Dear Friends,
There is nothing quite so American as violence. A nation born out of a revolutionary war and Manifest Destiny.
This week gunfire erupted across the area of our Mountain Sky Conference of the United Methodist Church – first with a shooting at a high school in Evergreen and later with a shooting in Utah. As I write this it is the 24th anniversary of September 11th, 2001.
In both places the reports are (reasonably!) people scattered, fled.
Perhaps nothing is quite so human as violence. Violence was a regular part of my young life, both in the suburban and rural communities in which I lived, and in the household in which I grew up. Violence has been not unknown in any parish and in any community I have been a part of, including this one. Violence is certainly central to the stories in the Hebrew scriptures and in the New Testament. Violence surrounds us.
Years ago, the city I lived in was concerned about the rise in violence in some parts of the city. (It was not rising where I lived and worked.) The city had been looking at the pockets of violence and trying to get violence down in those communities, and it hadn’t been working. They turned to some of the young people in the neighborhood around me. These young people looked for what was good in the community and found all the ways they could to support it and strengthen it. Even though it was considered, in the popular imagination of the city, a “dangerous neighborhood.” The good included comforting people who suffered from violence.
The school of public health at a state university encouraged the city to hire these young people to go into other neighborhood and look for pockets of peace in those communities. The young people videoed the stories of those pockets of peace and then showed those videos to the people who lived in pockets of violence and said, “what inspires you about what you heard? How do you imagine you could notice, encourage, and grow peace in your place?” The violence went down.
A few years ago I read a book about libraries called “Palaces for the People” – and I wondered how we could see our communities and our nation as “Playgrounds for Peace.”
What I learned from those young people focused on the pockets of peace is what I learn from the Gospel: to keep looking for and seeing hope in the most unexpected places and then telling about it. Intentionally. On purpose. This is like tiny seeds planted which sprout and bring forth bushes where birds make their nests and peace settles. If we have eyes to see.
Keep tellin’ the Story,
Mike
When communities come together in music and imagination, we are reminded of the holiness of everyday life in this world.
This week’s takeaway: Look for the pockets of peace all around us!