Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” (John 20: 19b-21)
There are two images I now carry from yesterday’s protests in Bellevue and Seattle.
I send you
The first was when Bellevue Police Chief Steve Mylett asked a protester to help him kneel. She gently held him as they knelt together. A few minutes later he asked if she could help him up, she does saying, “We got you.” Chief Mylett started by saying, ”What happened to George Floyd was wrong! It was a crime.” A young man addressed the crowd “My father was the first black chief of police in Tacoma.” Mylett reaches over and touches his shoulder.
Here’s a video of the encounter
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. (John 14:27)
To receive the Peace of God is to be created anew. Something unexpected is to happen. We’ll only get to experience it for a moment at a time. It will be there and then gone.
To our wounds only God’s wounds can speak[i]
The second, was late last night. I was watching a live stream of the Seattle protest. The demonstrators had ended up in Westlake Park, in the center of downtown. There were two scenes that touched me. One was when a senior police officer went to the rear of the speaker’s platform. A few police officers and the leaders from the stage came close and talked. The police asked, “What’s your game plan.” They were clearly all listening to one another. It was calm and respectful.
The other, was later. The crowd had thinned. Maybe 150 protesters remained in the area. The police were in a line blocking access to an intersection. They had a plan to move the demonstrators out of the downtown back toward Capitol Hill where they had originally come from. An officer had made four announcements over the past hour saying that there was a curfew in effect (5:00 pm – 5:00 am). It was now about 10:00 pm. Five hours into the curfew. At the intersection the police, support by National Guard troops, put on gas masks. About ten yards away demonstrators knelt and stood. In between were a few people trying to influence the crowd. There were those asking people to remain peaceful and to go home and return on Monday at 3:00 pm. There were a couple of others, more agitated, I don’t know if there is any meaning in it. But those asking people to go home were black and those asking them to stay (and fight) were white. One yelling, “This isn’t a protest, this is a revolution.” The police eventually began moving people away and there was little resistance. I went to bed.
I then lay in my bed remembering. I thought of 57 years ago. Marching in the streets of Chester with deputized white trash collectors with clubs threatening. I thought of all the demonstrations as part of CORE, all the later anti-racism attempts to educate, and of standing in cassock between white and black teens ready to fight. And I found myself at Peace with the young protesters in Westlake Park. My inner grumbling about their lack of skill in negotiating, their lack of training in non-violence, their sometime over the top outrage, they yell and don't sing—faded away. They wanted justice. They would sacrifice for justice. They were courageous and persistent. And I thought about police officers I’d known. An uncle, a parishioner, the one who wouldn’t allow us to play in the intersection and took our football. Doing a hard job. Wanting to come home to their families each night. Serving and protecting. And like the protesters, flawed and in pain.
The heavens frighten us; they are too calm
In all the universe we have no place to be.
Our wounds are hurting us; where is the balm?
Lord Jesus, by Thy Scars, we claim Thy grace.[ii]
I can’t breathe
There’s a political cartoon in yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquire—"The Statue of Liberty can’t breathe.” An African American Statue of Liberty is sitting holding two African American bodies in her lap. One is labeled “police killing” the other “Covid.” The two experiences of our nation are joined. The suffering of the virus and the oppression. The need for the Peace of God—it’s mercy and justice, calmness and harmony—a peace that lies within, a peace that flows into action.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding
We can do two things. Two things in response to our Lord’s gift of Peace. We can nurture it in ourselves and we can learn to see it when it happens.
And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. (Colossians 3:15)
Because we are of the Body we have access to the peace of God. And as we do that, we become instruments of God’s peace, in family and with friends, at work and as citizens.
Ours is to place ourselves in the pathways of grace. To engage the practices and disciplines of faith that feed inner peace—Eucharist and Office, silence and spiritual reading. Not the self-serving peace of passivity but the risking peace of Christ—"as the Father has sent me, so I send you.” It is the stuff that renews the earth.
For the blood of thy martyrs and saints shall enrich the earth, shall create holy places. From such ground springs that which forever renews the earth. Though it is forever denied. T.S. Eliot
Over the last few months I have returned again and again to the icon of the Martyrs of Memphis. What was the peace they knew as they ministered to those with Yellow Fever, as they suffered and died? What was the peace known by Constance and the Mother Superior as they brought additional sisters into the danger? I have found myself pondering this, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
Consider becoming an associate of a religious order.
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[i] “He showed them His Hands and His side.” From “Jesus of the Scars, and other Poems” by Edward Shillito. In Readings in St. John’s Gospel, William Temple. p 366.
[ii] As above. Shillito wrote the poem toward the end of World War One. Peter Wehner drew on the poem in “What It Means to Worship a Man Crucified as a Criminal”
The first picture is a piece by Allan Rohan Crite.
The icon of Constance and her Companions was done by writer Suzanne Schleck. It is part of the icon series “The Anglo Catholics."
There was a third image. It's been posted many times. Some see a Seattle officer placing his knee on the neck of a man being arrested. There's outrage. Though some believe the knee is on the mans shoulder. I can't tell. Here's what I see--a chaotic scene in which police are interfering with people looting a store and fleeing when the police arrive. A man running who is taken down by two officers. One officer places his knee either on the man's neck (if so, did he learn nothing!) or on a shoulder. Someone is cursing and yelling "Take your knee off his neck." The second officer reaches across and moves the first officer's knee. The Peace of God is in the officer who moves his partner's knee. Enough in control of himself to hear the yelling and/or notice the knee. Courageous enough to risk offending the other officer. I think this is what we want in our officers. To be willing to correct an officer engaged in a morally problematic act and for the other officer to accept the correction. What do you see? What do make of it?
The story of Bellevue's police chef was repeated in various ways across the country. In NY City Chief of Department Terry Monahan, the highest ranking uniformed officer, was leading a group of officers facing off with protesters who were hurling bottles and other debris. A protest organizer tried to hold the demonstrators back but was unsuccessful. “He tried -- we kept backing up, they kept advancing,” Monahan said. Monahan asked for a protester's megaphone so he could address the crowd. "This does not need to be riotous every single night." The protest leader then asked the chief to take a knee with him for peace, and when he complied the crowd cheered. "Have a good day, I love you," a protester said before hugging Monahan. Another NYC event. In Flint, MI and other places. In Camden, NJ. And in DC protesters turn over to police a person destroying property (note it is mislabeled as being a black-white clash.) A hug in Louisville. A BBC report on the hug.
Postings on the inner life and the virus
You know, and they know, that they are offering their lives
Intercessions and the virus Solitude.
The mystery of the cross Solitude in Surrey
We'll meet again God's not indifferent to our pain
Endures all things Becoming an Associate of a Religious Order
Spiritual vitality and authenticity The path of servanthood
Down into the mess Missing the Eucharist
In you we live Faith to perceive
Faith to perceive: In your great compassion
Turn everything that happens to account
We no longer know what to do The cares and occupations
Postings on Parish Development during the Virus
Power from the center pervades the whole To everything there is a season
Faith to perceive: Remaining inseparable Communities of love, prayer and service