I presided at the liturgy for Mary Mother Of Jesus Inclusive Catholic community, last evening. We had about 20 persons present, sat in a circle with our music minister Mindy playing on guitar and piano.
I had to cut the sharing after 1/2 hour they would have discussed peacemaking all evening. Please feel free to use any of the liturgy for your own celebration. Please give me credit for the poem. It includes my thought questions and I asked the readers not to read the many cites for the scriptures. The oral reading became very powerful because of "either destruction or peace" out loud and repeated.
Blessings everyone and may we draw these horrible wars to a close, bring our troops home and take care of them when they come home.
Mary Mother of Jesus Catholic Community
Remembering the 10th Anniversary
Can We Make a Quantum Leap from War to Peace?
September 3, 2011
Today we remember September 11, 2001- death, injury and destruction and the resultant wars that continue in Iraq and Afghanistan. This month is the 10th anniversary of the beginning of war with the destruction of the Twin towers in NYC, the plane crash in PA, the attack on the Pentagon in DC. The 10th anniversary is a time to reflect on where we are personally and where we are as a nation.
Records say that humanity has lost the population of the USA 300 + million people through war and genocide over the last 2 centuries. The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone is 1.3 trillion dollars for the USA. The State of FL lost $58 billion in support from the Fed government since 2001.
Today’s reflection is not about personal or national political decisions but focuses on trying to discern the will of God for each of us as individuals, for our communities and for humanity. The question for us as a community on this 10th anniversary of our wars is “Do we obey the will of God for humanity when as a nation we decide to go to war?”
This is the question before us for we are in the longest period the USA has ever been at war. Our liturgy provides a sacred time and space when we as community stand before God and reflect on our moral decisions. We offer our faith struggles and decision making to God. We have the Christian scriptures, the RC tradition, and we have the signs of our times to guide our reflection 10 years after our country committed to war.
For a different perspective I have begun to look at what a new theory of physics is teaching about our existence and relationships to each other and to our planet. Human knowledge gained through science is a sign of our times.
I want to share with you from what I understand from Quantum Theory developed in the early 20th century. Quantum physics has to do with the energy of atoms which make up matter-ourselves and the earth and with our relationships to the universe we live in. The reality of quantum theory changes the way we think about who we are and our connectedness to all that exists. I am not a physicist; what I am sharing is from two books Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics and Paradoxology: A Spirituality in a Quantum Universe. . Fred A Wolf, author on Quantum Physics writes, “Quantum theory is correct, and it is as weird as ever.” (pg 38 MTW). It is weird because it challenges the old paradigm of how the relationship of matter and energy works throughout the universe and time.
Quantum Theory presents us with challenges to how we view and experience the reality. This first challenge is paradox-what is, is what is not.
When I look at a wave of light and focus my attention, I see a particle. What I see is both wave and particle. This phenomenon is complementary that is mutually exclusive, yet jointly essential for a complete description of quantum events. A paradox culturally for example “We say we are a peaceful people yet we have been at war for 10 years.” What is the wave of alternative human possibilities from which we chose war?
I can focus on movement of an electron within an atom but not its location at the same time, a paradox. An electron can be at point A then appear at point B with no mappable trajectory. There seems to be no causal relation between the electrons two positions. Winter writes, “Try to imagine warp speed and faster,... in capricious motion, an avalanche of particles engaged in discontinuous leaps to positions resulting in an implicate order not necessarily preordained according to a primordial plan.” We would call this chaos.
The Quantum Leap at the atomic level is now understood at the cultural level. Winter writes the QL is “More than a metaphor. It is integral to us, where a universe of activity occurs in every cell of our body every moment of the day.” This also occurs throughout the universe from the micro to the macro of existence. As Einstein said, “Logic can get you from A to B. Imagination will take you any where”
A quantum leap took us to the moon and beyond, took us from slavery to outlawing slavery; from denying the right of women to vote to permitting it, and from the RCC denying the right of women to be called to its priesthood to living it. A quantum leap brought the fall of the Iron Curtain; it brought us Vatican II and we are in the midst of the Arab Spring. A quantum leap in our perception and experience can take us to peace.
When I observe the workings of an atom I will find what I look for. The observer influences what it seen. This is new for physics and for us as Christians and our story. The observer is not neutral or external, but through the act of measurement becomes part of the observed reality. Winter “Quantum physics tells us that we actively participate in creating what we see.”
O’Murchu writes: this suggests that observation gives way to relationship, a complex mode of interacting, fluctuating between giving and receiving, until a sense of resonance emerges. The individual parts-giver and receiver, observer and observed, lose their dualistic, independent identities, but rediscover a sense of the “quantum self” in the interdependent relationship of the new whole, which might be anything from the marriage of two people to a newly felt bond with (people of other lands to) the universe itself. (pg 37)
What does this imply for our faith journey and our seeking and seeing God? We live in a culture that supports going to war no matter the costs to our citizens and others. How can I see peace not war amongst human possibilities? What keeps me from seeing peace? What keeps me from bonding with people of other nations?
