Transfiguring Suffering Into Compassion

A Reflection for the Unitarian Universalist Community of the Outer Banks          October 21, 2018 Thomas E Wilson, Guest Preacher

Transfiguring Suffering Into Compassion

This last week Eugene Peterson, a Retired Presbyterian Minister, Teacher, BiblicalTranslator, Poet and Writer entered into Hospice Care. When his children asked him how he felt about entering the last months of his life, he said; “I feel pretty good about that.”

Before I retired five months ago I considered part of my Priestly duties as Rector of All Saints Episcopal was the volunteering to be a Chaplain with the Dare County Hospice program. What Hospice does is help people deal with death. In an ego agenda driven world death seems like a suffering but faith looks at death differently. What the hospice idea is to transform the suffering of death into a loving struggle for compassion. Transformation into compassion as a way of life is hard for us to get our heads around. Pat, my wife, grew up in Parochial schools and whenever she would get a disappointment, pain or hurt, the nuns would say “Offer it up!” She with fury dismissed it as pious nonsense and I have learned not to ever offer that piece of advice to her. However, that is the point of my reflection today!

I am indebted to Eugene Peterson because his Biblical Translation, The Message, is an attempt to present the Bible in language fit for real dog-faced people rather than as Preachers trying to impress you with their language. His translation of Micah is a case in point. Micah wasn't a professional prophet, he worked as a farm laborer taking care of Sycamore Trees telling people what he learned about being still in his Spirit with the Power Greater than Himself. Listen to Micah 6:8 “But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love and don’t take yourself too seriously— take God seriously.”

“Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love and don’t take yourself too seriously— take God seriously.” I am in pretty good health right now but I would like think that I might be able to face my own death seeing it as part of life, like St. Francis of Assisi who considered death a sister. His early life was self centered but he grew into a life filled with compassion. I am still working on it. I am reminded of a piece of graffiti that Erik Erickson quoted at the beginning of one of his books on Human Development: “I ain't who I should be, I ain't what I could be, but thank God I ain't who I used to be.”

I grew up self centered like, I guess, more than a few of us in this room. The world revolved around me and what I wanted and therefore I thought that if I didn't get what I wanted then the world was unfair and owed me an apology and I would throw a pity party.

Last week I did a reflection for an Episcopal Church in Engelhard and I started off with an experience of building a crystal radio set when I was in 4^th grade. I guess I am still stuck in the 4^th grade because when I started thinking about my history of compassion I found myself smack back in the 4^th grade. It was summer time and I was in short pants and walking down the road and I noticed a pile of something on the side of the pavement. I walked toward it and found a bird and it was still, very still because it was dead. I looked at it and I started to cry because that bird should not be dead. I can't even remember what kind of bird it was, but I thought it was beautiful and it seemed wrong that such beauty was ruined. The picture I have is of me as a child squatting on the side of the road crying. It could have been the beginning of compassion for me but it was just pity; pity for the bird and pity for me having to deal with it. However, I did not do a thing as an act of love and thankfulness for the joy the bird had given others in this world. If I had compassion I would have buried the bird and said a prayer of thanksgiving, maybe put up a sign for motorists to slow down to the speed limit so animals might stand a chance. Sometimes pity masquerades as compassion but it isn't. While it is better than complete self absorption, pity looks and sees an object rather that a being, a thing without any real connection to our lives. Using Pity can work to raise money as long as we are only asking for small change but usually pity meets the definition of “no change means no change”. Pity will not change lives or meaningful behavior. And if pity stays around, it usually breeds resentment in the targeted observer.

The next movement toward compassion that I remember was in the 6^th grade. My elementary school was dealing with an influx of children in the baby boomer generation and the administration had to build a new wing which was to be build over the summer, but it was not finished and the solution was to bus the fourth, fifth and sixth graders over to some empty classrooms near another school in the district. Most of us kids walked to school but now we had to ride the buses. On the bus I was riding was a retarded boy named Karl. Nobody sat next to him because he was different. I did not want to sit next to him, but that was the seat that was available. Talking to him was difficult but I treated him like a human being because my parent had drilled it into us that we needed to be kind and respectful, so I listened to what he had to say or what I could understand.

