Time is grim and flinty, as always
The happiness I have
Is in the kindness
Of those who scale the face of time
Giving, caring, helping
That is light and warmth
Desperately needed on the windy ledges
Some hurry on to a goal
Time will destroy that
Seek the treasure time cannot crush
Love
When I was a teacher, I was wishing students a “Merry Christmas” in the halls. They’d return the cheer and enjoy the holiday music I was playing in my room, the sounds of the season spilling into the hallway.
Then another teacher came up to me and asked, “Are you sure that’s wise to do? Shouldn’t you be more culturally sensitive?”
At that moment, I saw the Muslim kids in the hall. The Arabs, Persians, Indians, Turks, Bosnians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Nigerians, Ethiopians… At that moment, I realized that “Merry Christmas” might not be what they wanted to hear.
I said to the teacher, “You’re right! I should do better!”
To a young student from Egypt, I shouted, “Christmas Mubarak!”
He joyously returned, “Christmas Mubarak, Mr. Webb!”
I smiled to the other teacher. Cultural sensitivity accomplished.
In our school, in my classrooms, we wished everyone a happy holiday for the religion of their choosing. Happy Diwali, Eid Mubarak, and so forth. If someone wanted to say “Happy Holidays!”, I’d happily respond in kind. Joy is meant to be shared and faith is to teach us all. I didn’t know the expression “righteous envy” at the time, but it’s what I felt. As we all talked through the year about how we strove to be better people, I found inspiration in that, regardless of the faith or lack thereof in the speaker.
I say “Christmas Mubarak” and mean it. Joy and blessings be to us all, from my heart to yours.
“Not to think badly of anyone, not to wish ill to him though we have suffered at his hands, not to hurt him even in thought, this is an uphill task, but therein lies the acid test of nonviolence.”
~Gandhi, Ashram Observances in Action
“A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
~Jesus, John 13:34-35
As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I live with an understanding that people are able to receive revelations to offer guidance and comfort. God loves us, but we often confuse love with removing all problems. That’s not love, that’s co-dependence. Love is providing us with warnings when things are coming our way so that we can make ready for them. We are here on earth to learn and experience things, and those things involve dangers, hazards, pains, and trials.
If we return love to God, we heed those warnings, no matter what their source. We are able to have insight into the truth of those warnings and, as we give our hearts and minds over to trying to better understand our existences in a way that approaches God, we are more sensitive to those promptings and more likely to choose to act upon them.
God does not want us to experience our lives blindly. But it is up to us to accept the vision for the future and to be able to withstand it as we understand it. There are terrors approaching, but we can prevail if we heed prophetic warnings and make our preparations.
The Great Wall of China is forbidding, cold, impersonal, and crumbling.
The bridges of Venice draw tourists by the hundreds of thousands.
The bridges of London are famous and vibrant and connecting.
The bridges of New York City sing with Gershwin’s departed spirit, in that soaring clarinet introduction.
How many bridges have been put at risk due to the weight of the locks being fastened to them, fastened in the name of love?
The Berlin Wall is famous for having been torn down. Nobody wants to build it again, nobody who loves.
These things are a matter of personal choices. One is not thrust into one or the other against one’s will. One picks a course, a direction in life, and then arrives at the destination. If one is not pleased with an ultimate destination, different choices need to be made while still in mortality in order to avoid that destination.
And if one is sure of arriving at a destination, one needs to consider one’s choices all the more carefully – there is nothing sure about arriving anywhere for a person not tending one’s course.
There is a difference between admitting wrong, accepting consequences, and making amends versus denying everything, blaming others, and making noisy distractions. The first is part of building the Kingdom of God. The latter is part of making war against God.
Choose who to listen to: avoid those who always have a justification and never an apology. Seek out those who advocate peace without limits, love without exceptions, and forgiveness even towards mortal enemies. Avoid those who demand violence, vengeance, and retribution. Peace, love, and forgiveness are all parts of the most powerful, and most humble of forces in the universe – that which will prevail – while those other things are all hazardous to the soul we will need for eternity.
Let us suppose I hire a painter to paint a house I own out in the country. I sign a contract in which I agree to pay for travel expenses an amount up-front, and a final amount upon conclusion. We travel to the site and discover the property has burned down. True to the contract, I pay for travel and up-front expenses, but that is all. The house being burned down means the contract cannot be fulfilled. I terminate the contract without fault and the painter and I go our separate ways.
Now let us suppose the same situation, but we have a covenant to paint the house. Together, we rebuild it, as the covenant places a moral and spiritual obligation to see to it that a painted house results from our efforts. The money for the job is not as important as the job. We do not go our separate ways, because we have a covenant that implies we maintain and watch over that house.
This is why I do not have a contract with God. I have a covenant. The covenant is to return my soul to Him, and I labor with Him in that effort.
Since the foundation of the nation and before, there have been men, organized in whatever Party that would give them shelter, who gained and maintained power by placing other people, the weak and vulnerable, in separate classes, thereby depriving them of votes, economic choices, and equality before the law. This has been the great evil that stood for slavery, for disenfrachisement of women, against workplace safety, against overtime pay, against paid time off, against limiting the work-week. It continues to work to strip votes from nonwhite communities, refuses to pass legislation that would break cycles of poverty and imprisonment, and which obstructs legislation that would keep our lands and cities from being overwhelmed with pollution.
Its leaders are obvious in their love of money, and it is the love of money that is the root of all evil. They are obvious in their recycling of language and slogans used to support both slavery and segregation as they demand none speak or teach of the shame their political ancestors cursed our land with human bondage, lynch mobs, and cold-hearted justification of economic inequality.
In my own state of Texas, this Party has been in power for decades, and under their watch, with their knowledge, they have permitted school districts to take money that was supposed to service needs for the poor and handicapped children and merge it with the district general fund. This means that schools remain illegally underfunded and that services that could have prevented the Uvalde shooter and others like him from murdering children in schools were not provided, in violation of both federal law as well as our communal obligation to the most vulnerable and precious members of our nation, our children.
Make no mistake, money is involved in the politicians who preside over the deaths of our children. Those denials of services mean lower property tax rates, the savings of millions for those who support that Party – to them, the money is more important than the lives of children. They claim to be very religious, but so did the priests of Moloch, who sacrificed children to idols for the wealth of Carthage.
A Party that fights to reverse civil rights legislation, that works to make the rich richer, and that presides over the deaths of children in the name of lower property taxes is the enemy of freedom and the unity of the nation.
And that is why I do not support the Republican Party. I have to live, work, and worship alongside those who do and I know that the only true victory is through surrounding them with love, to the point where they willingly surrender the lies that sustain the illusions that justified their fight against peace, equality, and true justice.
Today is Easter, wherein I observe an important occasion in my faith. But that occasion is nothing to me if I do not honor it by striving to increase my compassion, peace, and love. I take seriously Gandhi’s challenge to be Christlike if I proclaim to be Christian. Faith is not a fixed destination. It is a pathway, unfolding before me as I choose to open myself to its possibilities.