This posting is not an original. Yesterday, I read a chapter in Jesus the Radical by Father John Dear SJ. I thought the list of ways easing human suffering, in some ways updated, was worth repeating.
“If we take time for daily prayer and sit quietly listening, our hearts will be disarmed of our inner violence” (p. 107).
The disarming of inner violence can happen and be heard in
- in the silence of the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as we call and act for an end for nuclear proliferation;
- in the voices of the Hibakushka, the atomic bomb survivors who call for total nuclear disarmament and the abolition of war;
- in the laughter, longings, and cries of the world’s children, who look to us for peace;
- in the poor and the marginalized, who suffer the fallout of our six-hundred-billion dollar budget for war. This is now understated. What good could be done with a mere fraction of that money?;
- in the cry of liberation from the wrongly and unjustly imprisoned, the tortured, the homeless, the hungry, the ill, and the dying;
- in the dead of Rwanda, Bosnia, Palestine, Iraq, Sudan, Central America, South America, Libya, Syria, China, and our own city streets, who cry out, “Stop the killing, stop the bombings, stop the violence;”
- in all those who are different from us, who call us beyond the blindness of racism to the vision of a reconciled humanity, the beloved community;
- in the faithful women of the world, who remain wide awake, announcing a paradigmatic shift, the fall of patriarchy and its hierarchy;
- in the solitude of creation, from the mountaintops to the oceans; in the gentle rain and the silent breeze that call us to praise a God of peace, a God of Life;
- in our own hearts, in our breath, in our prayer so we can go down the mountain to our cross or suffering in a spirit of love.
Adapted from Dear, J. (2000). Jesus the rebel: Bearer of God’s peace and justice. Lanham, MD: Sheed & Ward.
Teacher as Transformer 