Month: June 2016

Imagine

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Imagine a world where no one is harmed because they are perceived as “different” or “sinful.”

Imagine a world where abortion is widely available…and no one has one.

Imagine a world where everyone has access to guns…and no one uses them.

Imagine a world where there is free access to all drugs…and no one abuses them.

Imagine a world where anyone can say or write their own truth…and no one expresses hatred.

imagine

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. – John Lennon

Imagine a world where families can choose schools for their children that offer all subjects, including music and the arts.
Imagine a world where everyone is free to worship as they please, and to freely express their faith…and no one is harmed or offended.

Imagine a world where people were free to live wherever they wished…and no one was homeless.

Imagine a world where no one was jobless…because everyone had meaningful, productive work available.

Imagine a world with widely accessible health care…and no one needed it.

Imagine a world where no one wanted to eat junk and processed foods.

Imagine a world without environmental restrictions because everyone respected and cared for the earth.

Imagine a world where countries had armed forces and military…who were never called into action.

all shall be well

All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. – Julian of Norwich. Stone bench by the boxwood labyrinth at the convent of the Community of St. Mary in Tennessee.

Imagine a surplus of food and clean water, plenty to go around…and if an individual or an entire area of the world needed help, they received it because someone wanted to help.

Imagine a world where honest leaders were elected and served without compensation…because they truly wanted to serve.

Imagine living in such a world, where peace begins with the individual.  Just for today, try living into that truth in some way.

You don’t have to believe it; reality starts with a vision…imagination.

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Kyrie Eleison

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Lord, have mercy. Once again, a hateful act – a terrorist attack resulting in 50 people dead, more wounded.  I don’t want to turn on the TV (I usually don’t want to anyway, but I REALLY don’t want to now) or look at social media.

As I’ve said before, prayer matters.  My prayers join those of countless others.

D-Day Gratitude

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Today is the 72nd anniversary of D-Day, and I am once again deeply and profoundly grateful for freedom.

DDay monument copy

National World War II Memorial, Washington, DC

This afternoon while driving, I heard an excerpt of a speech given by Ronald Regan in 1984, on the 40th anniversary of D-Day.  As he related that fateful day, he said that Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue.…there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest.

Amen, amen.

Marine Corps monument

Marine Corps War Memorial, Washington, DC

I mused a lot about prayer and war as I drove, and got home and started writing.  Then I put my musings aside and lost myself in reading the transcript of his speech.  There’s no way I can add to this, so I’ll just include another quote from President Regan’s speech:

The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought — or felt in their hearts, though they couldn’t know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4 a.m., in Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.

Something else helped the men of D-day: their rockhard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer he told them: Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we’re about to do. Also that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”

Find the full text – transcript and recording – here.  Read it, bookmark it, and join me in giving thanks for all who have fought – and will fight – for freedom and peace.

Arlington

The last verse of Horace Trim’s (original) lyrics of Taps:

Thanks and praise for our days
‘Neath the sun, ‘neath the stars, ‘neath the sky
As we go, this we know
God is nigh.