No Complaints

A. Unabashed Pacifist:

Pacifists look for another way besides fight or flight: make things right.

B. Unabashed Christian:

Holy One,

I neither want nor expect it to happen, but if the world ends an hour from now, I have no complaints. You have done more than I can imagine to create an amazing world and I have had a very fine life.
My only regret would be that we humans have not done better with what you have provided and we have submitted too much to our fears of one another and of you, instead of loving one another and you.
Amen

C. Un-quoting Jesus:

"Widows and orphans should be taught to fish so they can support themselves."

[No comment. He never said it.]

D. Blog: A Parable

The Prodigal Father

On the northernmost tip of Maine, in the village of Fort Kent, as remote as one can get from mainstream America, lived an elderly man. His children settled in more populated areas from New York to Virginia, and chose to live at a distance from the father they never understood.

The oldest son felt judged because he had not achieved great success. The middle daughter felt alienated because she had transgressed one of her parents’ prime directives about adultery, divorce, and remarriage. The youngest son ran away from home following a shouting match with his Dad; this came after he had gotten drunk and wrecked the family car. After a life of dissipation, petty crime, drugs and booze, he felt worthless and ashamed in his father’s presence.

Then the father received a diagnosis of terminal cancer, with a prognosis of a few months at most to live. After years of sporadic visits at best, the three children pledged to make an unusual effort. They scheduled their lives so that every two weeks one of them would make the long trip to visit their father.

The regular visits provided opportunity for some grace-filled leave taking. Father and children shared memories and histories. They spoke finally of the great themes of life: joy, peace, love, forgiveness, the meaning of it all, fear, hope, good, evil, suffering, grace. With death close, they drew closer.

Seeing their father in his feeble and lonely condition, each of the children came to understand his love for them, the pride he took in their smallest achievement, the pain he felt with all their struggles, his longing for their company. With the end near, the old man had no complaints. His children held him in their arms.