"MLK"

 “MLK”

One could hardly imagine a greater contrast on January 20 than the comparison between the national holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr., and inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States.  Though King has been sanitized over the 57 years since his assassination in Memphis, he was a powerful leader for justice and equity.  I will write more on Trump later, but for now, I will say that I have seen his spirit before in the neo-slavery South – Faubus, Wallace, Barnett, Talmadge.  The issue now, of course, is that he intends to make white supremacy even stronger again.  In light of this, I want to revisit a column that I wrote for The Atlantic in 2018, as they reflected on 1968. They asked me to write about Martin Luther King, Jr., and here is that column.  

Doubting MLK During a Strike in Memphis

Reprint from The Atlantic Online

A retired Presbyterian pastor looks back on 1968, when he participated in the civil-rights struggle but hadn’t yet embraced the principles of nonviolence.

Jan 13, 2018

    I was a senior in college in 1968 at Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College), when the garbage workers strike in Memphis came to the public eye.  I joined other Southwestern students who were part of that strike.  That movement was part of a continuing shift for me in my own consciousness, as I began to change from a white person raised in the segregated South to a white person who gradually began to see how captive I was to the power of race.

            I had been taught racism by really decent white people in my hometown on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River Delta – my family, my church, my teachers.  I believed that white people were superior, and that black people would never be our peers or equals.  If at times my experience seemed to teach otherwise, I was like Thomas Jefferson in his writings on “Notes on Virginia.”  Though he agonized over the ideas of equality and slavery,  he indicated that he could not find evidence of the equality of people of African heritage.

Education was one of my paths out of this total captivity to race.  Though most of my public school teachers were believers in race, one of my English teachers, a Jewish woman in our small Arkansas town, suggested that I read Alan Paton’s “Cry, the Beloved Country” about apartheid in South Africa.  I read it, and in it I met my first black person.  Oh yes, I had seen many black people in my youth, but I had not considered any of them to be a person as I was.

            My college years began to expand my horizons, and I began to hang out with the first black students at Southwestern.   In my junior year, I was one of the leaders of demonstrations that helped to close down a restaurant that refused to serve one of my black friends.   As 1968 began, I joined other white and black young people around the country who had begun to believe that Martin Luther King, Jr. and his way of nonviolence were not only irrelevant, but were counterproductive and even dangerous.   Though I was not yet swayed by H. Rap Brown’s emphasis on the fundamental nature of violence in American life, it seemed to be the only way that justice might come for people of African heritage.  

            I jumped into the garbage strike, going on marches, seeking to organize and educate others.  I was part of group of students who went to churches on Sunday mornings, standing up to interrupt worship to shout “Support the garbage strike.”  We would usually be escorted out of worship, but a few people were sympathetic.   I retired from the ministry in 2017, and I have often wondered what I would have done as a worship leader, if such interruptions had come in my time.  Fortunately, none ever did, and I’d like to think that it was because Oakhurst Presbyterian was such a progressive church, but I know that the issue remains in my heart.

            Many of us felt that there was a possibility of victory in the garbage strike, and when Dr. King agreed to come to Memphis to support the strike, we had ambivalent feelings.  It seemed to us that he was only trying to capture the headlines, and the organizing seemed to be going well without him.   When his first march was organized, it ended in violence, as black youth and police clashed.  Dr. King seemed stunned that the black youth did not hold him and his principle of nonviolence in high esteem, and he was returning to Memphis in early April of 1968 to organize a bigger march that he intended to stay nonviolent.   I had an opportunity to go to Mason Temple to hear what would be his last sermon on April 3, but to my eternal regret, my lack of respect for him and my cynicism kept me from attending.

            I was working in the college library on the evening of April 4, and when my shift ended a little after 6 PM, I was walking out of the library, and one of my black student friends came up to me to say, in anger and in disgust, that Dr. King had been shot and would likely not live.  He then asked me:  “Some of my friends are organizing for the revolutionary fight.  We want to buy guns.  Can you lend me some money to help buy guns?”  I was stunned by his revelation and by his question, and I did not know how to respond.  I have racked my brain, but I cannot remember whether I gave him any money or not.  I was a relatively poor student, and I did not have money to spare anyway. 

