Who Protects Whom?

A. Unabashed Pacifist:

We make excuses when we go to war. Peace needs no excuses, just preservation.

B. Unabashed Christian:

Holy One,

You must hold the key to our repository of memories.
An anniversary may awaken some of them, and then they fill in some of the gaps in our flow of awareness.

Thank you for the reminders that restore more of our self-consciousness.
Thank you for the letting go of those memories that no longer matter to us.
Thank you for the replenished sense of who we are and who you are in our lives.
Amen

C. Un-quoting Jesus:

“Dad thought I was a fool to pursue medicine on the side – no financial future in it, he said.”

[Maybe when He healed Peter’s mother-in-law? Nope. He didn’t say this.]

D. Blog: Protecting the Holy One

Why do so many people think they can or need to protect God?
As if they could.
As if the Holy One can’t manage quite well without our protection.

It seems more a matter of protecting our image of the divine. That image becomes graven, it appears to me, when we condemn those who do not bow to it, even declare war against them. The name for this practice is idolatry.

One of my mentors gave me a striking image for the Divine One: “God is an idol smasher.”

Even when the idol is supposed to represent Divinity.