The First Sunday of Advent

One of the readings from today's Daily Office lectionary is Isaiah 1:1-9. At the very beginning of his oracle, Isaiah hears  the God of Israel offering a lament for the people of promise, "Children I have reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me." 

Recently, I came across some haunting lines from one of my favorite poets, Wendell Berry. I couldn't help but wonder, as I sat with the poet's assessment of the human condition, when our collective propensity for rebellion will finally succumb to the insistent overtures of God's redeeming grace:

They gather like an ancestry

in the centuries behind us;

the killed by violence, the dead

in war, the "acceptable losses" --

killed by custom in self defense,

by way of correction, as revenge,

for love of God, for the glory

of the world, for peace; killed

for pride, lust, envy, anger,

covetousness, gluttony, sloth,

and fun. The strewn carcasses

cease to feed even the flies,

the stench passes from them, 

the earth folds in the bones

like salt in a batter.

And we have learned

nothing. "Love your enemies,

bless them that curse you,

do good to them that hate you" --

it goes on regardless, reasonably:

the always uncompleted symmetry of just reprisal,

the angry word, the boast of superior righteousness,

hate in Christ's name,

scorn for the dead, lies

for the honor of the nation,

centuries bloodied and dismembered

for ideas, for ideals,

for the love of God!

-- from Sabbaths 2005

Earlier today, the Church prayed that God would, "give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light." May this Advent season be an opportunity for us to honestly confront the rebellion that keeps us in the darkness of sin. May our hearts be open to the work of grace within us -- for the love of God, for Christ's sake (and for our own).  

Veterans' Day -- 2008

At the 11th hour, on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, the fighting stopped in Western Europe. The Great War, the "war to end all wars", did not end wars at all. The War that began a mere 30 years later was on such a scale that its predecessor had to be renamed -- World War I. The killing and carnage of the First "world war" proved insufficient to preclude the killing and carnage of the Second -- or of the dozens of wars that have ensued around the world since 1945. Will we ever kill our penchant for killing?