            Violence followed in Memphis and throughout the country – the great apostle of nonviolence was gunned down by white people, and it seemed like all hope was lost.  I remember the National Guard armored cars riding up and down the streets in Memphis, and I remember feeling lost and forlorn.  That feeling was strengthened by the assassination of Robert Kennedy two months later and by the violence of the police at the Democratic convention in that summer, followed by the election of Richard Nixon as president that fall.

            I have thought over these events many times since then, and I have gained great respect for Dr. King over the years – I wish that I had known then what I know now!  Though it is greatly diminished, the power of race remains in me.  And, though I understand the impulse and sometimes the agency of violence, I am firmly committed to the principle of nonviolent resistance which Dr. King developed so well.   The continuing struggle for equality for black people, for women, for immigrants, for LGBTQ people reminds me that this struggle is ongoing in American history.  I don’t know if 2018 will be similar to 1968 or not, but I do know that in all of our work, the two forces of love and justice must be kept in proper tension.  As James Cone indicated in his fine book on Dr. King and Malcolm X,  King began with love and moved towards justice, while Malcolm X began with justice and moved towards love.  Both of those must be present if we are to build and sustain movements and communities dedicated to equity and justice.

"CARTER AND TRUMP"

 “CARTER AND TRUMP”

We watched a lot of the proceedings last week as the life of President Jimmy Carter was remembered and celebrated.  Since he was a native Georgian, the local media covered everything, from the service at the Carter Center, to the service at the National Cathedral in DC, to the funeral in Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, where his body was laid to rest next to Rosalyn’s in Plains.  Much was said about his faith, his integrity, his rise to political power, his Presidency, and his post-Presidency.  What struck me most of all was the emphasis on his decency as a human being.  

We remember Carter’s presidency – we were pastors in Norfolk during those years, and we watched closely his attempts to rescue the American hostages from Iran.  The husband of one of our church staff members was involved in the attempted but abandoned rescue effort.  We were impressed that Carter decided early on not to use overt military force to seek to rescue the hostages.  Carter was caught in a policy trap set for many decades – the American use of military and monetary power to maintain a grip on the oil of the Mid-East.  When the first wave of the Arab revolutions came, the anger at the USA poured out.

As grandson Jason Carter put it at the Carter Center (where he is chair of the Board), President Carter was on time but also ahead of his time in regards to the climate and environmental crisis, getting the speed limits lowered to 55 on interstates and installing solar panels on the roof of the White House (which his successor Ronald Reagan removed in the beginning of the Reagan Revolution, which has now culminated in the ascendancy of Donald Trump). 

As we watched the services for Jimmy Carter, it was hard not to compare him to incoming president Donald Trump.  There could not be more differences between them.  Carter seemed to be guided by a genuine sense of his own and other’s humanity, and his faith in God kept him humble and open to his own need for reformation and change.  While Carter admitted in a Playboy interview that he had sinned by lusting after women other than his spouse, Trump has been convicted in civil and criminal courts of sexual assault and bragged about how he knew how to get women by grabbing them by their private parts and invading their space.  In many ways, Trump acts like Roman Emperor Caligula, while Jimmy Carter taught Sunday school as much as he could.  In no small touch of irony, the white Christian Right deserted Carter for Reagan in the 1980 election, and in the 2024 election, Trump won 80% of the white Christian Right vote. For a powerful (and scary) article about this flow to Trump, read my friend John Blake’s column on CNN on January 12 : https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/12/us/white-christian-nationalism-du-mez-cec/index.html.  But, let us also remember – Trump has no landslide mandate.  Had 115,000 votes changed in the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Kamala Harris would be Madame President.

We had our struggles with Jimmy Carter, especially as he sought to take over the Oakhurst neighborhood with his Atlanta Project.  He believed that he knew it all and refused to listen to people like us, who had been in the trenches for awhile.  Fortunately, we knew the local coordinator of TAP, and we worked it out, even getting Rosalyn Carter to come to the church to see some of the programs. But overall, his humanity and his generosity shined through, as we saw in the services last week.  As we await the coronation of the would-be-emperor Donald Trump (about which I’ll have more to say soon), we give thanks for the life, leadership, and decency of Jimmy Carter.  