Today’s readings focus on our Hebrew religious history of wars and violence to a quantum leap of a new vision of the future coming into being through the words and teachings of Jesus living peace. Two other reflections are offered Kathy Southard’s song “The language of the heart” and my poem of reflection. Can we individually, as a nation, and as the human species make the Quantum Leap to being Peacemakers?
After the readings we will have time to individually and together reflect-Is this a new moment in time, a time for peacemaking and the setting aside the weapons of war?
Mary Mother of Jesus Catholic Community
Remembering the 10th Anniversary
Can We Make a Quantum Leap from War to Peace?
September 3, 2011
Let us begin our liturgy:
All
In the name of God
Creator, Sustainer, and Receiver,
Jesus our Way,
And Sophia quantum leap for peace,
Amen
Sorrow for Our Sinfulness
For the times we have not accepted that our God is the Creator of life and death,
All: Godde may we know Your wholeness
For the times we have not forgiven “70 X 7” times,
All: Jesus may we experience Your forgiveness
For the times we have not lived the Peace of Christ,
All: Sophia create in us new hearts of Your Peace
Opening Prayer: All
God of the nations, look upon the lands devastated by war and show us the way to peace. Turn our guns into plows and our bombs into bread. Remove hatred from our hearts and vengeance from our memories. Give us the wisdom and the will to end terrorism and war whether in lands far or near, or in the confines of our families and communities. Help us to know and understand that we are one world and one family. Grant this through the intercession of all the peacemakers of all times and all places, especially those who suffered persecution and death for the sake of justice and peace. Amen. (People’s Companion to the Breviary, pg 179)
Readings
I had the reader read without cites
First Reading: Hebrew Testament: the God of Destruction
Genesis 18:20
So YHWH said to Abraham, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is terrible and their sin is so grave…If they have done what her cry against them accuse them of, I will destroy them.
Genesis 22:2
Take you son, God Said, “Your only child Isaac, whom you love and go to the land of Moriah, “Seeing.” Offer him there as a burnt offering, on a mountain I will point out to you.
Leviticus 26: 22, 30
If you continue to defy me and refuse to listen, I will plague you sevenfold more for your sins… I will destroy your sacred high places and your pagan shrines. I will pile up your corpses on top of your lifeless idols, and I will hate you…
Deuteronomy 7:2, 16
When YHWH your God brings you into the land that your are to enter…and drives out multitudes before you—The Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Cannaanites, The Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you----and when YHWH, your God delivers them to you and you defeat them, you must destroy them entirely…You must destroy all the peoples that God, YHWH is now giving over to you.
2 Kings 18:25
Have I come to attack and destroy this place without word from your God? Your God told me to march against this country and destroy it.
Response: A Language of the Heart (can be found on a CD)
Song by Kathy Sherman CSJ
I do not speak your native tongue, I do not know your ways, your customs, your creed, the things that you believe, I never learned.
Your skin’s a different color. Your God has a different name, it’s easy to see how someone could believe, that you and I, we’re not the same.
But then I saw you smiling as the sun rose in the sky, and I saw the tears you wept as you watched your loved one die. And when I heard your children singing, they sounded much like mine, somehow I knew we weren’t that different after all.
There is a language of the heart we all can understand. That reaches cross the boundaries, of all peoples and all lands. The deepest things we know by heart when all is said and done. It’s a language of the heart can make us friends, can make us one.
I dream of peace and harmony, I imagine days to come, when war disappears and friendship draws near, to bind up age-old wounds. I’ve heard that love changes everything, I believe that it’s true, don’t you? If I reach out my hand will you take it, then let’s stand, for all that’s right and just and true.
Because I saw you smiling as the sun rose in the sky, and I saw the tears you wept as you watched your loved one die. And when I heard your children singing, they sounded much like mine, somehow I knew we weren’t that different after all.
There is a language of the heart we all can understand. That reaches cross the boundaries, of all peoples and all lands. The deepest things we know by heart when all is said and done. It’s a language of the heart can make us friends, can make us one.
Second Reading: Poem of Sorrow June 2005
I was in denial that Jason would participate fully in this war. The San Francisco Chronicle embedded a reporter with his platoon and on June 5, reported that Jason’s men had fired on and destroyed a pick-up and the persons inside. I wrote the following:
A poem of sorrow
A mother waits
A messenger comes to her door
The sun stops in its course across the sky
And plunges her world into night.
Sorrow so deep
Her wail so strong
It broke my heart
Here in Chicago this day.
Joined together forever are we
One son gave an order
One son died
We are one in our tears.
“I am sorry our cultures say, “War is the answer.”
“I am sorry my son says, “Fire”
I hold your son in my arms
And pray for your healing
And may the world be reconciled
To know that we are one.
