We watched for two and half hours for whales off the coast of Virginia, but saw only the awesome creation of sea, sky, birds, and the glow of wind on my face. A breath of ocean air. A prayer.
Archive for the 'All Authors' Category
I was talking to the Youth about this passage the other day, and I vocalized how incredible I thought God’s poetry skills were. He rips into Job with a series of passionate poems, almost raps. I’ve always found the last few chapters in Job to be some of the most captivating writing in the entire Bible. It reminds me that we are small, minute, and just a part of a much bigger picture.
Job sat back and apologized for his comments after God’s speech. We could, in fact, answer a lot of the questions that God lobbed at Job. Actually, there are people who could answer them quite well. But I love the fact that the entire rant is “do you know…?” type of questions. Let me explain why I find this so fascinating. I’m reminded of the joke…
A scientist dies and meets God. “Oh, it’s you,” he says. “We don’t need you anymore.” “What do you mean?” God asks. “Well, modern science has done everything. We can create our own elements, genetically alter our food so it lasts longer than yours did, we can even create life!” “Really?” laughs God, “I’d like to see that.” “Sure, here, just give me a minute,” the scientist bends down and begins scooping dirt together into a clump. “Wait a second,” says God. “Get your own dirt.”
We can sit here and believe we’ve achieved a lot — after all, we can answer God’s questions in Job with a resounding YES. But can we duplicate anything he does? We can answer that with a yes, maybe not quite as resounding. But it comes down to the fact that we are still using God’s tools. We can clone, yes, but we’re still using God’s handiwork, the miracle of DNA. It is, after all, God’s dirt.
Taking Heart,
Paul Loewen
Gene Stoltzfus blog: http://peaceprobe.wordpress.com
This is Gene Stoltzfus’s last essay, completed on Wednesday, March 10, 2010, just before he headed out on his beloved motor-assisted bicycle on the first spring day of the year. He picked up his U.S. mail in International Falls, MN. Then on his return journey, less than a kilometer from home in Ft. Frances, ON, his heart stopped. Please feel free to leave comments after this post on his blogsite: http://peaceprobe.wordpress.com. For more background on Gene’s life and updates on his memorial services, see: http://www.cpt.org .
Gene Stoltzfus, 1940–2010, Presente!
–Phil Stoltzfus, Gene’s nephew
–Dorothy Friesen, Gene’s wife
I have talked to survivors of military interrogation around the world who at some point thought they would not live for another day. I never write about it in the U.S. and Canada because it seems so unbelievable and out of place in a world of sanitized shopping malls and super highways. When I retell their stories I notice that people here fidget. But interrogation processes are one way in which martyrs are created. Martyrs in the original sense are “witnesses to the truth,” with a deep commitment of conscience that sustains them through moments of cruelty and abuse.
Some people are killed during interrogation. They never get to tell the story themselves. So I have learned to listen to those who narrowly avoid interrogation’s brush with death. This might be the time that you will prefer not to read on. But if you stop here you will skip over an important part of living and dying that stretches around the world and touches the entire human family.
I spent two hours in Iraq talking to a 22-year-old student who was arrested in a house raid along with two of his brothers. Until the time of his capture he was relatively uninvolved with anything political, not an unusual story in the Iraq of 2003. After his capture by American military personnel he was not allowed to sleep for two days. After 48 hours the American GIs told him that he would be killed unless he told them where Saddam Hussein was hiding. He was continuously blindfolded. He was told that his brother, taken into custody at the same time, was just now being shot. In the distance he could hear a gun being fired. If he didn’t want to die, he must tell all. Then nearby he heard a gun being cocked and felt a revolver touching his head. He expected to die. There was more shouting from the soldiers and then silence.
“I believed I would die,” he told me. “And then after a long wait I felt my hand to be sure I was still alive.” His blindfold was temporarily removed and then he was marched off to one of Iraq’s prison camps where he met others who experienced similar beatings and moments of terror. He was released three months later because of persistent outside intervention – an advantage that many disappeared people do not have.
My time with him left me exhausted and jolted me to wonder how I would respond to interrogation. Would I make up a story? Would I lie? Would something I say implicate others? Would I respond with anger or physical struggle? Would I go quietly to my death as some martyrs are reported to have done? Would anyone know how I died?