"ARE YOU ARYAN?"

 “ARE YOU ARYAN?”

    Today Congress certified that Donald Trump was elected President of the United States in last November’s election, a day in stark contrast with the Trump-inspired insurrection at the last Congressional certification on this date in 2021.

    Today is  also the Day of Epiphany, or January 6 in the Western church. It marks the end of the season of Christmastide.   After this time the church switches from Christmastide to Epiphany, until the season of Lent arrives on Ash Wednesday (this year, that is March 5).

        Epiphany signifies a revelation, an opening in the individual imagination and in the imagination of the world.  The church tradition remembers this as the coming of strangers, of the Magi.  They were Gentiles coming to worship the baby Jesus and to proclaim that they had seen God’s revelation in this baby.  It is striking in Matthew’s account of this story in chapter 2 that the first people outside the family to see the baby are Gentiles, seers from another culture.  It is also striking that Matthew contrasts this worshipful attitude of the Gentiles with the murderous impulse of the rulers of the area, most especially King Herod.

Matthew’s story tells us that the Magi show up in Jerusalem, inquiring about the new ruler of Judea.  Herod, the ruler at that time, is filled with anxiety at this news, and he develops a plan to find this baby and kill him.  The Magi, however, counter his plan and do their work without revealing to Herod where the baby is in Bethlehem.  Herod reacts to this with horrific violence, ordering all the boys of Bethlehem ages 2 and under to be murdered.  It is a chilling and horrible penultimate chapter in the Christmas story.  Joseph,  the adopted father of Jesus, takes his family and flees as refugees to Egypt – we are glad that they were a welcoming country and did not have a wall built.

I was reminded of this story as I finished reading “My Lord, What A Morning,” an autobiography by the great contralto singer Marian Anderson.  Susan gave it to me for my birthday in November, and she noted that she found it in the “used “ section in the Avant Pop Bookstore in Las Vegas.  It was published in 1956 and went through five printings.  It is a bit dated, but many of the stories are still powerful.  For those young people who read this blog, Marian Anderson was an African-American opera singer who stunned many white people in the 1930’s and 40’s with her powerful and accomplished voice.  

In 1939, she sought to schedule a benefit concert at Constitution Hall in DC, but the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused her permission to do it because she was Black.  First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt intervened and helped to schedule the concert at the Lincoln Memorial.  The DAR later relented, and Anderson sang at the Hall in 1943.

Anderson experienced this kind of thing many times, which she notes in her autobiography.  One such experience stood out to me.  In the 1930’s, she was touring Europe after Hitler had come to power in Germany.  While she was performing in Poland, she received a request from Germany to sing in Berlin.  Here is how she describes that process:

“I was not eager to appear in the Germany of those days…..My manager offered Berlin a single date.  The answer came back that this date would not be the best, but since there was no alternative, this would be accepted.  The fee was also acceptable.  There was only one other question – was Marian Anderson an Aryan?  My manager replied that Miss Anderson was not one-hundred-per-cent Aryan.  That ended the correspondence.”

“Are you Aryan? Are you white?”  Those questions are at the heart of our racial history, and as the Magi story reminds us, the first visitors to see the baby Jesus were not Aryan.  And as the Make-America-White-Again president-elect prepares to take office for a second time, we would do well to read this Epiphany story and Marian Anderson’s story again.  They will be at the heart of the next Trump administration, and we should be prepared to make our responses.   

"SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM"

 “SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM”

The world mourns the passing of Jimmy Carter at age 100.  We were blessed to go to his 100th birthday party at the Fox Theater earlier this year, and we give thanks for his life and for his presidency.  It stands in stark contrast to the incoming presidency of Donald Trump, and my blog today is about that time that looms before us.

