This morning it hit me again–that groundswell of temptation to despair that comes with reading the morning papers and catching a few anguished minutes of CNN’s latest updates. Our interconnected web of existence sometimes gets tangled, and tangled it is with an array of knots that numbs our imagination. We know the hotspots. We know that if we take out our wide-angel lens and try a broader view, we observe those hotspots intimately connected across historical time and geographical space. Wendell Berry is right. We "eat our history day by day." How digestible it is, is another matter.

God knows we live in interesting times and inhabit a tangled web. Our own congregation is home to a wide range of opinions on who is responsible. Those of us gathered here are not above caustic discourse over who is accountable for the killings and the suicide bombings and the military campaigns. What complicates our discussion is the difficulty of critiquing a structure that is political without being called to task in language that presumes we are critiquing an entity that is religious. How challenging it is to argue any vantagepoint without qualifying ourselves a thousand times, because any singular vantagepoint can be diffused by other frames of reference that are just as valid for those inhabiting these frames. It’s not as if there are two sides. That would be simple compared to the multi-faceted reality we are called to witness, assess, and act mindfully within and upon.

What does our own liberal community of faith have to offer us as we face this tangled web day after day, as we mourn for those who lose their lives and quake with those who fear for their lives? How does our own liberal community of faith help us listen with deeper attentiveness and observe with more open eyes what is transpiring in our world?

What I ask of my faith is for an enlivening of my capacity to see that there are many vantagepoints, that those who inhabit each have inherent worth and dignity, that each is worth listening to, and that no singular vantagepoint justifies violence and bloodshed. None, absolutely none, justifies the violence and the bloodshed.

Our faith tradition is one that aspires toward reason, tolerance, and compassionate justice. It is a faith of liberal tradition. It is a faith that works and works hard. Sometimes it even works us into a sweat. But if we heed the aspirations of our liberal tradition and draw strength from our faith, I daresay we will be better equipped to loosen those tangled strands, because reasonable as we are, we know that miracles happen. Reasonable as we are, we know that forces seemingly unreconcilable can forge covenants of understanding and peace.

So even as our throats tighten and we mourn together at yet another news report of those who have fallen, may we know and trust that miracles happen and that we are co-creators of these miracles. Amen.

 

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