Resurrection: Culture of Life Defeats Culture of Death

"Jesus was a one-man crime wave." - Father John Dear

I was privileged to hear Father Dear speak on Tuesday. He requested that we call him John, as "Father, Dear" was just a little too over the top. So John, then, is a Jesuit priest and peace activist who has been arrested 80 times (by his own count) and who was nominated for the Nobel Peace prize. He was at our church as part of the tour to promote his latest book,
Lazarus, Come Forth!: How Jesus Confronts the Culture of Death and Invites Us into the New Life of Peace.

In John's presentation he breathed new life into the Gospels, particularly the Gospel of John, which is the only gospel to contain the story of Lazarus. Fr. John (as opposed to the gospel of John) argued that Lazarus represents all of humanity; we belong to the culture of death as it is expressed in war, poverty, preventable illness, trafficking, racism, sexism, and death row. Fr. John argued that we are in thrall to death's power, that we do not fully believe that we can defeat it. Just like the mourners in Bethany, like Mary and Martha, our faith is not strong enough to let us believe that life in God / Jesus is truly stronger than death.

Fr. John noted that Jesus wept out of sorrow for our lack of faith in him and in life itself. Then Jesus went to Lazarus' tomb and issued three commands:
1. Take away the stone!
2. Lazarus, come forth!
3. Unbind him, and let him go free!
In Fr. John's reading of the Word, he sees these commands as life-giving orders for each of us. We can roll away the oppressive stone of fear on our heart, walk forth into new life in faith, and be unbound to see, hear, taste, touch and smell what life truly can be.

Fr. John also revisited the foot - washing aspect of the Last Supper, another piece of our faith tradition that only John describes. In Fr. John's narrative, the foot washing is a call to a nonviolent Way, not a call to service (as I described it in my already - outdated epiphany below). He noted the verbs, "Jesus, bent over, lifted, rose" were verbs from the Passion narrative and presaged Jesus' ultimate nonviolent act of death on the Cross. Certainly rich food for thought. New thoughts, new imaginings, new directions - a blessing.

My personal tsunami

Have you ever experienced a phase of your child's development when you dreaded waking them up? You know that your "good morning" will be the 8.0 magnitude tremor that sets of a series of tsunamis, breaking the calm of your silent pre-dawn moments. I'm in such a period with my three-year-old son; I tiptoe into his room to soak up the image of his peaceful sleeping figure before I regretfully disturb both of our tranquility with my wake-up call.

Today we experienced five temper tantrums between my "alarm" at 6:45 and preschool drop-off at 8:05. One was over oatmeal, one over the center of a toilet paper roll that my daughter was using for a microphone - and that he desperately wanted. I cannot remember the source of the other three tsunamis that swept over us this morning, but my body still holds the tension and frustration. My chest feels tight when I try to take in the deep breath that *should* calm me down.

In my Just Faith class we studied heroes of non-violence, reading Gandhi, King, and watching movies about the Polish labor movement and the Chilean people's election to remove a dictator. I felt regret that I could not be a part of such a movement, could not follow a great leader. Here again I felt the sting of my "just mom" label. Yet . . . my motherhood profession offers great opportunity to practice peace, calming influence, and defusing tensions. This morning I once again realized that my reactions are the only thing that I can control in a given situation. I certainly cannot control my three-year-old! How difficult it is to speak calming words on the fifth temper tantrum, to control my thoughts and the angry words that threaten to break past my lips. My frustration and my failure to stay peaceful in the storm taste bitter on my tongue, as if I've swallowed some of the salt water in our tsunami.

We don't spank in our household, and use timeouts and loss of privileges effectively with my older children, but my youngest is not quite old enough to understand or to negotiate for what he wants. We only have a short time left in this phase, but I pray that it will be enough time for me to calm the storm - in him and in myself. Perhaps we can channel our passions into a river: water that carries strength, that can carve rock and nurture growth, but that can absorb disturbances with only a faint ripple.