After my talk with the unlikely martyr, the connection of this Muslim student to my own ancestors in 16th-century Europe fluttered in my mind. Did the stories I read in my youth about the Anabaptist martyrs prepare me for this? Death by burning or drowning is now little practiced, but current authorities still believe that truth can be accessed by means of brutality. The pattern of torture used for their interrogation blended now with the people I was meeting. The Anabaptist stories recorded in the Martyrs Mirror (subtitled “The Bloody Theatre of the Anabaptists or Defenseless Christians who suffered and were slain from the time of Christ until the year AD 1660”) are part of the continuous tapestry of state-sponsored cruelty reaching to our very own day.
In the late 1970s I worked in the Philippines. One day I was invited to meet a pastor and former political prisoner. The Marcos dictatorship had sent its military and paramilitary to his community and their tactics were designed to control popular discontent through cruelty, terror, domination, killing and confiscation of property. The pastor felt bound by his convictions to do what was possible to protect the people of his church. He was arrested and interrogated for weeks. His body was spent. Finally he was encased in a blindfold and told he would be killed. He felt the barrel of a revolver that touched the temple of his head and rested there for a time while his interrogator demanded that he give names of the people with whom he worked. “I was silent because I couldn’t think any more,” he told me.
“Were you afraid you would endanger others?” I asked. “Of course I was worried that what I said would implicate others but when the gun was put to my head I just expected to die. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I even thought about being a pastor but that didn’t seem very important in the moment. I was ready to die. I just told them to get it over with. During those days I thought about the martyrs. The interrogator didn’t pull the trigger. I don’t know why.”
I felt my gut twitch after the pastor described the near-death moment. Was there anything I could say or do? Anything healing? Anything personal? The pastor, like the Iraqi student 25 years later, only requested that I tell the world what happened to him. That was enough.
Accounts like these stories of people living on borrowed time reach back centuries to pre-Roman times and show me that the impulse to domination is still alive in our as-yet-uncivilized reptilian brain stem. In our time the word “martyr” has morphed from its root meaning of “witness to the truth” to a description of someone who dies for his or her beliefs. The Greeks and early Christians who used the term understood death to be a possible outcome of the path towards truth and light. Eventually “martyr” referred exclusively to those who died for their belief. Those who began as witnesses to truth became martyrs at the time of death. For the Muslim, shahada (martyrdom) also springs from the internal struggle that results in the witness to truth. Both religious traditions have departed from the core understanding of martyrdom in times of political conflict and triumphalism.
From where did my childhood curiosity arise to steal into my father’s study to read about the martyrs? Those drawings of torture and burning bodies awakened wonder within me. In one of my early return journeys to North America from the lands of torture – before I understood that torture techniques had their home here – I was introduced to a new psychological disease called the martyr complex — seeking persecution to fulfill an inward need. Had I been the unwitting recipient of this disease? Or was the use of the term “martyr complex” the work of a psychologist who had never met a torture victim or known the honored path to witness practiced by martyrs?
Church buildings pay tribute to martyrs, including long-forgotten soldiers who died in distant lands to protect the nation or empire. Their deeds are celebrated and interwoven with patriotism. I have visited churches in the Netherlands, the birthplace of Anabaptist martyrs, where they place the Martyrs Mirror on their altars before the service of worship and return it to a locked closet after the service. I once inquired about the influence of the book of martyrs in the life of worshipers and was told that, “Most of us have no idea about the stories in that book. It’s from another time.”
Why are soldiers and interrogators still trained in the craft of torture? Can moral outrage and attempts to protect the prisoner change things? Why do Christian crusaders or Muslim suicide bombers slip into patterns of domination that kill and destroy in a manner that cannot possibly reveal truth? Can respect for and veneration of martyrs draw us closer to the truth when the patterns of our lives are so remote from the authentic truth-seeking represented in martyrs?
Genuine martyrs appear when people believe that their witness on earth is connected to the whole of the universe. Martyrs are not inclined to draw attention to themselves, but their path can draw people to the glory and faith of a vision. Martyrs have all the foibles of the rest of us. Some may not deserve the label. In our human family great movements that push us to transcend boundaries with visions of hope produce martyrs. But organizations and movements become emasculated and ineffectual when they protect themselves too much from the risk of bold witness. On the other hand, they also undercut themselves when they slide into violence against others in order to try to control the outcome of their vision. We have the challenge of incarnating a blend of vulnerability and boldness.
