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Our headlines are full of destruction, death, and disaster. Turkish backed rebels have captured the cities of Aleppo and Hama in Syria and are now at the gates of Damascus; North Korean troops have joined the Russians in their ongoing assault on Ukraine; Israel continues to pound Gaza in retaliation for it’s invasion last year. How can we come here this morning and celebrate the angels’ song of peace on earth? That is the question staring us in the face today as we continue the pulpit series on “Poetry for Advent”. This Sunday, I have chosen to draw upon the words of Denise Levertov; you’ll find her poem, “Making Peace” on the insert in your bulletin:
A voice from the dark called out,
“The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.”
But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses. . . .
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light – facets
of the forming crystal.
Her poem speaks volumes about the disturbance in our souls that seeps in over the morning coffee and the bloody headlines. She uses the metaphor of poetry itself to place the realities of our world and its challenge in front of us. “. . . peace, like a poem,” she writes, “is not there ahead of itself.” She could not be more right. The peace we seek not only fails to arrive ahead of itself, it seems to always remain beyond itself – beyond reach. It is very hard to know how we get from this bloody mess that is the world we’ve created to the blessed ideal of peace on earth. Jesus knew that. As he approached Jerusalem two thousand years ago he saw the same bloodstained streets that we encounter today. And Luke tells us that he wept over the city and said, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!”
But although this poem of peace that Levertov speaks of “can’t be imagined before it is made” she does give us clues about those “things that make for peace”. Crucially and powerfully she refers to “Peace, not only the absence of war.” There is a world of meaning in that simple phrase. When we bring to mind the hope of peace, you and I so often think merely of how to keep the guns and missiles and bombs at bay. We imagine that if only the people of the earth would stop killing each other we would have peace. And I admit that if everyone would at least stop killing one another that would be a great start. But it is not peace. Peace’s poem
“can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.”
Simply put, peace without justice is no peace. Peace without hearts and hands ready to reach out to others in compassion is no peace.
So, where does this leave us? It leads us back to ourselves and to the wisdom found in this epistle of James: “Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. . . . For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind.” Levertov puts this bluntly:
“A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs . . . .”
This is where the dream of peace on earth begins. It begins with the hard work that is done in each of our hearts. It begins with our learning and exercising the capacity to question the primary place that profit and power hold in our culture and our lives.
And make no mistake, profit and power reign supreme in our land. The profits of the gun industry are sufficient to fund broad scare campaigns that convince millions of otherwise rational Americans that sensible, reasoned regulations having to do with firearms sales mean that the government is coming to take your guns away. It’s not that I don’t understand the knee-jerk reaction; when I read the headlines these days something within me wants to reach for a gun too, but I’ve been around long enough to know that more guns just mean more bullets fired into more bodies. As a former police officer, let me tell you that I agree with a New York Times editorial that said, “It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that people can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill [other people] with brutal speed and efficiency.” I grant you, gun control is not a “silver bullet” – if you’ll pardon the analogy – but it is a very significant step in trying to tamp down the rampant gun violence pervading our culture.
However, it is not only the machinations of power and profit on a grand cultural scale that is our concern, it is ultimately our task, as Levertov puts it, to question our own needs; because that’s where this hard work of crafting the poetry of peace begins. Questioning our own needs means considering the possibility that the needs of others are just as significant, and in some cases more significant. That ultimately leads us to the hardest part of this task, to allow “long pauses. . . .”
Most of us, most of the time, do not pause . . . much. We are busy setting our agendas, filling our needs, making our points, structuring our worlds. We may take short pauses to catch a breath, but they are not the stuff of peace. Long pauses . . . are those large gaps intentionally carved out of our lives that make room for the other. To pause long . . . is to lift one’s head and look; it is to open one’s eyes and see; it is to consider that which lies outside of one’s own needs, interests, and points of view. And that is where peace begins. It begins there because it is only in the long pauses . . . that room is made for something other than the hectic self-absorption that leads finally to winning and losing, control, dominance, and violence. Thomas Howard speaks of “The ordinary stuff of our experience” that reflects much larger issues and realities. He writes that “The sarcastic lift of an eyebrow carries the seed of murder since it bespeaks my wish to diminish someone else’s existence.” He acknowledges that this is not a new insight to most of us but, like Levertov, he knows it is the domain of the poet to make it real. He writes, “The prophets and poets have to pluck our sleeves or knock us on the head now and again, not to tell us anything new but simply to hail us with what has been there all along.”1
So this morning I bring you a brand new idea that is older than the ages: First, practice taking long pauses . . . . Be the peace you want to see come to the world, because that is the only way it will ever come. As Denise Levertov puts it,
“. . . peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light – facets
of the forming crystal.
And so, peace be with us and among us. And may we not simply practice peace, but may we learn to pause long enough to be peace.
1 Thomas Howard, The Novels of Charles Williams, Wipf & Stock, 2004, p. 18.
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