Tag Archives: Ambassador of Peace

REFLECTION: The Psalms of Peace, part three

Posted on July 18, 2012 | Comments Off

John Dear, SJby Rev. John Dear, S.J.
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace

Editor’s note: This meditation is the third of a five-part summer series on the peace writings in the psalms.

“Come, children, listen to me. I will teach you awe for the God of peace. Who among you loves life, takes delight in prosperous days? Keep your tongue from evil, your lips from speaking lies. Turn from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it.” (Ps. 34: 12-15)

Psalm 34 was the daily prayer of my friend and teacher of nonviolence, Billy Neal Moore, during his nearly two decades on Georgia’s death row. He was granted clemency in 1990 and now ministers to prisoners in Georgia. Throughout the 1980s, during our near-weekly correspondence, he often wrote about Psalm 34 as his guide to the God of peace and the way of nonviolence. He taught me the beauty and power of Psalm 34, how it can be a guide for us through the door way to peace.

The psalm is a poem. Each line begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Its message and teaching are so simple that we can easily miss its life-changing wisdom. I suppose it would take the daily attention of a prisoner over the course of 20 years to realize it as a path to peace and the God of peace. It reads as a hymn of praise, a guide to daily living, an invitation to wisdom, and a testimony to God’s liberation of the poor and oppressed.

The first part is an invitation to join in praising the God of peace:

“I will bless the God of peace at all times; praise shall be always in my mouth. My soul will glory in the God of peace that the poor may hear and be glad. Magnify the God of peace with me.” (Ps. 34:2-4)

Luke probably used this psalm as a basis for Mary’s Magnificat. Both offer a hymn of praise, political denunciation of the rich and powerful, and a call for justice and liberation of the poor. “The powerful grow poor and hungry, but those who seek the God of peace lack no good thing,” we read in verse 11. There is the promise for those who seek the God of peace: Everything we need will be provided for…

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Posted in Ambassadors of Peace, Bread for the Journey, Dear, Nonviolence, Racism, Reflection, Scripture, Sharing Wisdom

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REFLECTION: The Psalms of Peace, part two

Posted on July 15, 2012 | Comments Off

John Dear, SJby Rev. John Dear, S.J.
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace

Editor’s note: This meditation is the second of a five-part summer series on the peace writings in the psalms.

“Come and see the works of the God of peace who has done awesome deeds on earth, who stops wars to the ends of the earth, breaks the war bow, splinters the war spear, and burns the war shields with fire, who says: ‘Be still and know that I am the God of peace.’ ” (Ps. 46: 9-11)

How refreshing to hear this verse, right in the center of the Bible, from Psalm 46: The God of peace stops wars and dismantles weapons. This is the God who made us, the God who calls us, the living God we will soon meet face to face. This God, it seems to me, is a God worth seeking and knowing.

But we don’t hear much about this God these days. I have often thought that the heart of our global crisis comes from our false image of God. Most of us imagine a god who makes war, blesses war, supports our wars and admires our weapons. But this is not the God of Psalm 46 or the God of the nonviolent Jesus. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus names God as a peacemaker who practices universal nonviolent love toward all creation by letting the sun shine on the good and the bad and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. This true image of a nonviolent God changes everything.

As every spiritual director knows, God is always moving in close to us with love and blessings, and every individual responds up to a point and then stops. Every one of us resists the movement of our peacemaking God at some point for some reason, usually because we are afraid of what might be asked of us, even though God usually just wants to love us and be with us like a doting parent. But we don’t realize that we are resisting God. That’s why a spiritual director is so helpful. A good spiritual director is a like a coach who sees God’s movement toward us and our movement away from God, and encourages us to go back to prayer and welcome God…

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Posted in Ambassadors of Peace, Bread for the Journey, Dear, Nonviolence, Racism, Reflection, Scripture, Sharing Wisdom

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REFLECTION: The Psalms of Peace, part one

Posted on July 4, 2012 | Comments Off

John Dear, SJby Rev. John Dear, S.J.
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace

“A king is not saved by a mighty army, nor a warrior delivered by great strength. Useless is the war horse for safety; its great strength, no sure escape. But the eyes of the God of peace are upon the reverent, upon those who hope for God’s gracious help.” (Ps. 33:16-18)

Psalm 33 is a hymn of praise to the God of peace and a warning to those who place their hope and trust in the false gods of war. You can’t serve both the God of peace and the weapons of war, it announces. It’s one or the other. Show reverence to the God of peace and live in peace, gratitude and joy, or show reverence to the weapons of war and their false security and die. That’s the message I get from the text. It’s more radical — and helpful — than any spiritual writing you’ll find today.

No, you say, this is just pious Bible talk. A king, an emperor, a president — yes, even Barack Obama as well as George W. Bush and Mitt Romney – are saved by a mighty army, by bombs, by drones, by Trident submarines, by nuclear weapons. That is the logic of every nation, every military, every war. The God of peace cannot save us. Only our weapons and warriors can save us. This is what we have been taught, what we hear preached, why we wave the flag, why we pay taxes to the Pentagon, why we risk radioactive waste, why we threaten to destroy the planet, why we spend nearly all our money on warfare instead of on schools, health care, affordable housing, food for the hungry and environmental cleanup. This is what most of us believe. Might makes right. Violence saves us. War is the will of God.