After we got off the bus, some of the other kids laughed at me and said I probably got “cooties” from Karl. For those of you who are in the dark; cooties are imaginary creatures that infest children when in contact with someone who is different. I knew what some of the kids were doing, they wanted me to share their fear and shun Karl. I continued to sit next to Karl and it was not out of pity but out of doing good deeds to another human being as I would have wanted someone to stick up for me if I was in that same kind of situation. It was kindness with a little empathy, but it was not yet compassion because it required nothing from me than my small personal time and energy. I did not want to share his suffering. So I kept him at a polite distance.

Later in life I would stand up in demonstrations against Racism, War and Capital Punishment; not because I cared about the people but because it was the “right” thing to do in being kind and respectful. I would do the same thing with many of the jobs when I started a career, jobs I had in order to put bread on the table. These were jobs, not life, and there was a sharp division between my job and my life. The understanding was my empathy was confined to the office sessions and it I was to run across the client outside the office, I was to keep a professional distance and not speak to them unless they spoke to me and I was not to let a conversation about problems continue. My job was identifying, and working with people's problems for which I was paid. This continued even for the first years of my ordained ministry. At the end of the office hours, I often went home exhausted if I had not given myself enough time to work on Counter Transference.

The Dalai Lama in his book: The Essence of the Heart Sutra, writes:

"According to Buddhism, compassion is an aspiration, a state of mind, wanting others to be free from suffering. It's not passive — it's not empathy alone — but rather an empathetic altruism that actively strives to free others from suffering. Genuine compassion must have both wisdom and lovingkindness. That is to say, one must understand the nature of the suffering from which we wish to free others (this is wisdom), and one must experience deep intimacy and empathy with other sentient beings (this is lovingkindness)."

Empathy is the exercise of imagination to begin to understand the joys and suffering of another human being. It is something I learned more when I did some acting to try to get inside and understand characters I played. Empathy is not the schizophrenic identification of another person but the awareness of how parts of me are found in parts of the other. I never lapsed into mental illness and became the character; the character was not me but yet the character was also not not me for he did contain more than a little of my shadows, both light and dark.

But the movement toward compassion was developing since I learned how to listen to another person and hear their pain and suffering. The very act of listening empathetically was the beginning of moving people from suffering to struggling. It is always their struggle, but by compassion you can share that struggle with them, sharing your strength, your wisdom, your hope, so they know they are not alone. Life and love are like Math, Science, Art, Language, Prayer or Faith, always a struggle to reach a deeper level. If do-gooders, thinking they are doing a kindness, try to save us by doing our homework for us, to keep us from struggle, finding a quick and easy solution or short term rescue, many times all they have done is to postpone the suffering because it will come back with a vengeance. We do no favors to take a struggle away. Suffering really cannot to be taken away for it is everywhere, rather it needs to be transformed into struggle. A person who is suffering feels powerless and sorry for themselves whereas a person who is struggling to find a deeper life for the days they have, as the Serenity Prayer says: “to have serenity to accept what I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Just for today.”

Twelve step groups are places of compassion. Visitors are not greeted as solitary losers on which to have pity but as sufferers who are invited to be fellow strugglers, transforming their suffering into struggle.

Struggle is what we are called to do to claim the world. The Prophet Mohammad is reported to have said after a battle: “We have finished with the Lesser Jihad and it is now time for the Greater Jihad” The lesser Jihad is always easy as we find enemies as an excuse for blaming someone for our suffering. But the harder, The Greater, Jihad, struggle, meant the struggle to be a better person and to create a better community of justice and care in the image of Allah the Compassionate and Merciful.

The Buddha, Prince Siddhartha, having lived a pampered life, finally left the Palace of ease and found the suffering of the world and life. He knew that there was suffering everywhere and it was never noble but always meaningless. However, it could be transformed and made meaningful when it was replaced by struggle on the Eightfold Path. When some of his disciples asked what they could do if they found themselves in a land of famine; he replied that if they were in the middle of famine they could fast; replacing the suffering with struggle for deeper meaning of compassion.

Jesus answered the question about what his disciples could do if someone hits them on the right cheek. The only way that someone in a society, that is mainly right handed, hits you on the right cheek, is when he does a back handed slap, an insult from someone who considers you not worth their time and beneath their contempt. A Jew in an Roman occupied territory as Jesus was, or one had less social or economic status and power as Jesus was, had three choices. One; they could fight back and end up killed by the powers that be. Two; they could stuff down the insult and live with the bitterness for the enemy and self loathing of their own inaction. Three: they could stand in front of the aggressor and offer the other cheek to be hit so the oppressor would be aware of what he was doing, injuring a fellow image of God , a person not an object. As a Christian I would call it a Transfiguration into Compassion, others might call it a Transformation. This is what caused the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to do his ministry as a way to have the enemy see what they were doing to another human being. It was an act of defiance and an act of loving compassion for the enemy's soul. The suffering turned into struggle for growth for deeper life.

