Blessed are those who mourn

I have gotten so used to stories of violence in the news every morning that I confess they don’t move me as much as they should, or used to. Today: Three straight days of killing in Karachi with 42 dead; Syrian tanks shelling the city of Hama, where more than 100 people have died since Sunday;  U.N. peacekeepers killed by a landmine in Sudan; daily deaths in Libya; bombings in Baghdad; and assassinations in Kandahar. It goes on and on.

But yesterday when I opened the New York Times, there was a front-page story on the unfolding famine in Somalia. A large photo of a starving child filled most of the top half of the page. As I looked at that small, emaciated body my eyes started to fill. When I turned to the inside continuation of the story, there was a hazy, almost surreal photo of a mother and child. I started to weep.

Weeping for a world where violence and death have become so commonplace. For a world where children are always the first to suffer. For a world where the vision of Isaiah of a new world where “No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days” seems more like a mockery than a promise.

In our monthly chapel service later that morning, the leader shared a reflection on the Beatitude “Blessed are those who mourn,” from Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Lament for a Son:

“Blessed are those who mourn.” What can it mean? One can understand
why Jesus hails those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
why he hails the merciful,
why he hails the pure in heart,
why he hails the peacemakers,
why he hails those who endure under persecution.

These are qualities of character which belong to the life of the kingdom. But why does he hail the mourners of the world? Why cheer tears?

It must be that mourning is also a quality of character that belongs to the life of his realm. Who then are the mourners? The mourners are those who have caught a glimpse of God’s new day, who ache with all their being for that day’s coming, and who break out into tears when confronted with its absence.  …  The mourners are aching visionaries.

I pray that I never lose the ability to be “filled with compassion,” as Jesus was at the signs of suffering. And that no matter how much it may ache, I never lose sight of the vision of the kingdom of God.

They, Too, Sing America

Charles Blow writes about the real America - the "honest people who do honest work — crack-the-bones work; lift-it, chop-it, empty-it, glide-it-in-smooth work; feel-the-flames-up-close work; crawl-down-in-there work... They do hard jobs and odd jobs — any work they can find to keep the lights on and the children fed."
 
Working people just trying to survive in a Gilded Era of the wealthy getting wealthier while the crumbs going to the bottom are fewer and fewer.

Bring it on!

A decade ago, after President George W. Bush’s tax cuts, William Sloane Coffin, in one of his memorable and pithy remarks, said:  “When the rich take from the poor, it’s called an economic plan.  When the poor take from the rich, it’s called class warfare.  It must be wonderful for President Bush to deplore class warfare while making sure his class wins.”

If Bill were still with us, he would substitute Paul Ryan, or Republicans in general, for “President Bush,” but make the same point.  The Republican reaction to the President’s press conference yesterday was a perfect example.  When the President proposed repealing tax cuts for corporate jet owners, hedge fund managers, and oil and gas companies, the cry of “class warfare” soon followed. 

Human Events wrote “he is still most comfortable when he is playing the class warfare card. “ Commentary chimed in “with the 2012 campaign season upon him, Obama is ratcheting up the rhetoric of class warfare.’  And a headline in the Dallas Morning News read “Texas Republicans say Obama playing class warfare with corporate jets.”

Yet when Republican governors and legislatures are outlawing collective bargaining by public sector employees and the GOP-led House of Representatives is passing a budget that cuts everything from Women, Infant and Children nutrition to Pell Grants; that’s not class warfare, that’s an economic plan.

All I have to say is, Bring it on, Mr. President.  It’s about time.

The resurrection perspective

Yesterday morning, President Obama hosted an Easter prayer breakfast at the White House with more than 100 Christian leaders.  The president spoke openly and honestly about his personal faith, and how  “"I wanted to host this breakfast for a simple reason – because as busy as we are, as many tasks pile up, during this season, we are reminded that there’s something about the resurrection ... of our savior, Jesus Christ, that puts everything else in perspective,"

Yet neither the Washington Post or New York Times (unless I missed a one-liner somewhere in the small print) even mentioned it.  Perhaps some might say that’s because a Christian prayer breakfast isn’t really news.  But it seems to me that with the mythology about the president being Muslim still swirling around, the most recent Pew poll showed that only about a third of Americans believe he is a Christian, the media has a responsibility to report the president’s own words that correct the lies.  This time, they didn’t.

Willie, Mickey and the Duke

In the 1950s glory days of New York City baseball, three giants, now all Hall-of-Famers, patrolled center field.  Mickey Mantle for the Yankees, Willie Mays for the Giants, and Duke Snider for the Dodgers.  For a boy growing up in that era, if you paid any attention at all to baseball, you knew Willie, Mickey and the Duke.

Duke died on Sunday at age 84.  Only Willie is left.

Creating terrorists

Ever wonder how the U.S, can create more people who hate us?  This is a good start -

Gathering Firewood, 9 Afghan Boys Killed by NATO Helicopters

Guns or food?

A survey of Salvation Army offices shows they can’t keep up with growing hunger. Demands for food are increasing while donations are level or decreasing.  Not surprisingly, the heaviest demand for food came in areas with high unemployment and home foreclosures.  Meanwhile, we are now spending $3 billion a week on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.