Not too long ago, one U.S. archbishop said these exact words to me: God cannot save us. Only nuclear weapons can protect us. They are our only hope…

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Posted in Ambassadors of Peace, Bread for the Journey, Dear, Nonviolence, Racism, Reflection, Sharing Wisdom

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REFLECTION: Civil rights figure talks nonviolence, faith

Posted on June 29, 2012 | Comments Off

John Dear, SJby Rev. John Dear, S.J.
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace

It was hot and muggy this past weekend at the campsite outside of Chapel Hill, N.C., where about 2,000 progressive Christians gathered for the second annual ecumenical Wild Goose Festival, but people didn’t seem to mind. Everyone enjoyed the music, the speakers, the prayer groups, the art booths, the kids’ games, and the conversations with old and new friends. I, too, was happy to catch up with many friends, among them civil rights leader and theologian Vincent Harding. He has taught for the last few decades at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, but he is best known for his work with Martin Luther King Jr., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the 1960s and for drafting speeches for Dr. King, including his famous April 4, 1967, speech against the Vietnam War.

Vincent HardingDr. Vincent Harding is author of several books, including Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement and Martin Luther King: An Inconvenient Hero. At Iliff, he continues to chair the “Veterans of Hope Project: A Center for the Study of Religion and Democratic Renewal.” I sat down with Vincent on Saturday morning for a conversation about the country, racism, nonviolence, Dr. King, hope and God…

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REFLECTION: Walter Wink, our best teacher of Christian nonviolence

Posted on May 30, 2012 | Comments Off

John Dear, SJby Rev. John Dear, S.J.
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace

“Whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”(Mt. 5:19) That’s what Jesus announced in the Sermon on the Mount, right after the beatitudes and just before the six antitheses, which instruct us to resist evil nonviolently and to love our enemies. In light of that verse, Walter Wink must be considered one of the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. I can think of no higher praise.

Walter Wink

Walter died peacefully May 10 in his home in Sandisfield, Mass., at age 76, with his beloved wife, June, by his side. I first met Walter 20 years ago, but I’d been studying his books for years before that. He helped me at the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and in recent years, we had lunch together each year in Santa Fe with our friends Sheila and Dennis Linn when they attended the annual conference of scientists and philosophers.

Walter Wink, to my mind, was one of the greatest teachers of the Sermon on the Mount and Gospel nonviolence in Christian history. Raised in Dallas, Walter received his master’s degree and doctorate in theology from New York’s Union Theological Seminary, where he later taught. From 1967 to 1976, he served on the national steering committee of Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam. Later, he taught at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York. Over the years, he and June gave countless workshops on Jesus and nonviolence around the country and the world…

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REFLECTION: Dismantle NATO, or better yet, have the N stand for nonviolent

Posted on May 23, 2012 | Comments Off

John Dear, SJby Rev. John Dear, S.J.
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace

“NATO doesn’t work anymore. Let’s dismantle this arcane network of war makers whose fundamental purpose is the service of U.S. military interests and create a new global network for nonviolent conflict resolution, which serves the whole human race by leading us toward a new world of peace.”

That’s the message from the weekend, when thousands marched in Chicago against the largest meeting of NATO in its 63-year history.

We don’t want NATO, they said. We can’t afford NATO. We can’t risk having NATO anymore. We need a paradigm shift, a new way of relating with the world. We don’t want to be in perpetual preparation for the next war, they said. We want nonviolent relationships with every nation and strategic, well-funded, institutionalized, international structures that will make the world less militarized and more nonviolent.

For months, a diverse group of organizations, including unions, nurses, churches and the Occupy movement, has been planning the protest. Those plans, many believe, forced the Obama administration to move the G8 summit from Chicago to the woods of Camp David in Maryland. Meanwhile, the massive police presence throughout the week attempted to put the movement in a negative light. But despite the police, media and government pressure, thousands marched and proclaimed the message, “We want peace. End the U.S. war in Afghanistan now. No more NATO.” That, for me, is a sign of hope…

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REFLECTION: An interspiritual approach to peace

Posted on May 17, 2012 | Comments Off

John Dear, SJby Rev. John Dear, S.J.
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace

We’ve all witnessed the worst of religion, how organized religion can hurt us, turn our leaders into cruel, power-hungry authorities, and bless war not peace. Yet many of us continue to plumb the depths of all that is good and positive in religion and spirituality in our search for the Divine, and this proves to be a great blessing. In this search for God and the common good, at some point, many of us have joined local, national and international interfaith programs and projects in our work for peace, to reach out to those of different religions in a spirit of respect as we seek a more just and peaceful world. Interfaith peacemaking is a necessary component of every movement of justice and peace. A new book, however, suggests we can go even deeper, to explore an “interspiritual” approach to life.

God of Love: A Guide to the Heart of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Monkfish Books, 240 pp. $15.95) by Mirabai Starr walks us through an interspiritual approach to the Abrahamic traditions and invites us to seek not just dialogue, but the God we worship together as members of the Abrahamic faiths. These beautiful reflections on Judaism, Christianity and Islam open up the personal and spiritual dimensions at the heart of these religions as a way to deepen our own spiritual life and make greater peace with others.

Starr, my friend of Taos, New Mexico, has previously published acclaimed translations of the Dark Night of the Soul by John of the Cross, and The Interior Castle and The Book of My Life by Teresa of Avila. Here she shares overviews of essential teachings of the Abrahamic religions, stories of their saints and spiritual masters, their prophetic calls for justice and peace, and examples from her own spiritual journey to offer an interspiritual perspective that calls us to the practice of universal love at the heart of these religions…

To read the entire article, click here.

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