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A Time of Mourning, a Time of Hope?
By Sunny MacMillan
The "news," almost by definition, is almost always bad or worrisome. In this period when so many are enduring strife or dying from warfare and suicide bombings in the Middle East and elsewhere, the "Holy" land has again captured world attention at the same time that peacemakers are trying to resolve conflict there.
This current mayhem, murder and atrocity can be set against the background of history, when in the era of Jesus, cruelty abounded and Evil was as real as it still seems to be. Seasonally this is a time long honored by religious tradition and, farther back, the celebration of surviving winter and the promise and hope that spring always brings.
I struggle with religious ideas. I want to believe. I want the security blanket of knowing that if I believe, if I adhere to certain tenets, I will not only be "saved" but live again. But too much cruelty and murder have always been carried out in the name of religion. We have only to look at what happened to Jesus, or the Inquisition or the "Holy Wars," to know that power struggles have long been mounted under the two-faced banner of "religion." It is still true today, and American youths are again being asked to sacrifice their lives in a foreign country whose tragedy is sharply linked to religion.
A decade ago I attended a weekend forum at the Rowe Conference Center at which Harvey Cox, voted Harvard's most popular teacher, spoke on trends in religion. One that startled me and stuck in my mind was "Jews for Jesus." The other was that the Moslem religion was the fastest growing religion worldwide—and I believe I have read more recently that this is still true.
When I read what Muslims have done to repress even minimal rights for women in places like Afghanistan, I wonder what the appeal of this religion is to so many people around the world. I vow to find out more about it, and then I read a story in the New York Times about an African woman condemned by a Moslem court—all men, of course—to be STONED to death. Now. In our time. The look in her eyes is seared into my consciousness. How can this be, how can a woman be sentenced to death by stoning in what we like to consider is a modern world?
Last night a friend told me of her preparations for helping with a Maundy Thursday church service to honor the Last Supper. She had baked bread for the Communion service, and generously handed me an "extra" loaf warm from the oven. Tennebrae, the service is called. The church is lit, communion takes place as it did centuries ago when Jesus shared his last meal with his apostles. Then one by one the candles in the church are extinguished as the tale of what is soon to befall this gentle prophet is wrought like the iron that made the nails that would soon crucify him. I chose not to go to that church service, but felt uneasy with my decision.
Today another friend called and asked me to join her for a Good Friday service at another church. The bell tolled as we arrived at noon to enter an almost empty but beautiful church. Other people did drift in, and indeed the idea was that participants were encouraged to stay as long as they wished. The service was designed in segments—readings, hymns, silent prayer and a sharing of thoughts by the minister or priest. I felt at peace in my physical self, but my mind had trouble calming down as words fraught with the significance of centuries unfolded. As the minister explained, people often attended public ceremonies like crucifixions much like Romans and others paid to attend fights between gladiators or wild animals. Or like—within all too recent memory in the United States—crowds in search of entertainment drifted through small towns to watch someone be lynched.
A few years ago I went to NYC to view a museum exhibit of photos taken at lynchings in the United States. It is the only time I have ever been in a museum where black viewers outnumbered whites. Many lynchings were in the South—but not all. Most of the victims were black males—but not all. There were white faces and even a woman or two hung from a tree to sway in breezes as their life was choked out by the noose that strangled them. The famous black singer, Billie Holiday, lamented lynchings in one of her most famous songs, "Strange Fruit." The fruits were the dead bodies hanging on the trees, swaying to and fro—but not because they were alive.
Humans have a seemingly endless capacity for cruelty, as well as a capacity for kindness, compassion and love. Does one side of that equation balance out the other? I have tried to read the Bible, accepted as one of the world's greatest pieces of literature. But frequent references to smiting, wrath and hatred overwhelmed me. It seemed too clearly a case of "if you're not with us, you are against us"—and, therefore, not worthy of justice, much less caring.
The minister observed today that when someone dies, especially if that person is young or "good," everyone asks, "Why?" No one asks that about births, he said. And yet it is all part of the same life cycle. We are born and we die. Evil dogs our steps, lurking in every nook and cranny to seduce or entice us into bad actions. We become confused about who or what is the enemy. We all too often refrain from taking responsibility where we know it should be taken to halt the spread of evil. People refused to believe the horror of what was undertaken (pun intended) in Nazi death camps. If we swept it under the rug, or pretended that evil did not exist, did not gnaw at all our professed beliefs about basic human goodness, then we could pretend to continue our lives without heeding evil.
Words freighted with poignancy, beauty and alarm flew like butterflies around that church. Refuge, sanctuary, trespasses, repentance, malefactor, forgiveness—many are balm to a troubled soul. He referred often to the "wall of forgiveness," one way in which Evil is deterred. I had never thought of forgiveness that way, as a physical wall through which bad things cannot enter. "Forgiveness" is a very difficult concept for me about some things perpetrated against me or mine. Or against society. I cannot forgive the ideas of serial murderers, child and spouse abusers, rapists and others irrefutably guilty of terrible crimes. I could not forgive the men, all men, who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Towers. They did it deliberately, they were well-informed, and they did that dire deed in the name of religion.
Too often it seems that people get away with terrible crimes and then get off lightly by saying, "I’m sorry." To me, the uninformed and unbelieving person that I am, that seems to give people a license to do bad things and then absolve themselves simply by uttering two words: "I'm sorry."
Still, this is a time of bunnies and chicks and of major religious celebrations. Passover and Easter Egg hunts. Forsythia, crocus. All this pondering and wondering has tired me out, but I feel the better for having gone to church. I think I'll go dye some eggs—and what I will not do is turn on the news!
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