As we approach the beginning of the apocalyptic second Trump presidency, I am drawn to the 105 year old poem “The Second Coming,” by William Butler Yeats.  Yeats was an Irish poet, born in 1865 in County Dublin, and he was an Irish nationalist.  He wrote this poem in 1919, at the end of World War I, and also in the middle of the flu pandemic of 1917-1919 which killed millions around the world.  Indeed, his pregnant wife almost died from the pandemic.  Yeats meant the poem as a warning about the breakdown of European civilization, but as with all good art, it has lasted and resonates in all ages.  Yeats won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. Yeats died in France in 1935.  On one of our trips to Ireland, we visited St. Columba’s Church in County Sligo because Caroline’s and my first church was named after St. Columba, the patron saint who brought Christianity to Scotland.  Susan also wanted to see Yeats’ grave at St. Columba’s Church, and we were impressed to stand in that space beside Yeats’ grave.  

I first encountered this poem in a British Literature course in 1967 at Southwestern at Memphis (now Rhodes College), and it has stayed with me ever since.  I’ll have more to say on the Trumpster, but for now, as 2024 draws to a close, here is my feeling about the coming Trump administration. 

“The Second Coming”

By William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

" A DECREE FROM CAESAR AUGUSTUS"

 “A DECREE FROM CAESAR AUGUSTUS”

From my point of view, the two Gospel versions of the story of the birth of Jesus give us Joseph’s perspective (Matthew) and Mary’s perspective (Luke).  While John’s Gospel has a more philosophical approach in chapter 1 (“The Word was with God”), Matthew and Luke both seek to ground the story in history, in the societal realities of the time.  Matthew has Joseph confronting  difficult choices, once he has found out that Mary is pregnant by someone else.  Being a decent man, Joseph decides to quietly end their engagement and send Mary away, back to her birth family, rather than exposing her to the harsh light of public humiliation, including the possibility of her being stoned to death.  He receives a vision from a messenger from God, telling him to stay with Mary, adopt the baby as his own, and raise the baby as his son.  Joseph agrees, and in so doing, he gives Jesus (and Mary) cover and a supportive and present father.  

Luke’s Gospel tells us that rather than being born in his parents’ hometown of Nazareth, the baby Jesus is born in Bethlehem.  Why?  Because the Roman Empire needs more tax money.  The Emperor Augustus (nephew of Julius Caesar and successor to him) sends out a royal decree telling all citizens to return to their hometowns to be enrolled for taxing purposes.  Chapter Two tells us that Joseph and the pregnant Mary make the arduous trip to Bethlehem, where the baby is born on the streets.  Luke wants to make sure that the readers know that the birth of this baby Jesus is no event divorced from human history, that God’s revelation to us comes not outside the swirl of human life, but rather right in the middle of it.  He not only mentions the decree from Caesar Augustus but also tells us that Quirinius is governor of Syria – who is Quirinius, anyway?  Luke wants to remind readers of every age and in every generation that this birth of Jesus should not take us out of the world but should impel us into the hurly-burly of the world.  As Mary put it in her Magnificat, in her song of praise in Chapter One, “God has scattered the proud….has filled the hungry with good things, and has sent the rich away empty-handed.”  In the birth of this baby, it is God’s intention to turn the world upside down.

Decrees from Caesar Augustus – with the coming of our imperial president Donald Trump, this story has been on my mind and heart lately, as I struggle to make sense of the election of Donald Trump as president again.  He certainly would like to be the imperial one, and I’m hoping that Congress will have the will and courage to blunt aside his imperial desires.  With the Republicans controlling all branches of the federal government in 2025, I am skeptical that Congress will have the will, at least until the midterms in 2026.  So, I am thinking about the imperial decrees that President Trump will issue on “day one,” as he puts it.  Surely something on immigration, something on declaring a national emergency at the border, perhaps declaring martial law so as to suspend elections and keep the power in his hands.  And with the adolescent Elon Musk running around, throwing money around everywhere, this could be a grim year of 2025.

