There is one image from the Las Vegas tragedy this week that does not leave me. A young man speaks of how he held the wound of a friend as terror reigned around him. In the midst of chaos—there was love.
Images of neighbor caring for neighbor in Puerto Rico come back to me in the middle of the night. I see hands offering the ultimate gift of clean water. I pray for a growth in compassion in these challenging times as I lie awake wondering about our world.
Two religious holy times of the last week offer us wisdom and echo a call to conversion and love through service. Last weekend our Jewish brothers and sisters ended the holy time from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur with reflection, fasting and turning from that which not life is giving to a deeper call to love. October 4 was the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, patron of ecology, whose life was dedicated to a simple life of conversion and love for all creation and those who were economically poor and shunned by his society.
In this moment with so many people and creatures suffering from a warming planet and various forms of violence and intolerance, both of these holy times of the year remind us of our deeper call as humans. There is a famous book written by Murray Bodo about St. Francis of Assisi called The Journey and the Dream. There are many bits of wisdom in the poetic recounting of the life of St. Francis. However, the Afterword, is particularly poignant for our moment as we struggle to balance lives of reflection, prayer and even contemplation in a world with so many demands and so many tragedies calling to our hearts and taking our attention. Bodo states:
Both are important, the Journey and the Dream, the coming out and the entering in.
Without the Journey the Dream is a futile entering into yourself
Where you ride a monotonous wheel that spins around YOU alone……
The Journey and the Dream are one balanced act of love
And both are realized outside the mind.
This powerful call to reflect deeply inside and then allow LOVE to act through us in service is what the young man in Las Vegas exemplified and the neighbors caring for neighbors in Puerto Rico. Ours is a prophetic time demanding faith filled responses to a warming world and a world where discrimination and violence seem to increase. Our prayer must lead us outside of ourselves to address structures that beg reform. Recently several moral calls to action garnered my attention and time. Last week I journeyed to Washington DC with Catholic Climate Covenant to lobby for a budget that does not cut EPA ability to care for water, air, land and communities. I met with our Senator’s staff advocating to not cut weatherization and low income energy funding, and to not eliminate the Environmental Justice office from the EPA and to keep funds for relocation of our Alaskan brothers and sisters being displaced by rising seas and climate change, as well as other ecological and climate justice concerns.
Several weeks ago, NMIPL was part of a host committee organizing the kickoff of Rev. William Barber’s Poor People’s Campaign: A Call for Moral Revival. New Mexico is one of 25 states where local people will be organizing folks all over the state in the spirit of Rev. Martin Luther King to address concerns of economic disparity, excess militarization, racism and environmental degradation/climate change. Actions will take place in New Mexico and across the country in late spring. For the kick off at Central United Methodist Church in Albuquerque, some 1,2000 people gathered to pray, to listen and to commit to the moral agenda so needed by our nation at this time. (More info and sign up at https://poorpeoplescampaign.org/)
As we enter into the contemplative time of fall leading to winter, may our inner dreams for the well being of all move from our minds and hearts to action and service into our communities and state. May our prayer be one taken from a modification of St. Francis’ Canticle of Creation that proclaims:
Be Praised, O Holy One, through the interconnected web of Creation,
Which binds your children, your creatures and your earth,
All that you have woven together
So all may exist in Original Goodness.
Joan Brown, osf is a Franciscan Sister from the Rochester, MN community. She lives in Albuquerque and works around the state as the Executive Director of New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light (NMIPL). She may be reached at joan@nm-ipl.org.