Mother's [Peace] Day

The original Mother's Day Declaration wasn't your typical Hallmark card greeting for mom

A MOVEMENT FOR PEACE. Contrary to popular presumption, Mother’s Day wasn’t created in a conspiracy of greeting card companies and florists. 

Originally called Mother’s Peace Day and organized by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe (author of “Battle Hymn of the Republic”) in Boston in 1870, it was to be a day dedicated to the eradication of all war. 

Though Mother’s Day is now far afield of its origins, the following declaration written by Howe was its early watchword:

BE FIRM. “Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: ‘We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.’”

TEACHING & TRAINING. “‘Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.’”

DISARM! DISARM! “From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, ‘Disarm, disarm! The sword is not the balance of justice.’ Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.”

NOT CAESAR, BUT GOD. “As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after his own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.”


CALL FOR ASSEMBLY. “In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.” (

Source: Bruderhof, Wikipedia


John Franklin Hay 
Indianapolis, Indiana, USA 

Just Another Race?

“You must treat this track with respect or it will bite you.” 

So said 1969 Indianapolis 500 winner and million-times “almost winner” Mario Andretti to Formula 1 driving ace Arie Luyendyk when he came to Indianapolis as a rookie in 1985. Luyendyk went on to win the race in 1990 and 1997.

Gripped by the aura of the Indianapolis 500 several years ago, the following piece came together for me. Perhaps the poem makes sense only to those who have lived within the gravitational pull of the Brickyard for a lifetime.

I recently read noted native Indianapolis author John Green’s public letter in tribute to the Indy 500 and I remembered this 2007 piece—my own tribute to The 500.

Every year brings fresh stories of victory and heartbreak. A few well-resourced teams tend to dominate the month of practices and qualifying. But on race day, it’s anybody’s win for the taking. The best have lost here. The unexpected have had a celebratory drink of milk in Victory Lane. 

The average speed for qualifying will always be the fastest of any auto racing series. Indianapolis-based Sam Schmidt Racing, owned and operated by a former Indy racer who was mangled and permanently paralyzed in an IndyCar crash years ago, will have competitive cars qualify. And there is always the local, ever-hopeful Ed Carpenter. 

There are older and younger drivers who have mortgaged everything to get into the Indy 500. They should not be here. But here they are, choking back tears as they get one more chance to drive in—and win—“The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.”

What is the mystique of this oval,
this ribbon of banked asphalt
that it winds its way into
the hearts and hopes of
many a would-be conqueror?

Is this not merely pavement,
One more course to be driven,
One more track to be subdued?
And is not Indy just another race?

Why, then, are the greatest
not considered so until they have
proven their mettle here?
Why do the sport’s most promising
strive a lifetime to win The 500?

Once run, Indy asserts a
greater grip on its pursuers.
It shadows their other victories.
It haunts their off-track pursuits.
It lures them back to its graceful sweep.

Other races simply mark the calendar
as tests and rehearsals for another
chance at The Brickyard.
Only the very swiftest qualify here
and only a select few win.

Here, May turns men into boys,
turns boys into speed demons—

and women into winged warriors.
Indy defies anyone to call it “just another race,”
but honors all who offer due respect.

Can You Hear Me Now?

I’m now wired and I can hear much better

I’m now sporting hearing aids. A pretty sleek set. And they’re helping me hear significantly better.

Jodi has been urging me for a few years to get my hearing checked. Lots of “what did you say?” I mentioned this to my physician at my free annual preventive care physical (thanks, Obama!) and they wrote me a referral to an audiologist.

But it’s when I started substitute teaching off and on in February that I really noticed my challenge. I could barely hear students who were less than 10 feet from me in a classroom. That convinced me to make an appointment.

Sure enough, testing revealed my high end hearing is seriously compromised, compounded by tinnitus (ringing, roaring). At 65, I’m officially hearing impaired.

So, I’m now wired. I can hear much better. And for that I am grateful. 

With an iPhone app, I can control hearing in diverse sound environments. I can tune in to one person or many—or shut out all y’all! Ha!

Whatever stigma wearing hearing aids once held for me or holds for others, I no longer experience it. Before he finally got hearing aids, my dad would often sit unresponsive amid living room conversations. My mom resisted having hearing aids and would conveniently “forget” to wear them and frequently “lose” them. Was it a generational thing? 

Not me. Instead of missing out on parts of casual or critical conversations, I’m tuned in and engaged. And that feels great!

A Prayer for the Season of Easter

by Wilfred L. Winget

O Mighty, Holy Breath of God
On this glorious Day of Resurrection

Blow open all the shutters of our minds
bursting the barriers of
prejudice and pride
insensitivity and sloth
ignorance and fear
stretching wide our vision of
what you are doing
where you are working
in our fascinating
exasperating world.

Blow wide the doors of our hearts
impelling us outward to
the lonely and loveless
the angry and hopeless
the empty and faithless
as ready instruments
of your Grace.

Blow up our lungs to keep us shouting
Yes to Faith in the face of fear
Yes to Hope in defiance of despair
Yes to Love in spite of apathy
Yes to Life in the teeth of death

Through Christ, the Living One,
Our Lord.
Amen


This poem/prayer was given me by Morris Weigelt, Ph.D., who taught New Testament at Nazarene Theological Seminary. Wil Winget was his brother-in-law. Wil taught at Spring Arbor University and died a painful death after a long bout with cancer. This poem was written amid that portion of his life's journey.

I have posted this poem most Easters for about 25 years.

May this prayer be answered in and through each of us.