Decrees from Caesar Augustus – no matter how grim it looks to us for the future of the United States, we must give thanks that Matthew and Luke have shared these Biblical stories of the birth of Jesus.  While there are some glorious moments in these stories, most of the time, they take place where we live, in the craziness and messiness of the world.  Mary pregnant before marriage, Joseph wanting to get rid of her, the baby Jesus born on the streets, hunted by government soldiers to be executed, the Holy Family fleeing for their lives from the soldiers, refugees on the run, becoming immigrants in a foreign land – we are so glad that Egypt did not have the closed walls that Trump wants to build!  These Christmas stories remind us that God is in the middle of the messy and messed-up world, that God intends to work Her powerful Spirit not as an escape from the world, but in the midst of the mess.

Decrees from Caesar Augustus – we will have plenty of those soon, and in the midst of the suffering and chaos that these decrees will cause, let us draw strength from these Christmas stories.  God has come to us in the flesh-and-blood lives that we live, and though the Caesars roar and maim and kill, God’s truth abideth still, as the Roman Catholic monk put it so powerfully 500 years ago.  As we receive this Christmas season as a time of love and mercy before the would-be Caesar’s onslaught, let us prepare to be as courageous as Mary, as open as Joseph to seeing a new world, and as dedicated and loving as Jesus.  May the power of love and justice sustain us, as it did the Holy Family.

"ON SAYING YES"

 “ON SAYING YES”

In Luke’s Gospel, Mary is a young woman engaged to be married in Nazareth, when she has a vision from God.  She sees the angel Gabriel, who comes to her with a message from God.  “Ave, Maria,” as the Latin puts it.  Gabriel tells her that God wants her to allow herself to be the vessel for the conception and birth of the Messiah, whom she will name “Jesus,’ meaning “God saves.”  This request places Mary in a precarious position – pregnant before marriage by someone other than her betrothed, she will be shunned and perhaps even stoned to death.  It is the first of several steps where God chooses to come among us, not as a glorious king or president, but rather as one conceived in scandal, born on the streets, hunted down to be killed by government soldiers, a refugee whose family seeks political asylum in Egypt.  

Mary says “yes,” that she will be a “handmaiden of the Lord,” as the King James Version of the Bible puts it.  Yes, that same “handmaiden” of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” She is anxious and frightened, but she finds comfort in her cousin Elizabeth, who is also miraculously pregnant.  The community of women gives her courage and power, and she shares her song of vision and justice, called “Mary’s Magnificat” in Luke 1:46-55.  It is not a song of “sweet, little Jesus boy,” but rather a radical vision of what God intends in the birth of this baby:  “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly;  God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.”  In the birth and life and ministry of this baby, God intends to affirm a much different vision of what life on earth should look like.

I was thinking of this story last weekend when Caroline and I joined Andrew and Amy Marti at the Spelman/Morehouse Christmas Concert.    When Caroline and I were pastors at Oakhurst, we were privileged to be part of church group who attended the annual Spelman-Morehouse Christmas Concert on the first weekend in December.  It would be held twice in King Chapel on Morehouse campus and once in Sisters Chapel at Spelman.  It was always crowded, and it was always a moving experience.  The power of the voices, the arrangements, and the sheer joy of being in Black space to welcome the season – these drew us many times to this annual concert, including this year.

. I have many favorite songs from these concerts, but one song stands out:  “We Are Christmas.” It was co-written by the Spelman Glee Club Director, Kevin Johnson, and by student Sarah Stephens Benibo. Here is the link to Ms. Stephens Benibo as a soloist on the song with  the Spelman Choir (with handbells that year in 2006).  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj33F8ZBQCM

      The idea for the song comes from Sweet Honey in the Rock’s song “We Are,” and it is based on Mary’s experience in the Christmas story, as well as her vision (“The Magnificat.”). At first the music lulls us into thinking that we have another “Sweet little Jesus boy” song, but the lyrics lead us into something quite different – it is up to us to bring this story to life in our day and in our time.  It tells us that we, too, are asked to say “yes” to God’s coming to us in our lives, both in the birth of this baby named Jesus, and in the continuing revelations of God to us in our lives.  As we dread these coming years of a second Trump presidency, let us remember Mary and her courage and her determination.  We will need all of that to find our way to live as children of the God whom we meet in this Christmas story.