The test of martyrdom is whether that particular witness to the truth helps to support and sustain the community’s commitment to a full-bodied vision of peace and justice. The martyrs are present with us and may be more powerful for their witness in death than they ever could have been in life.
Scriptures for worship recently have brought out themes of judgement for me… something that I’ve wrestled with and tried to leave alone in the past. This time, though, I decided to follow the scriptures and words from worship a bit further.
How do Christians understand God’s judgement? My first impression is a stern figure who punishes and rewards arbitrarily, based on largely unknown and undefined factors. I mean the first rule of thumb for educators in grading is making very clear what the grades are for — rubrics, quality indicators, all those are standards, but it God sometimes is portrayed as random with punishment and rewards.
And this is just it. So often, I think I’m stuck on the idea of judgement as dishing out punishments and rewards based on what people deserve. There’s lots to suggest this in the Bible too… especially Psalms talking about God going after the enemies of the Psalmist. But there’s another judgement… one to celebrate and for which to give thanks; one that people and all creation waits for with anticipation.
I wonder about these two views of judgement. They don’t seem to connect. Is this perhaps because judgement as punishment and reward is a human conception of judgement, not God’s? After all, God’s thoughts are not human thoughts, nor are God’s ways human ways. What if God’s way of judgement really is beautiful and something to be adored and admired? What if God’s way of judgement looks ridiculous sometimes and is filled with irrational grace, forgiveness, and second and third and fourth chances? What if God’s judgement is not whom to rebuke and whom to reward, but how to restore all people and all creation back to right-ness?
The story of the prodigal son read in today’s worship service affirms this view of judgement. Both of the sons expect punishment and reward based on actions and choices. The father’s response, though, comes from a different paradigm — a paradigm of reconciliation. Judgement here is choosing to celebrate the return of the son and deciding to work at the restoration of relationship.
This seems to be God’s judgement — certainly thoughts that are not human thoughts of deserving and weighing scales and ways that are not human ways of retribution. God is not punitive. God is restorative, merciful, forgiving, abundant in grace, and transforms even tragedy into goodness.
Thinking of God’s beautiful judgement that restores, I too can celebrate and wait with anticipation for God to bring all things back to wholeness.
It was our first experience leading a 4-day trip with our Youth. They were a group of 15 — 5 boys, 10 girls. It was an inner-city trip, and we were learning about service. We had planned a time for them to serve each other. The boys were making an elaborate (okay, Sidekicks) meal for the girls. They were going to give each girl a rose, and then walk them to their seats. Since there were twice as many girls as boys, the girls would come five at a time, in two waves. With roses in hand, they lined up behind the door. The girls didn’t know what was coming (the roses or the supper). As the boys lined up, they all agreed: “Make sure we’re lined up and they’re lined up, we don’t want to have to pick.”
It wasn’t because they didn’t want to have to choose which of their friends to walk to the table, it was because they were worried that by picking they would inadvertently leave someone to be picked last. In this moment, I was instantly reminded of the fact that Youth can be incredibly perceptive and mature. These Youth were in grade 8.
When Elihu breaks into the scene in Job, he says, “It is not only the old who are wise, not only the aged who understand what is right.” Jesus himself reiterates this notion when he tells us we all need to become like little children. Working with Youth has opened my eyes to the fact that, yes, while young people can be extremely energetic and sometimes immature, they can simultaneously be some of the most mature people I know. This story was just one brief example. There have been many others.
We have a lot to learn from young people. Energy. Passion. Humour. Excitement. And maturity. It might not always seem obvious, but sometimes I wish the older generation acted a little more like the young.
Taking Heart,
Paul Loewen
Reflecting these weeks on “holding on and letting go” as part of Lenten devotionals, I notice yet again my urge to control everything.
Even in writing about choosing a personal focus for Lent, my journal records my unwillingness to let go — all of my Lent ideas involve holding on, working harder, trying again, pushing and forcing myself to do what I think is good. Holding on to everything with tight fists. There may be times for this kind of tenacity. After re-reading my brainstormed list, though, I realize the most important thing I could concentrate on this Lent is letting go.
