For anyone who knows what it means to chase knowledge...

So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,

Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,

The eternal snows appear already past,

And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;

But, those attained, we tremble to survey

The growing labors of the lengthened way,

The increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,

Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

- Essay on Criticism (c. 1711), Alexander Pope 
via a letter from a soul sister, My End of the Bargain

Malala, Martin and Martin

I have nothing original to say on the topic except to reiterate and braid some disparate threads. 

Malala Yousafzai finally wins the Nobel Peace Prize, and she shares it with Kailash Satyarthi, Indian children's rights activist. Malala is universally recognized for her activism, especially regarding education for girls. Her story is one of peace in the face of interminable violence. It also illuminates that the Taliban and other unrecognized, militant, terrorist entities are not sustained by their own breath. Hate begets hate. We in the States don't think carefully on this fact, because we don't see who suffers for our deeds.

In undergrad, I asked myself incessantly, so what is our part? What should we do in the face of violence and suffering? I was obsessed with the writings and speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence, you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: Only love can do that."

How do we love here? We can act: we can go, we can pray, we can advocate-- we can speak. 

The following is a poem Malala's father kept in his pocket. The page is an excerpt from her eyewitness account and memoir, I am Malala. She was just sixteen when the book was published.

Pakistani Teen Malala Yousafzai Shares Nobel Peace Prize

At 17, Malala becomes the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner in history

Letter to the Church

We sang about God's justice in church today. It's true that I have learned something about the law-- not in a classroom, but under the shade of a prison in Brixton. It's a very different vantage point than a court of justice, I know, and certainly very different from the holy pews of a church. I stood in service today, hands clapping, remembering those unwavering prison cell lights, and wondered why we were so concerned. You see, I don't think we would be murmuring our amens and singing for God to topple regimes and fell our enemies if we really knew what the word "justice" meant.  In any of its conceptions, judging ourselves under a perfectly just regime is frightening.

I've often wondered how it is that the church can cry for justice, when it was the Samaritan that clothed the naked, when it was Peter that denied him, and when it was the woman with five husbands that shared the news of Jesus with her town.  Further, I wonder why it is that the church turns such a blind eye to the circumstances of poverty and racism and sexism and prejudice and bias that so plague our neighbor, and how it came to be that we have relegated the task of 'loving others' to those brave sisters and brothers who 'save the world.'   Our lack of compassion and our arrogance are stains that turn the foreigner, the entire world away from us.

I do not think this is a failing without explanation - there is always a reason for the disconnect.  I think we are afraid of our own reflection.  For I am the whore at the well and I have denied him.  The only difference between them and me is that up until now, I wasn't willing to go that far, to recognize myself in the people the church has deemed a little different: poor, voiceless, and "other."  But if we believe the truth of sin that we so eagerly put on everyone else, we must also believe it for ourselves: I deserve what justice ought to prevail upon my soul, and I am afraid to see it. 

Now do you think I sing songs about justice?  I have seen war victims witness before an international criminal tribunal.  I have seen a man come beg the court not to foreclose his home.  I have witnessed the sentencing of defendants who robbed, raped, murdered... I have sat in the rooms of the state court, the federal court, the international court, and the prison cell -- but Lord, when I saw the accused, all I could think is that there was a time when I ought to have stood where they stand.  So from that vantage point,

Do I want justice?

Do I want to save the world?

Justice, as a road to holiness, is purifying and intangibly powerful.  But I've long lost the fever to understand power and its structures (legal and otherwise), and I don't know if it's even possible to fully grasp what it means to want justice.  So I think of what I can do and turn to the two things that I am sure Jesus told me to do: to love God and to love each other.  I have wondered what he meant, because it feels so selfish that God would want me to love him first - but the more I think on it, I am more fully aware that even this is for our own benefit.  It's the same story retold - for in loving him, we find a certain joy, absolution, freedom. So for now, I try to remember that.  I try to sing about mercy and in the end, I hope I can say that I tried to walk humbly, tried to understand somebody and to understand God-- that, in the words of Dr. King himself, "I tried to love somebody."

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
    And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
    and to walk humbly with your God.

Written on MLK, Jr. Day 2013 

woo

pronunciation: /wuː/, v.

1. to seek the favor, affection, or love of. . . 

2. to seek to win

3. to invite (consequences, whether good or bad) by one's own action. . . 

4. to seek to persuade. . . 

@ the puget sound

synonyms. charm, seek, entice

Service

 On February 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his last sermon, often called "The Drum Major Instinct."  It describes the basic human desire for distinction and significance, the desire to be great in some piece of your world, and further defines what this greatness ought to look like.  Who does this apply to today?  Imagine a world where everyone defined service as a necessity. What would our world look like if we, in our relationships, communities and nations, followed hearts full of grace and souls generated by love? 

Photo Credit: http://www.history.com/photos/martin-luther-king-jr/photo11

Click here for full text and audio of "The Drum Major Instinct."

"Don't give it up. Keep feeling the need for being important. Keep feeling the need for being first. But I want you to be first in love. I want you to be first in moral excellence. I want you to be first in generosity. That is what I want you to do.

And he transformed the situation by giving a new definition of greatness. And you know how he said it? He said, "Now brethren, I can't give you greatness. And really, I can't make you first." This is what Jesus said to James and John. "You must earn it. True greatness comes not by favoritism, but by fitness. And the right hand and the left are not mine to give, they belong to those who are prepared."

And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness.

This morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don't have to know Einstein's theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant."

Dr. King concludes: "Yes, Jesus, I want to be on your right or your left side, not for any selfish reason. I want to be on your right or your left side, not in terms of some political kingdom or ambition. But I just want to be there in love and in justice and in truth and in commitment to others, so that we can make of this old world a new world."

Lahndannahs

 

Real Londoners - nytimes.com

 ". . . That’s how you tell,” the man said, steadying himself with a hand on the bar. “That’s how you tell.” 

friend

Renoir

“There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one’s self, the very meaning of one’s soul.”

― Edith Wharton