Jean Vanier, the founder of a worldwide collection of communities where people work and live with people with developmental disabilities and where people learn how to be compassionately human with each other, said in his acceptance speech for the Templeton Prize in 2015:

“It is only as we meet and share together person to person, eye to eye, and heart to heart that we discover what it means to be human and to discover the joy of being together, working together towards a common mission of peace and unity. It is only moving from winning and loneliness to collaboration, and from hostility to seeing enemies as friends, that we discover the real meaning of peace.”

The world is not going to be changed by divisions of enemy camps hurling invective at each other at the latest enemies to blame, but by joining with the enemies and decide that we/they need to transform the suffering we feed into a struggle together for the common good with compassion for all.

Today for instance we see a great deal of suffering because of the two recent hurricanes. We have choices on how to respond. We can breath a sigh of relief and have pity on the people who are suffering who made the bad choice to live somewhere else, or we can respond to suffering with love and help transform it into a struggle for compassion.

How about you? How are you doing with compassion?



Transfiguring Suffering Into Compassion.
What a nun says I didn't want to do,
when she suggests that I offer it up,
but I just want to invite pain to sup,
giving my unjust suffering its due.
Oh, the joy of it all, to pin a blame
on someone rather than life or me;
there must be a devil or an enemy
that I can make to suffer or shame.
But what if it is part of living itself,
unavoidable with all our ego drives
determined to separate all our lives
by putting our neighbors on a shelf?
Join us to struggle for a compassion
as way to put suffering out of fashion.

Sunday Night Messages Over the Crystal Set

A Reflection for XXI Pentecost                     St. George's Church, Engelhard, NC 

October 14, 2018                                           Thomas E Wilson, Supply Celebrant

Amos 5:6-7,10-15 Psalm 90:12-17 Hebrews 4:12-16 Mark 10:17-31

Sunday Night Messages Over the Crystal Set

When I was in the 4^th grade, my father gave me as one of my Christmas presents, a Crystal radio set, to put together as a way of hoping the idea of building something would encourage me to get an interest in making something out of my life. My father had put one of these sets together when he was a child and it was part of him opening himself up to science and technology. He became an engineer and he knew that a science and technology background would be the coming fields in which to earn a living. After all, the area in which I then lived in the Southern Tier of New York had as three of its biggest employers; Link Aviation, IBM, and Ansco Film and there were always going to be jobs there. Except, Link Aviation was later sold to Howard Hughes and left town, most of IBM left town, and Ansco film was sold to Hong Kong. My father was trying to prepare me for life. While all of these opportunities were there as the conventional wisdom and the local Chamber of Commerce kept promising while I was growing up; my father understood, growing up through the Great Depression and serving as a Marine Officer in combat in the Pacific in World War II, that an easy life with easy answers was far from certain. My Father loved me and wanted me to go beyond my comfort zone and be exposed to a deeper dimension of life than just existing.

A few months ago when Pat and I were in Maine, I read a book by theoretical physicist Alan Lightman, Searching For Stars From an Island in Maine, a reflection on the human quest for a comfortable certainty in unchanging rules confronting the modern scientific discoveries which challenge us to look beyond. My father would have been 100 this year but he died 52 years ago when I was 19 and I knew he would have loved that book as a challenge because he had prepared me to look deeper than the surface reality.

I made the crystal radio set and at night I would get under the blanket, put an ear plug in and tune the home made radio to the local stations as a way of closing my day. The kind of music didn't matter-Pop, Rock, Folk, Country, Classical, Jazz - which ever station I could pull in best. Duke Ellington used to say that there were only two kinds of music: Good and Bad.