Now I’m practicing. I’m letting go of expectations of perfection in my work and study. I’m letting go of judgement of myself when I don’t exercise and eat as well as I know I should. I’m letting go of trying to fix everything and of taking on responsibilities that are not really mine. I’m letting go of legalism, perfectionism, and criticism, and beginning to see what remains that I need to hold on to.
A friend shared his experience of how he holds on. As a Muslim, he follows the tradition of praying five times a day. These moments become daily markers of time and space for the essential. A reminder of what he needs to let go and what he needs to hold on to. Hearing his experience, I recognize a need for these reminders myself.
One step further. In addition to practicing letting go, I’ve started to stop at moments throughout the day (thanks to the multiple alarms on my phone to alert me!) to remember and pray. Everything else seems to slide into place and I feel centred again. I remind myself too, like my friend says, that it’s not about legalism. If I miss a time, I “jump up” to the next, knowing that I am free in God these moments are a gift, not an obligation.
Lent moves on another week and I keep trying to hold on, let go, and continue the journey.
This is our game. This game is for world hockey supremacy. We’ve heard the slogans. Collectively we’ve displayed the pride, enjoyed the swagger in victory and felt the blows in defeat. Perhaps in the quiet moments of a bathroom stall during intermission or after this year’s world junior’s tournament we’ve even questioned whether there is something out of balance, some overcompensation happening but soon enough the puck drops, the beer is hoisted and we are again transported into the dream of world domination. I have not followed hockey for over ten years but the world juniors and the Olympics have drawn me deep into the corners of the hockey world. I followed with dread the trials of team Canada as they teetered and then stabilized and then charged and then almost collapsed as they headed into overtime in the gold medal match. And we all know the outcome. But in my own world I continued to travel deep into the opposition zone of the hockey world. A place I was once at home in but it now felt strange and suddenly I heard the whistle blow. Did I re-enter the hockey world off-side? The call comes from an unlikely Danish official, but this international play after all. Embossed on the back of his black and white stripes is SK. But I am not offside. It is a penalty called against team Canada. SK makes a strange hand gesture. I do not recognize the penalty call. He glides towards the penalty box and says Fortvivlelse. I wait for the announcer to get a translation and make the announcement. Then a voice comes over the speakers Team Canada has been called on … No, sorry correction Canada, the nation of Canada, has been called for Despair. They are asked to take a time-out to reflect on their relationship with hockey.
Despair? A little harsh don’t you think? Tough call. Up in the media both they dig up some more information on this official and they find that SK has a history of handing despair penalties. In fact they dig up one particularly controversial account in which SK was asked to defend his call. The document certainly dates the official which could raise even more eyebrows. The document was dated back to 1849. There was another nation who was given a time-out for despair. The media jumped on this document and feverishly corralled athletes from the Danish team to translate the document. In order to help Canada understand the call they replaced the name of the original country with the word Canada. Through a fortunate connection I have obtained a portion of this document.
Canada says, ‘We will be Hockey or we will be nothing.’ What happens if Canada does not become Hockey? Then they will be in despair. But they will not be in despair over the fact that they did not become Hockey rather they will be in despair because they could not rid themselves of their identity of not being Hockey. They hoped to become Hockey because they found themselves, their identity, intolerable. And so, they are in despair. But perhaps they will stand atop the podium and Canada will be declared Hockey to the whole world. Surely then they will not be despair. They will have rid themselves of themselves and become who they thought they should be. But what then have they done? They’ve succeeded. They’ve now rid themselves of their identity and become Hockey. And so they are lost, they are not themselves. They are in despair. And so I stand by my call. And the penalty is hardly a harsh one, though it could be the most harsh. I simply ask that Canada stand alone without hockey, at least for a time and see who they are. They are then free to play, to not play, to play well, to play poorly.
It seems that the IOC has found out that SK was never meant to officiate this game. He found his way into the tournament under a pseudonym. Something he has tried on numerous other occasions. And so security has come onto the ice to remove him. He makes no objections and gives no resistance. He seems content. He has made his call. Canada is called on despair. They either lose themselves or cannot stand themselves. A questionable call from a questionable official? Well, either way the time-out is almost over and Canada is free to get back in the game if they so choose.
