Next Year, Peace

 

I heard about a drugstore yesterday.  It seems that, in order to keep things organized, it had one line for people who were exchanging gifts and another line for those who were buying something.  A drugstore! 

 

It started me thinking, and I had planned to sit down this morning to muse a bit about the confusion we seem to have between the gift and the giving.  I wonder why we seem to place so much more importance on the gift, and so little on the giving; why our consumerism is so finely tuned that to return a gift is now commonplace.  I pondered, perhaps a little Grinch-like, how both Christmas and Chanukah, two rather serious holidays (one about the birth of Prince of Peace, the other about religious freedom) had devolved into a consumer frenzy – a frenzy that retailers now have to have to survive.

 

I wanted to ask, does anyone really know why we’re giving gifts? 

 

But events have overtaken me.  Texas, which executes more people than all the other states of the union combined, has taken yet another life.  In my state of Washington, six people, three generations of a family (grandparents, parents and children) were murdered.  In Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto was assassinated.

 

Executed, murdered, assassinated.  In our richly nuanced language, these words exist so that we may differentiate between three forms of the cold-blooded snuffing of human life.

 

I weep, but … I … will … not … despair! 

 

Next year, peace.  That’s my mantra.  If not this year, then next year we will all treat each other with respect and love.  All of us.

 

And if not next year, then the following year.  If not the following year then the year after that. 

 

Pray for peace, believe in peace, work for peace.  A great Jewish teacher, Simeon ben Gamaliel, stated, “The world rests on three things: on justice, on truth, on peace.”  Perhaps then, to achieve peace we need to work a little harder on justice and truth.

 

As we approach year’s end,  I propose a common prayer, to be uttered before going to bed on New Year’s Eve by people of every religion – and no religion, with every bit of feeling and conviction that we can muster. 

 

“Next year, peace.”  Peace, and all it implies.

 

Working on my blog entry this week calls me to the keyboard … mostly because it means I can put off starting this Sunday’s Christmas homily!  Not that it’s a particularly difficult subject.  But when that blank screen stares back at you, getting started can be painful.

 

The service itself will be the essence of Interfaith.  The theme is “Honoring Christmas.”  Not co-opting Christmas.  Not diluting Christmas.  Not Christmas from one “right” point of view.  Indeed, the service will be “Honoring Christmas” from four differing points of view.  It is a microcosm of what we seek to embrace at the Interfaith Community Church.

 

The first point of view is obvious: honoring the baby Jesus as Christ.  The second is honoring Mary, and particularly her role personifying the divine feminine.  The third point of view is from Islam, which honors both Jesus and Mary.  The fourth point of view is honoring Peace on Earth, Good Will to All as a universal quest for humanity’s multitude of spiritual paths.

 

Each of our ministers will take part and give a personal reflection during his/her own part of the service (Jesus as Christ, Mary, Islam).  As I’m a Jewish Unitarian Universalist, it’s not hard to guess that my part of the mosaic is a reflection on “Peace on Earth, Good Will to All.”

 

The idea is to have a cohesive service, yet one that is not homogenized.  From the point of view of the school I left last June, each “segment” of the service has its own theological point of view.  While Christians may feel more familiar (and perhaps at home) with one part of the service and Muslims with another, there is no attempt to say that one point of view is “right” and the others “wrong.”  Rather we seek to honor, respect and appreciate the profundity of the differing spiritual paths and their approaches to this deeply significant holiday.

 

So.  A homily to write.  Peace on Earth, Good Will to All.  I need to do some digging.

 

Starting point, of course, is the New Testament, “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth, good will toward men.”  From the Qur’an, “Those who act kindly in this world will have kindness.”  From Buddhism, “In happiness live the peaceful, those who give up both victory and defeat.”  From the Talmud (of Judaism), “The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.”  That’s a start!

 

I wish the world a profound and merry Christmas.  May we embrace peace, and may peace embrace us.

Lead On, New Jersey

 

It seems to me that in saying “No” to the death penalty, New Jersey has just struck a blow for justice … as opposed to revenge.

 

I know some will argue against the death penalty for reasons of compassion.  They have good points to make and most of us have heard them.  But at this moment I’m more concerned about ours being a nation of justice.

 

It seems to me we need to make a decision (or perhaps remake a decision).  What is the primary purpose of our criminal justice system: rehabilitation or revenge?  I fear we have come down on the side of revenge.  We are the lesser for it.  And we suffer because of it.  In that sense, state sanctioned murder (or capital punishment) is just the bloody tip of the iceberg.  The rest of the iceberg is worth looking at as well.

 

Some have said that rehabilitation costs too much.  But that’s absurd.  What costs too much is a society that ensures that first time imprisoned offenders will become hardened criminals by the time they are released.

 

The under-educated make up the overwhelming body of our imprisoned.  Instead of teaching people how to be better, more hardened criminals in our prisons, why not, as example, make sure that no one leaves prison without at least a high school education?  Washington State does that for some, why not country-wide for all?  What’s weird is that it’s the well educated criminal who tends to get the lighter sentences.  It ought to be the other way around.

 

But isn’t that “pampering” the prisoner?  So again the question: do we want revenge or rehabilitation?

 

What does this have to do with the death penalty?  And why write about this in a blog that concerns faith?  I would like to see us out of the revenge business.  We need to protect society.  No doubt of that.  That means we need prisons, to separate the criminal from society.  But let us be the society of love that ALL of our religious traditions ask of us.  Let us spend the time, the money and the care to help those whom we have had to imprison, so they can be productive members of this great country.

 

Lead on, New Jersey.  I hope a national dialogue will follow (dialogue, not screaming match).  Does justice mean revenge?  Are we still stuck on an eye for an eye?  It’s time we really talked about it.

And So It Begins ...

 

Writing a web page was hard but straightforward.  There is something intimidating about starting a blog.  I can’t promise to be profound.  I can and do promise to be honest.  And for luck, I’ve swiped the title for this first posting from a favorite television series: Babylon 5.

 

Throughout the site I have spelled “interfaith” both with a large “I” and a small “i” and I mean something very different with each word.  Most people tend to think of interfaith.  For me that’s a description.  An interfaith meeting is one that involves several different faiths (perhaps Christian, Buddhist and Muslim, for example).  Some people appear to use the word inter-religious to mean the same thing. 

 

But I also think of Interfaith.  Interfaith, for me, is itself a faith: like Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism.  I don’t offer this as fact, but as belief: my belief.  Yours may well be different.  But I thought it only fair to lay out where I’m coming from.  I look at the world faiths as denominations of Interfaith, much as a Christian might look at the many forms of Protestantism, Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy as denominations of Christianity. 

 

With that light, my Interfaith “denomination” is Jewish Unitarian Universalism.  That is the spiritual path that I personally am most comfortable with.  I would never say that it is the “right” path (I don’t think there is a single “right” path) – only that it has proven to be the best path for me.

 

While I think that interfaith has been and remains valuable, what I believe in is Interfaith.  Interfaith is my call and my ministry.  It is Interfaith that I want to explore, both on this website and in this blog.