June 6, 2005
On October 15, 2005 while on patrol, Jason lost his eye and arm to a road side bomb. He was flown to WRAMC where he spent a year healing from his injuries. I spent 8 months living at Walter Reed holding my son and praying for his healing.
Gospel: Teaching of Peace by Jesus and Paul
(I had the reader read without cites-became more powerful)
Matthew 5:9 Blessed are those who work for peace: they will be called children of God.
5:44 You have heard it said, “Love your neighbor---but hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for your persecutors. This will prove you are children of God.
19:17-19 Jesus replied “ …keep the commandments.” “Which ones?” the youth asked. “No Killing…Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Mark 4:39 Jesus awoke, rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Quiet, be calm!” And the wind dropped and everything was perfectly calm.
5:34 “My daughter,” Jesus said, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace and be free of your affliction.”
Luke 1:78-79 Zachariah, John’s father, was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied…Such is the tender mercy of God, who from on high will bring the Rising Sun to visit us, to give light to those who live in darkness and the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace.
8:48 Jesus said, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”
10:5-6 And whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace be upon this house!” If the people live peaceably there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will come back to you.
24:36 While they were still talking about this, Jesus actually stood in their midst and said to them “Peace be with you.”
John 14:27 (Jesus said,) “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; but the kind of peace I give you is not like the world’s peace. Don’t let your hearts be distressed. Don’t be fearful.”
Romans 2:10-11 …there will be glory, honor, and peace for everyone who has done good… With God there is no favoritism.
12:14, 17,19, 21 Bless your persecutors---bless and don’t curse them…Don’t repay evil with evil…If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them drink…Don’t be overcome by evil, but overcome evil by doing good.
14:19…let us conduct ourselves in ways that lead to peace and mutual growth.
15:33 The God of peace be with you all. Amen.
Petitions
Dear God we are your beloved community of Mary Mother of Jesus. Coming together we offer our petitions for the needs of the People of God:
Prayer for End of Petitions
Dear God, We know that you hear our prayers, those spoken aloud and those we hold in our hearts. We know that when we ask you gift us with your wisdom and your peace for our neighbors, our communities, and ourselves. All: Amen
Offering of Our Bread
Blessed are you, God of all creation, through your goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. This bread is our faith community your daughters and sons, seeking peace and being Your reconciliation with our lives. It will become for us the bread of life.
All: Blessed be God forever.
Offering of Our Juice
Blessed are you, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have this juice to offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. Believing you reign supreme over life and death, we seek healing and peace for our hearts in this time and place. This juice will become for us our spiritual drink.
All: Blessed be God forever.
Pray sisters and brothers; that we will listen to Sophia God of new beginnings and speak truth with lives of peace, reconciliation and forgiveness; that our faith community will do the same; and that all our feelings and thoughts, our spiritual life may be acceptable to you, almighty God, Mother and Father.
All: May God accept the sacrifice of our hands
For the praise and glory of God’s name,
For the forgiveness of all the People of God,
And our lives for your peace and justice in the world.
The Canon from the pink sheet
Our Father and Mother
To live lives of forgiveness and work for peace is a challenge too great for us alone; so Jesus taught us to pray: Our mother and father…
Reception of Eucharist
Dear Jesus may receiving your body and blood recall your forgiveness for those who tortured and killed you teach us lives of forgiveness and compassion for each other, our church, our nation, the world and earth itself. We are
The Body and Blood of Christ called to be God’s healing peace for the world. We are happy to be called to live lives of hope and to come to your supper.
Closing Prayer
Many people will come and say:
“Come let us climb YHWH’s mountain
To the Temple of the God of Jacob and Rachel,
That we may be instructed in God’s ways
And walk in God’s paths.”
Instruction will be given from Zion
And the word of YHWH from Jerusalem.
God will judge between the nations
and render decisions for many countries.
They will beat their swords into pruning hooks
And nation will not raise the sword against another,
And never again will they train for war. Amen (Isaiah 2:3-4)
Final Blessing
Presider: May God be with us
All: and also with you.
Presider: Let us go in peace to serve God and one another.
Our liturgy today is completed our service has begun.
All:
In the name of God
Creator, Sustainer, and Receiver,
Jesus our Way,
And Sophia quantum leap for peace,
Amen
Books Cited:
O’Murchu, Diarmuid. Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics. Revised and Updated; New York, Crossroad Publishing Company, 2004.
Winter, Miriam Therese. Paradoxology: Spirituality in a Quantum Universe.
New York, Orbis Books, 2009.
September 3, 2011
Reflection
1. What has our culture and RCC taught you about war making?
2. What were you doing when you first heard the news
of the tragedy of 9/11?
3. What were your feelings that day?
And in the immediate weeks that followed?
4. How has your personal/spiritual life changed since 9/11?
5. What is your sign of hope for tomorrow?
6. Have you made the Quantum Leap to peacemaker?
7. How might our faith community help you with your life of peacemaker?
Sunday, September 4, 2011
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