They say that everything on the internet is forever. Well, if that’s the case, one of my life’s goals is done! Which one, you ask? To have something I have done or said immortalized. If the internet’s data truly lasts forever, then there’s a lot that I’ve done that’s been immortalized. Every email I have sent will go down in Gmail’s servers for all eternity…
It wasn’t always this way. Scrolls are fragile. People that could write were few. Written words we contained in jars of clay, held onto sacredly. With no recording devices, spoken words would have to be written down to keep them in memory.
Job’s words, “Oh, that my words were recorded…” make me laugh. He may never have known that he got his wish. His words have been recorded and read by more people than any other literary work. Quite the immortalization. I hope to write a lot in my lifetime, but I know my words will never go down in history like his did. This led to an interesting thought…
Did the Bible’s writers have any idea what they were doing?
Did they realize that their words would be read by countless people? Did they realize that people would stake their lives on the words they eeked out on crumbly scrolls? Did they know that their words would be called canon, holy?
I have no doubt they felt inspired to write what they wrote or say what they said. But so do many people today, and the canon is already closed. We’re not adding 20th or 21st century prophets to the Bible. That’s over and done. Picture Job, aching and in pain, wishing his words were recorded. Picture Paul, hunched over a desk, quill in hand, writing by candlelight. I wish I could go back and whisper, “Do you know what you’re writing? Do you know how much those words mean?”
Write and speak like your words will mean as much to people in 3,000 years as Job’s do to us.
Taking Heart,
Paul
Last week Predator drones attacked in Helmand province in Southern Afghanistan and mistakenly killed civilians. We don’t know how many. The incidents are another warning like the messages of protest that Pakistanis have been trying to send Americans for the past few years. Despite the much ballyhooed precision of these air crafts and their weapons, they still kill civilians because corroborating intelligence on the ground is unreliable and this leads to flawed targeting.
The protection of civilians has been a most basic plank of all notions of just war for many nations going back 1600 years. The slide towards increased killing of civilians in war by national armies and as a corollary, the use of civilians as human shields is often overlooked. Tactics arising from the use of robotic weapons of war may increase the slide of disrespect for civilian life in war. This trend that brought us civilian casualties from Dresden to Hiroshima, from IEDs in Iraq to drones in Pakistan reflect the broad lines of increased disrespect for civilian life into the 21st century warfare in regular and insurgent armies.
During the final week of Lent this year I expect to travel to Las Vegas and to Creech AFB 45 miles northwest where the Predator pilots and their staffs are trained and local control rooms guide the planes in the 24 hour surveillance and attack assignments over Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. As I go I know that the Predators are just a tip of a vast array of robotic technology now being developed to make modern warfare “safer” for soldiers but more lethal for civilians.
The Predator and their Hellfire missiles are the air weapon delivery system of choice right now but maybe not for long. In the future the work of disarmament will be made even more complicated by robotic instruments of all kinds. The U. S. Army is working with universities to build micro fliers, tiny bird like flyers to be used for intelligence gathering and surveillance through its Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology Collaborative Alliance. Joseph Mait, manager of the Army Research Laboratory says,“ Our long-term goal is to develop technologies that can produce a map of a building interior or detect bombs,”
Big unmanned Predator like aircraft have lots of problems. They are still expensive to build, maintain and fly although they are much cheaper than the earlier generations of bombers. They can also be easy to spot. In Pakistan I was told that children in remote areas have games they play called, “spotting the Predators”. Shrinking those vehicles to a few ounces will not only change the children’s games but will give an up-close view of who is doing what, when and where.
According to Discovery Magazine, Haibo Dong of Wright State University is working on a four-winged robot, the Wright Dragon flyer. The designers complain that it is more difficult to create than a two-winged flapping system but promises more speed and manoeuverability. Dong expects to have a prototype, about the size of a real dragon-fly, completed this year. “This small craft could perform surveillance, environmental monitoring and search and rescue,” he says.
At Harvard University roboticist Robert Wood is working on mechanical bee-like instruments to create a colony of RoboBees. These swarming robots will incorporate optical and chemical sensors as well as communications systems to make autonomous flight decisions and to coordinate with colony members during tasks such as searching for objects or people.