However, on Sunday nights I would pull in the preachers. There were many of them, all talking about preparing for life; the life in heaven after we are dead. “If you were to die today, do you know where you are going to spend eternity; where are you going to spend eternal life?” Eternal Life was confined to the after death ghetto. Heaven was a reward and Hell; the way they made Hell sound as a place meant for people who listened to Godless rock and roll or jazz. The kind of place for people who had lustful thoughts. The kind of place to have eternal punishment, day in and day out FOREVER was not a place I wanted to end up. They were literally trying to scare the Hell out of me. I wondered what kind of God gets his jollies out of seeing people get tortured in fire and brimstone. I was told that getting out of Hell was simple but not easy. I was going to have to go to church more and study the Bible more and give more to the evangelist de jour as a way of preparing for life. I was going to have obey the dictates of religious authorities and not talk back or allow doubt to creep in. I was told that formula of following the prescribed norms would be certain to prepare me for Eternal Life away from Hell after I was dead.

Jesus and the rich man talked about life and how to prepare for it in today's Gospel lesson. There are three words for “life” in the Greek of the New Testament. They are (1) BIOS, out of which we get the science of Biology - how does the body function. (2) PSYCHE out of which we get the science of Psychology -how does the mind work, (3) ZOE out of which we get the science of Zoology - what are the differences between those things that have life. In this particular lesson and in much of the New Testament the word ZOE is used with a modifier AINOION, out of which we get the word eon for a very long period of time longer than we could imagine and was a metaphor for God, the Eternal, and the combination usually used was human life living into the life of the Eternal and is translated as “eternal life”. What happens over the centuries was that the metaphor “eternal life” was made literal and was translated by the Church authorities as the life after death.

When the Bible writers used the term ZOEN AINOION, “eternal life, they meant a life lived fully and completely in God's presence. In this particular story Jesus loved this young man who wanted to live into what he thought was eternal life. There was something about this young man, because the Bible does not often have Jesus as “loving” a particular person, but the writers note that Jesus does love this young man. Maybe Jesus looked at him and thought , “Wow this is one sharp person. He has a great reputation. He's followed all the commandments. He understands the law! He has a great aura of authority. He is the kind of person who can be a real leader; maybe better than these twelve guys who hang around me now who keep missing the point.” Out of his love for this young man Jesus says: “I really want you to follow me, but I want all of your life, not just your religion identity and not your stuff. If you really want to go on this journey - we are going to have to travel light, get used to losing a lot of stuff, the stuff out of which we used to get our identity; and you have got a lot of stuff. Since you are going to lose it anyway; why not give it away.”

In essence I hear Jesus asking this young man to follow the words of Frances Havergal in the sequence hymn we sang before and after the Gospel about making a full commitment. The young man looks at Jesus like he is crazy. The young man has spent all of his life finding his meaning of life in getting and managing his stuff, plus he was so proud that he had scrupulously done all the religion stuff. He was certain about the rules of his life because his society had created their own Social Institutions to make sense of their world.

All Societies make decisions on the shape of Social Institutions, e.g. what is the nature of a family, what is the nature of an economic system, what it the nature of how decisions are made for law and governance, what is the response to the poor, how do we pass on education and culture to the next generation and finally what is the shape of religion. Emile Durkheim's definition of Religion as a Social System:"a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say things set apart and forbidden - beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a church, all those who adhere to them.”

But living in the presence of God is not about religion but about an awareness of God in every moment. Frederick Buechner in his Wishful Thinking tried to show the difference between Religion and being Religious:

THERE ARE POETRY BOOKS and poetic books—the first a book with poems in it, the second a book that may or may not have poems in it, but that is in some sense a poem itself.

In much the same way there are religion books and religious books. A religion book is a book with religion in it in the everyday sense of religious ideas, symbols, attitudes, and—if it takes the form of fiction—with characters and settings that have overtly religious associations and implications. There are good religion books like The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne or Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor, and there are miserable ones like most of what is called "Christian" fiction.

A religious book may not have any religion as such in it at all, but to read it is in some measure to experience firsthand what a religion book can only tell about. A religion book is a canvas. A religious book is a transparency. With a religious book it is less what we see in it than what we see through it that matters. John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany would be an example. Huckleberry Finn would be another.

Writers of religious books tend to achieve most when they are least conscious of doing so. The attempt to be religious is as doomed as the attempt to be poetic. Thus in the writing, as in the reading, a religious book is an act of grace—no less rare, no less precious, no less improbable.

In that same fashion; A Life With Religion is the placement of God somewhere far off and with whom you keep an appointment to check in and try to get the Divine on your side as well as off your back so you can do business as usual. In this viewpoint, eternal life is a reward for living a moral life, where we hope that entrance into heaven might be graded on a curve. A Religious Life is an act of Grace where all of life is seen through the eyes of an ever present Spirit of love and awe. A Life With Religion is a habit one forms and can be easy to live with, but a Religious Life is about living in love and filled with all sorts of falling short and getting back up again because the love never ends. I am loved and Love is hard to do but love is the only life worth living.