Good Friday: Seven Reflections

Good Friday invites our own life responses


“Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible, it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith".

 -- W.H. Auden



Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy Blood’s slow loss,
And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon--
I, only I.

Yet give not o’er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock. 

-- Christina Rossetti



“Given is the word. Given publicly, on the first Good Friday, on a hill, in the sight of all, was the visible demonstration of the only permanent way to overcome evil. Human nature demands something more enduring than the unquiet equilibrium of rival powers.” 

-- Muriel Lester

“The symbol of the cross in the church points to the God who was crucified not between two candles on an altar, but between two thieves in the place of the skull, where the outcasts belong, outside the gates of the city. It does not invite thought but a change of mind. It is a symbol which therefore leads out of the church and out of religious longing into the fellowship of the oppressed and abandoned. On the other hand, it is a symbol which calls the oppressed and godless into the church and through the church into the fellowship of the crucified God.”  

 -- Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God

One of the paradoxes of what Christians call Holy Week is that what is being taken is being given. "No one takes my life from me; I lay it down."



"...Love so amazing, so divine
Demands my soul, my life, my all."

 -- Isaac Watts

Holy one,
shock and save me with the terrible goodness of this Friday,
and drive me deep into my longing for your kingdom,
until I seek first
yet not first for myself,
but for the hungry
and the sick
and the poor of your children,
for prisoners of conscience around the world,
for those I have wasted
with my racism
and sexism
and ageism
and nationalism
and regionalism
for those around this mother earth and in this city
who, this Friday, know far more of terror than of goodness,
that, in my seeking first the kingdom,
for them as well as for myself,
all these things may be mine as well:
things like a coat and courage
and something like comfort,
a few lilies in the field
the sight of birds soaring on the wind,
a song in the night,
and gladness of heart,
the sense of your presence
and the realization of your promise
that nothing in life or death
will be able to separate me or those I love,
from your love
In the crucified one who is our Lord,
and in whose name and Spirit I pray.
Amen. 

-- Ted Loder in "Guerillas of Grace"

Washing Another's Feet

"AS I HAVE DONE FOR YOU"

Off and on over the years, I participated in the Maundy Thursday liturgy at St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church in Breckenridge, Colorado (we were there to ski and snowboard during Spring Break--nothing pointedly spiritual about it.)

Typically, the little church was half full and it was likely a quarter of us were out-of-towners. No matter.

Not used to the turnings, responses and readings of formal liturgy from The Common Book of Prayer, I would fumble my way through the service.

The part to which I felt particularly connected was the foot washing. The liturgy invites us to do for another what Jesus did for his disciples that night of their last meal together--a Passover seder. After the leadership team's example, we would be invited to wash each other's feet at the front of the sanctuary.

During the foot washing, the congregation sings:

Brother, sister, let me serve you,
Let me be as Christ to you;
Pray that I might have the grace to
Let you be my servant, too.

We are pilgrims on the journey,
We're companions on the road.
We are here to help each other
Walk the mile and share the load.

I will hold the Christ-light for you
In the nighttime of your fear.
I will hold my hand out to you,
Speak the peace you long to hear.

HOMELESS NEIGHBORS' FEET

The radical humiliation of washing another's feet first struck me in 1989, when a nurse asked me to help with the foot soaks and foot massages she weekly offered the homeless men who visited Horizon House--a day service center for homeless neighbors in Indianapolis. I initially volunteered to assist, but when the hour came, I found myself strangely resistant and made excuses not to be available to wash their feet.

The next week, Nurse Anne wouldn't let me off the hook. I found myself kneeling before the dirty, gnarly, swollen, smelly feet of a homeless man. Still resistant, but yielded, I gave myself to the task, pushing inner protests aside. One after another, I washed and massaged feet until there were no more feet to wash. I felt relieved and released—and somehow strangely at peace. From that point on, I have always embraced unhoused people as neighbors, recognizing and accepting my connection, complicity, and challenge in their condition.

LEADING PARADIGM

During my 2,000-mile bicycle ride through India in 2007, we were honored in Bangalore/Bengaluru with foot washing. The Free Methodist Bishops of India knelt down and washed each cyclist's feet in front of all their pastors, parishioners, and non-christian friends and community members who gathered to welcome us to that city. We, in turn, washed their feet. Knowing the strong sense of caste and social role that pervade the various Indian cultures, I can only begin to imagine the radical--even offensive--action of a leader washing anyone's feet. But this is likely close to the context of Jesus' action on what we now call Maundy Thursday. He is the servant leader and this is the primary image for Christian leadership. The towel and basin stands alongside the cross. Those who dismiss or stray from this central paradigm mislead.

IT'S NOT ABOUT THE FEET

I have not fully identified the points of my resistance to wash either the feet of homeless neighbors in a homeless center or the feet of a friend in a Holy Week foot-washing liturgy. I'm not nearly as interested in analyzing my resistance as in simply recognizing it and overcoming it. It's really not about foot washing, anyway. It's about doing the necessary, menial, and helpful things for one another without reference to "who's who," social role, or fear. I want to continue to move in that direction in my life, breaking resistances and hesitancies and excuses with helpful actions for whomever they are needed.

What Do We Know?

A poem penned while substitute teaching at a local high school

These high school students--

what do they know?
What does he know? they may
think or say of me.

They know much
beyond algebraic equations
and Latin and Macbeth.

They know how to navigate
learning institutions
and peer complexities
and the disequilibrium of growing
dis-equally in different directions
at the same time.

What do we know?
Little.
And much.
May they--may we--dare to continue
to learn and know
and grow.