Robotic technology is already heavily used in all of America’s wars. As many as 4000 robots are already on the ground in Iraq. Tiny information gathering devices are complemented by robotic instruments designed to identify and disarm bombs. With ground mobility they can enter into dangerous settings where enemy soldiers are heavily armed. Some of these instruments are being adapted for or are already used for in the homeland security. Their phenomenal growth will change forever the arms race, the balance of power(s) in the world and the nature of police work.
The ethical implications of this revolution of arms, force and information gathering are daunting.
1. The development, deployment, and use of the instruments of robotic warfare are being carried out in at least 40 countries around the world. A robotic arms race is already under way. There are few if any forums that address the implications of this race for the future of life on earth and for the quality of life-like basic freedoms.
2. As the robotic arms movement unfolds, the possibility for back yard development of instruments of destruction reaches to the limits of imagination. Violent video games were just a beginning although they may have helped dull our sensitivity and create a culture of acceptance. The IED (improvised explosive device) an interim instrument for defence and attack for insurgents will have been just the first generation of a long line of sophisticated adaptation of off the shelf technology for killing. The distance between the safe researcher silently working in a sanitized laboratory and the field practitioner is narrowing. The absence of meaningful work for so many in this generation may become the void where new waves of imagination in the service of violence are unleashed. Nonviolence movements will match this challenge only with keen understanding of the implications of robotic developments and solid healthy organizations.
3. As civilian casualties grow, persons who believe that life is sacred are faced with enormous new challenges. Peacemakers and human rights workers have only begun to grasp the implications of robotic warfare. People on the ground in Pakistan told me that just 10% of the victims of Predator drone bombings are insurgent combatants. Ninety percent are civilians. The l Pakistan Security Monitor, a project of the School for International Studies at Simon Fraser University disputes these figures. I have travelled in Pakistan and have heard the estimated 90% figure from persons with access to the areas of impact with accompanying stories of travail and death to women and children..
For Christian pacifists the reach of research, development, and manufacture dips into every one of our communities. We are now faced with new challenges to our convictions about not killing. Unless we face those oncoming ambiguities without falling into legalism, the convictions will morph into fluffy cotton decoration over a core of words that are not backed up with action.
4. As we enter this new frontier of ethics and robotic warfare, our methods of witness for a nonviolent way will be forced to adapt. The centralization of the development and manufacture of killer instruments into fewer and fewer corporations and selected political powers is over. The time is here when ordinary people can go to the local computer store or amazon.com to order component parts for assembling a weapon. What will we do if the computer store owner even goes to our church or parish? What will we do if people in our church own stock in companies that produce the components? We won’t have to go to Washington or to some well-mannered legislative office to begin the discussion and to engage in public witness.
We are now swimming in the culture of robotics, a technology that is being adapted every day by nations around the world to myriad roles that include security and killing. We can watch in admiration or distaste as the magic is unveiled . In periods of transition and unfolding violence it takes a little time for our consciences to be awakened and the gift of stubborn resistance to become clear. The time has arrived.
It is encouraging at certain points to experience life, at least at that moment, as having been boiled down, clarified, distilled. I am not sure there is much more to Christian life, which is to say life, than prayer and worship. Perhaps there is only worship or only prayer or some third unknown description. But for now I still find it helpful to speak of the two.
Pray without ceasing
Let everything that has breathe praise the LORD
All things may be prayer and worship. My breathing, my eating, my coming and my going. My buying and selling, giving and taking. My sitting and lying. My speech and my act.
I went for a run today and I did not care (much) for the benefits I used to hope from this expression (better fitness and self-image) I did not incorporate techniques to make my run more efficient or effective . I ran and breathed and looked and thought. I ran to the cemetery at the edge of town and sat on a bench. It was one of the first sunny almost warm days and on the bench the sun shown directly on my face and the tree behind me blocked the wind. And everything was just glorious, utterly glorious in that moment.
I realized then that had I not done this, had I not run in that way at that time I would have been guilty of blasphemy a fully unconscious expression of sin and heresy. This led me then to the much more humbling realization that much of my life is blasphemy.

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