Jesus is really not interested in creating a rival Religion Institution, he is interested in going deeper where all of our Social Institutions are shaped by an awareness of God's presence in all that we do. My own belief is that one of the worst things that happened to the Jesus movement was when it became a Religion like all the other religions; a way to get God on our side and off our backs so we can do business as usual. Jesus was not interested in Religion but in Relationship in this world where God is in the space between each of us and deep inside us at all parts of each day. Eternal life meant living into the Eternal right now and not just after we are dead. I leave it up to God to deal with what happens after this body cools.

So what must you do to claim Eternal Life?

Sunday Night Messages Over the Crystal Set

Hearing the radio preacher's spittle hit

as he listed all my faults that last week

with a prescription that I'd need to seek

about a better moral life and do my bit.

The verses of “Just As I Am” are timed

for me to pray for an ill deserved chance

to re-try to put out the fire on my pants

as out of the hell's flames I've climbed.

In that script it was all about my task,

what I needed to act and think and say

to keep me whole I'd pray in right way

doing my leaders will when they'd ask.

For years it never occurred I was loved,

just as I am, before I was by guilt shoved.

Reflection and Poem On Occasion of Blessing of Animals 2018

A Reflection for the Feast of St. Francis (transferred)        St. George's Church, Engelhard, NC 

October 7, 2018                                                                  Thomas E Wilson, Supply Celebrant 

 Jeremiah 22:13–16     Galatians 6:14–18       Matthew 11:25–30     Psalm 148:7–14

On the Occasion of the Blessing of Animals 2018

What we have done today is to take the lessons for the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi on the 4^th of October and transferred them to this Sunday as we gather to bless the animals and the world in which we live. Francis was born in the Italian Umbrian City of Assisi, dying at the age of 45 on October 4^th, 1226. His father, Pietro di Bernardone, a cloth merchant, was away on a sales and business trip to France when Francis was born. Because there was at that time a high death rate among infants, his mother baptized him quickly naming him Giovanni, Italian for John the beloved, before Pietro returned. When Pietro got home, because the business trip to France was so successful, he nicknamed Giovanni Francesco, Italian for “the Frenchman”, in English – “Francis”. Otherwise this would have been the Feast of St. Johnny of Assisi.

Francis was therefore an outward and visible sign of his father's ego so that his father could always be reminded what a great businessman he was and his hope that the family business ties with France might be enriched. For Pietro, the world was a rough place and scarcity was the norm, never enough to go around so you had to grab and hold on to what you needed and since the world was divided into two parts, winners and losers; real winners strived to win and take advantage of the losers.The region the family lived in was plagued with bitter sporadic warfare between the forces loyal to the Pope and the Pope's adversary for power, the Holy Roman Emperor; think of it like modern day Republicans and Democrats but with sharp swords instead of elections, debates and committee hearings.

Francis was not a very good businessman, but he had his own ego to think about and lived and spent lavishly. He did not care too much about the world since he was too busy consuming it selfishly; the world was about winners lording it over the losers. Francis at 21 decides he really wants to be a soldier, the ultimate game to determine winners and losers, and he pushed Pietro to buy him some expensive armor to go to war to find his own personal glory. Giovanni, Johnny, goes to war and did he ever look grand swaggering all the way to fight with a neighboring state. That is when we find out that Francis, besides not being a very good businessman, was not a very good soldier either, when he was captured and held for ransom. After about a year as a prisoner of war, his father paid the ransom and brought Francis home. This son, who once had been a sign that his father could make a lot more money, was costing his father a lot more money. Pietro was looking at his son as a losing proposition.

In 1205, when Francis was 24, he could not figure out what he was going to do. As he was wandering though the Umbrian countryside he stopped at a small run down chapel of San Damiano. He went in side to pray and as he sat inside this ruin, he meditated on the cross there of an icon of Christ. It shows Jesus on the cross but instead of dying and suffering, he has his arms wide to embrace the witnesses to the crucifixion, with a look of hope in his eyes. The crucifixion is an outward sign of a loser but the embrace of others and the eyes of hope give a different dimension to this “loser”. In his meditation Francis thought he heard Christ say to him, “Repair my church.”

