I create a devotion each week that I send to colleagues and peers. Create may not be the best word because much of the time I am borrowing from sources rather than writing my own words. I decided to publish the devotion on my blog each week from now until the end of the year. The devotion, like my meditation, has three movements: centering, ponder, and remember.
Centering
As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God? My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?”
These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise God, my help and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts; all your waves and your billows have gone over me. By day the Lord commands steadfast love, and at night the Lord’s song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?”
As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me continually, “Where is your God?” Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise the Lord, my help and my God.
(Psalm 42, NRSV)
Ponder
On knowing it can be done
Can you imagine how difficult the crossword puzzle would be if any given answer might be, “there is no such word”?
The reason puzzles work at all is that we know we should keep working on them until we figure them out. Giving up is not a valid strategy, because none-of-the-above is not a valid answer.
The same thing happened with the 4 minute mile. It was impossible, until it was done. Once Bannister ran his mile, the floodgates opened.
Knowing it was possible was the hard part.
And that’s how software leaps forward as well. Almost no one seriously attempts something, until someone figures out that with a lot of work, it can be done. Then the shortcuts begin to appear, and suddenly, it’s easy.
What’s possible?
As soon as we stop denying the possible, we’re able to focus our effort on making it happen.
Exalted and hallowed be God’s great name
in the world which God created, according to plan.
May God’s majesty be revealed in the days of our lifetime
and the life of all Israel, and all who dwell on earth — speedily, imminently,
Blessed be God’s great name to all eternity.
Blessed, praised, honored, exalted, extolled, glorified, adored, and lauded
be the name of the Holy Blessed One, beyond all earthly words and songs of blessing, praise, and comfort.
May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life, for us and all Israel, and all who dwell on earth.
May the One who creates harmony on high, bring peace to us, and to all Israel, and all who dwell on earth.
To which we all say, Amen.
(I first offered this adaption of the Kaddish Prayer from Reformed Judaism [http://www.reformjudaism.org/practice/prayers-blessings/mourners-kaddish] at the memorial service of a friend and colleague. To not harm the intent of the prayer, I worked with a Reformed Judaism Rabbi prior to adding “all who dwell on earth.”)
I grew up in a time when this tone on TV and radio was only a test or a signal of the end of the world. Anything other than a test meant that nuclear bombs were minutes away. Sometimes is was used to announce bad weather. I can remember only a couple of times when that was true where I lived. I am old enough to call the loud outdoor blasts that blare out in neighborhoods “civil defense” instead of tornado sirens. Following the EBS (emergency broadcast system) tone I waited to hear that it was only a test while the visual of what a nuclear blast would do to buildings and people ran through my head thanks to the films we saw at school twice a year. My sister and I must have looked worried one summer afternoon during the weekly EBS test. I remember her telling us. “They test this stuff and you can ignore it. It is scary, but the people in charge are not going to use the weapons that can hurt their families as well as ours. Do you hear the outdoor sirens too? No. So, there is nothing to be afraid of. Don’t be afraid, but pay attention. If you are out playing or out with friends and hear the sirens come home if you are not far away. If you are more than a five minutes from home go to your friend’s house. Their parents will know what to do. If you are at school the teachers will know what to do. Listen to them and do what they say. Ok. Alright. Now, go outside because it is a beautiful day.”
“The Day After,” a made for TV movie aired in November 1983. It told several stories about people living in and around Kansas City following a nuclear exchange. The very next day I had to give an eight minute speech in my “Introduction to Public Speaking” course on a topic I pulled from a hat. My speech was about the necessity of nuclear deterrence. In 1984 the BBC broadcast “Threads” which also depicted what people in London might experience in an exchange of nuclear weapons. Scientists can theorize, determine blast radius, and plot the course of radiation fallout that will damage humans, and all creation, at a cellular level. My father-in-law and other soldiers that landed in Japan following its unconditional surrender in WWII saw what nuclear weapons could do. He never spoke of it, but his body told the story of time spent in radiation fallout through a muscle disease and liver cancer. Only the ruins and survivors of the first blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki really know what these weapons can do, will do, when let loose.
President Obama, contrary to Republican talking points or perspective, delivered important and prophetic remarks at Hiroshima last week. Arguments continue about the necessity of dropping those crude weapons and the motivation behind the use of nuclear weapons. They indeed shortened the war, scared humanity, set off an arms race, a cold war, and now, if not secured by people who embrace the fear of mutually assured destruction (MAD), or disarmed by countries that have such weapons, there is a brand of political and religious fanaticism around the globe that would use nuclear weapons and lead to another, maybe the final, World War.
Below are the opening and closing paragraphs of President Obama’s speech at the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima.
President Obama Speaks at Hiroshima Peace Memorial
May 27, 2016
Seventy-one years ago, on a bright, cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.
The world was forever changed here. But today, the children of this city will go through their day in peace. What a precious thing that is. It is worth protecting, and then extending to every child. That is the future we can choose -– a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare, but as the start of our own moral awakening.