Last year at this time religious leaders devoted their Easter sermons and Passover celebrations to the hope for peace. Pope John Paul II said, “Peace is possible even where, for too long, there has been fighting and death.”
That peace is even more elusive this year as fighting and death increase tragically. From Northern Ireland to Jerusalem, from Zimbabwe to Afghanistan, violence seems the method of choice in resolving age-old ethnic, religious and territorial disputes. The result is that conflicts are escalated more often than resolved.
The devastation moves us to ponder the possibility that civilizations may thrive on conflict and decline in peace. That some humans see their lives defined by conflict, leading the fight for a cause they often can’t define, hoping to find salvation in the struggle-and if the struggle is lost, in martyrdom.
Every year in spring we are touched by the earth’s renewal as signs of growth and vigor become symbols of peace. Easter lilies bloom even when we are not at peace.
But nature is not peaceful. The struggle for survival in nature is often violent. The race is to the swift, the battle to the strong, survival to the fit. But at least there is no hypocrisy in it.
The animals that dominate do so simply because they can. Even plants survive to pass on the seeds of their strength in complex ways. Simply because they’re strong.
The hypocrisy that once drove me from organized religion, if not from my faith, was all about righteousness. Obedience to power, not strength.
Power is invested in us by others. Strength comes from within.
The church in which I was raised is now embroiled in conflict, less from without than within. Misuse of power. Preying on the obedient. The hypocrisy of righteousness. The church is criticized less for the sins of its clergy than for the deceit of its hierarchy. The cover up is always worse than the sin.
Given the current climate of distrust, it’s amazing the faithful have not deserted their parishes. In fact, numbers of converts are actually on the rise in those parishes where priests are in touch with the way we live in this country, in this century. And that is amazing in a church whose rules are grounded in the distant past and have changed little in decades.
My children have newly found faith. My daughter was baptized and confirmed Saturday night in a parish run by priests who seem to have a real grip on the reality of life in this century, and a sense of humor in the bargain. This appealed to her and to her sister, both of whom married “lapsed” Catholics and had been disappointed in their earlier attempts to rejoin the faithful. Next week, my two youngest grandchildren will be baptized in that church by the Monsignor, whose sermons are full of humor and the kind of life-affirming strength that has been all too rare.
Because the church we have in our mountain community is not run by such gifted ministers, I rarely attend, finding the sermons more turn-off than inspiration. I don’t believe this makes me less spiritual, just less hypocritical.
Though we have often attended a multi-denominational sunrise service on Easter morning, there was none offered this year. Instead, my daughter and I went on a hike, carrying 3-month-old Amy in her front-loaded backpack. It was the kind of glorious spring morning one hopes for on Easter. Wildflowers splashed across the hillsides, birds searching for nesting sites, butterflies flitting from flower to leaf.
The scent of clematis blossoms intoxicating our senses. Golden daffodils, grape hyacinth and crocus nodding in a gentle breeze.
Enchanting. More earthy than Easter lilies, but straight and strong as the cedars, growing toward the light. How could we not feel the renewal of spring? Our spirits restored by Nature at her best. Nonjudgmental, true to her laws, and strong if not exactly peaceful.