi people. The first moral failure made the second more likely. These many years, many deaths, many billions of dollars, and many missteps later, we are tempted to say that we have done all we can do and wash our hands of the problem, letting Iraq and Syria be torn apart by their “ancient hatreds.” But that would be shirking our moral obligations, for the United States has become –voluntarily! – very much a part of those hatreds.  

The more serious temptation at this moment of crisis is to do what we did in 2003: pursue a quick-fix military solution justified by best-case scenarios about the good that would be achieved – peace, freedom, and democracy for Iraq and the region. But that approach lacks the realism essential to any ethic of military intervention. Because past U.S. interventions helped create the current crisis, we have a moral obligation to act. Limited military intervention might be necessary. But without a serious effort to address the larger political, economic, and cultural dynamics – to engage in nation building in two countries torn asunder, it will be no more successful than it has been until now.

Yesterday, tens of thousands marched through European city centers in solidarity with refugees who have been fleeing Syria in what has been described as the biggest mass migration since World War II. In Denmark, an estimated 30,000 chanted “Say it loud and say it clear: Refugees are welcome here!” 

Here in the US, a Facebook group Open Homes, Open Hearts is looking for ways to offer support, inviting families to post photos offering welcome. 

International groups like Oxfam and Mercy Corps are working to provide for refugees, while smaller, more localized groups, like Migrant Offshore Aid Station and Hand in Hand for Syria focus on more specific concerns.

In my thinking and praying this week, I came across a group, and video, that humbled me, challenged me, and gave focus to my thought and prayer. The video was made in 2012 – so it’s out of date. And long: 53 minutes. I almost said “too long”.

But the group promoting it, Cultures of Resistance, intrigued me.

And the title, The Suffering Grasses, reminded me of the same reality I’d seen in Finland: “When the elephants fight, the grass suffers.”

 It’s worth watching, in part for the way it brings to life the early days of the conflict in Syria.

And in part for the way it makes clear that lack of awareness, lack of interest, lack of global outcry, has made it possible for the mayhem to continue.

It offers a hope for peaceful solution: through creative resistance, digital documentation, reminder of the long history of peaceful coexistence between different clans and religions.

Watching, I found myself wondering at the courage of the video’s creators and those who filmed and spoke, where they are now, what they would say. How many are dead? How many have left Syria/

In church this morning, our sermon, first in a series on Acts, focused on Paul’s conversion. Bent on violent persecution, he encountered the risen Christ on the road to Damascus and was forever changed.

Damascus is the capital of Syria, oldest inhabited city on earth, site of one of Christianity’s most famous conversions. I had been struggling with how to pray, and I was sharply reminded: pray for repentance, conversion, change of heart. 

As I was reflecting on that, our rector, Richard Morgan, mentioned almost in passing the experience of a Muslim woman he knew, who encountered Christ in a dream, and found her life forever changed. Pray for dreams, visions, miraculous intervention!

Our prayer leader cut through my reverie once again with a strong, compassionate prayer for the people of Syria: pray for comfort for those in distress, care for those in need, wisdom and strength for those called to offer aide.

And then, the prayer of confession, a prayer I needed, and continue to need:

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent ...

No neat solutions. 

Yet I open myself to learn more, to listen better, to pray more consistently.

To hold fast to the knowledge that God can change hearts, minds, situations, nations.

Syria.

And my own.