Francis thought; “At last, this is something I can do and be a winner and make God, the Big Daddy in the Sky impressed.” One problem was that he did not have enough money but he solved that problem by stealing some of his Pietro's Silk stock and selling it on the sly. That is when he found out he was a failure as a thief, because his father had an audit and discovered the theft. Francis runs away and hides in a cave.  Pietro finally finds Francis hiding in the cave, Francis was a failure in hiding out as well, but the cave experience is a symbol of the universal experience about going deeper into himself, which is the beginning of healing. Pietro drags him out, beating him all the way back home to be locked up and then dragged him before the Bishop to cut Pietro's losses and disinherit Francis.

When people fail; they have a number of choices; 1) Be the victim and blame someone or something else, and entertaining fantasies of getting even, 2) Accept that you are a loser and live in resentment, or 3) Stop playing the game of winning and losing and move toward wholeness. Francis chose the 3^rd option and told his father Pietro that Francis was no longer going to play this ego game and he absolved Pietro of any responsibility. He gave back to Pietro everything he had, even the clothes on his back, walking away buck naked to live in harmony with his Heavenly Father's world.

A friend gave him an old ragged and torn robe to cover his nakedness; a great comedown from the fine silks and furs he used to strut around in as he projected the image of a winner. He now was dressed as the part of a loser in the world's eyes, but he became a living icon, like that icon at San Damiano, embracing the witnesses and viewing the world with the eyes of hope. He went from town to town and earned his bread by begging, juggling and being an acrobat and then giving the poor the better part of what he earned. He stopped and looked at the world in awe. He saw that the world was not a game of losers and winners but a place where there was a middle ground of peace between people to be cultivated. He realized that God's call to repair his church was not about buildings or even institutions but about God's church being the world which was in a horrible shape with the ego games of winners and losers. 

Francis found the deeper truth that we repair the world first by repairing ourselves. We begin by repairing the eyesight of our soul which sees a world utterly divided between an Us and a THEM, winners versus losers. Francis saw that it is only when we discover that we are all part of the same larger community of God's love, in which there are only apparent, but not real, difference between east and west, male and female, slave and free, race language or culture, geographical distances, political or economic systems. Animals, humans, stars, rocks, trees, winds, life, death, you name it, we are all part of the same community of star dust which began with that explosion of love 14 billion years ago when God spoke: “Let there be light!”

Scott Peck in his book, The Different Drum, wrote about the need for community which begins when we going into our metaphorical caves and come to an awareness of our own divided self:

Community requires the confession of brokenness. But how remarkable it is that in our culture brokenness must be “confessed.” We think of confession as an act that should be carried out in secret, in the darkness of the confessional, with the guarantee of professional priestly or psychiatric confidentiality. Yet the reality is that every human being is broken and vulnerable. How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded! Community requires the ability to expose our wounds and weaknesses to our fellow creatures. It also requires the ability to be affected by the wounds of others. But even more important is the love that arises among us when we share, both ways, our woundedness. With remorse, confession becomes a joy.

When Francis embraced his poverty, he declared his own brokenness in a broken world and he walked into situations to bring peace into times and places of conflict, divisions between Us and Them. At one point he risks his life to cross battle lines to go to the Sultan of Egypt to try to bring about peace in the middle of a war between the Christians and the Muslims. He sang and joined the birds in singing God's praise for the creation. He blessed animals and sinners and enemies. Blessing is not something we do to make something “Holy”, blessing is what we do when we take the time to see the deep holiness of everything that is before us. As Elizabeth Barrett Browning reminds us:

“Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”

Today we bless the animals as a first step of blessing all of this creation even blessing those people with whom we disagree. As the Pope, who took his Papal name from Francis, said last year:” Let us help each other, all together, to remember that the “other” is not a statistic or a number, we all need each other.

On the Occasion of the Blessing of Animals 2018

Yoda's not pure bred but a mongrel with

cleft palate and one ear up the other down,

ending up landing twice placed in a pound,

an escape artist over or under fence swift.

The very first afternoon at our house he

jumped up onto the fine dining room table

leaving deep unhealable scratches as able,

yet mending heart scratches of Pat and me

He, knowing he was broken but, accepting

our very own less obvious brokenness

with a grace unbidden but sorely missed,

our love of him and each other rekindling.

Often when he begs for time of play or treat

reminds us we are all beggars at God's feet