"LAND ON FIRE"

 “LAND ON FIRE”

As we move through the Advent Season, John the Baptizer stands as a prominent figure, and as such, we can use him as an entry point into the Advent story and into the terrible times in which we live

John the Baptizer does not make it into Matthew’s version of the Christmas story, but he plays a prominent part in Luke’s.  Luke’s version of the birth of Jesus begins not with Jesus but with the backstory for the birth of John the Baptizer.  John’s conception is not quite as stunning as Jesus’ conception, but it is miraculous nonetheless.  The mothers of John and Jesus are cousins, and the boys become cousins, with some scholars arguing that Jesus becomes a disciple of John the Baptizer.  Other Gospel accounts, like John’s, portray them as rivals, but whatever their relationship, all four Gospels see John as the precursor for Jesus, as one who prepares the way for Jesus.

John the Baptizer was a Jewish man on fire.  He took the warmth of the love of God and channeled it into a burning call for repentance and justice and equity.  He challenged the Temple as a site of renewal and religious sanctity.  He offered the idea of baptism in the river as a source of renewal and repentance.  By “repentance,” he didn’t mean only the ceasing of doing bad things – he meant a complete re-orientation of our will and imaginations, a re-orientation towards God and not towards the powers of the world.  It was here, in this idea of death and rebirth that is part of the ritual of baptism, that people could find the fire to renew their lives.

John not only used fire as image of renewal – he used it also as an image of consequences and punishment.  His sermon went like this in Luke 3, as he chastised the religious leaders who came out to hear him:  “You children of snakes!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?......Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees;  every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”  When the leaders and the people asked him what they could do to escape this kind of fire, he told them to share food and clothes with the poor, to refrain from cheating people and to stop robbing people.  For John, the warmth of God’s love was a fire that burned for justice and for equity.

As the fences were cut and people slaughtered by Hamas in Israel on October 8, 2023,mand as the bombs drop and the fires rage among the Palestinians in Gaza, I think of John the Baptizer and his fiery prophecy.  Israel was established as a nation in response to 20 centuries of horrors against Judaism by Christians, culminating in the still unfathomable Holocaust.  Unfortunately, there were people already living in the lands where Israel was established as a nation, and those people were removed in what is remembered as “Nakba,” or catastrophe.  They were not compensated or given land.  They are now called the Palestinians.  In the right wing movements that seem to be sweeping the world, Israel now has a leader who seems determined to kill his way to the decimation of the Palestinians, not unlike what my European ancestors did to the Jewish people now living in Israel.  Thousands and thousands have died and will continue to die until some semblance of justice is established.

What would that justice look like?  It is complex, but at least two elements must be present for there to be a foundation of peace with justice.  First, the state of Israel must be recognized.  Jewish people rightly feel that they must have a state, a safe haven to protect at least some of them from the 20 centuries (Yes, I said centuries) of death and persecution at the hands of the world, persecution influenced heavily by the followers of Jesus the Jew.  The idea of a Palestinian state from the river to the sea is not a possibility that will lead to peace.  Antisemitism is embedded deeply, especially in the West, but indeed throughout the world.

Despite there being no Palestinian state from the river to the sea, the second element for peace with justice is that a Palestinian state must be carved out somewhere in the area.  The horror and brutality of October 8 arose out of the cries of injustice and suffering on the part of the Palestinian people.  Hamas was not acting as savages, although they did incredibly savage things.  That fury grew out of the suffering and anger, and though the Palestinians do not have the firepower to match the Israelis, they do have that same deep well of suffering and injustice, a well that will always feed groups like Hamas until some justice is established.

The Holy Land is now a land on fire, as John the Baptizer predicted.  I don’t know what John’s thoughts on the current conflagration would be, but he clearly gives us the answers to end the burning and bombing and slaughter – do justice, share kindness.  Because the suffering is so deep on both sides, establishing justice will require people of faith and endurance and commitment to make difficult decisions.  They must be made, however, lest we all fall into the pit of fire.