A Long Gaze Needed

My heart aches terribly for the children and parents of Gaza and Ukraine. My spirit is tempted to break because neither our President Biden nor our Senator Sherrod Brown or Representative Marcy Kaptur or Latta or Jordan will have the guts to demand a "permanent cease fire" before any more money will be expended to Israel. I find it very hard to understand WHY usually sensible people in most life decisions cannot see the need for an end to weapons and war-making. Why is it that Christians, especially, cannot see that killing one's brothers and sisters—all loved equally by an all-loving God—is just so totally opposite to what our God wants and has revealed through the life of Jesus. This is not all dreamy, idealistic naiveté! This is what we Christians promise to live by as followers of Jesus. Professor Dr. Vincent Miller from the University of Dayton delivered a talk to us on St. Francis Campus this past Thursday evening on "Laudato Si" the pastoral written by Pope Francis in 2015, the pastoral that is gaining "steam" across the world due to the dire needs of our environment, its dangerous reality affecting our common home the earth. Mr. Miller spoke about the need for feeling and really seeing with real ecological eyes the need for education and conversion. Each person must FEEL a connection with the earth, must FEEL its wounds—it is our mother and our sister! The earth has nurtured and is and will sustain us into the future if we steward it wisely and respectfully. There will be less respect for the earth's ability to sustain the people of the world if people do not feel the connection and find ways to help their "mother" their "sister" wounded seriously by the arrogant, unsustainable wants of our consumeristic culture. Professor Miller spoke so gently, respectfully, and lovingly of "old growth" in the forests of our "neck of the woods" here in northwestern Ohio. He explained the need for "attentiveness" to the birds, the lilies of the field. Miller quoted #11 of Laudato Si: "Francis (i.e. St. Francis) has helped us see that an integral ecology calls for openness to categories which transcend the language of mathematics and biology, and take us to the heart of what it is to be human just as happens when we fall in love with someone…" Especially now as new life is popping out on the trees, in the gardens and flower beds, just when piglets and lambs and chicks are delighting us with their antics and tenderness, our eyes can observe and we can sense with joy the connection with all this new life. This is the time to relish creation, to gaze and gaze upon it and treasure its loveliness and its gifts to us. This is the time to recommit ourselves to a life of nonviolence toward ALL creation! All creation is connected, one to the other –above the ground and below it! The connections are astonishing to our mathematical and logical mind, are mystical but real. WE are all related to all this creation, to all people. This truth in itself both scientific and felt in our very nature DEMANDS the highest respect and nonviolence in all our actions. Therefore, there is no way that WAR, that any violence can be acceptable to God's people. Please reflect on and continue this conversation…paulet1905@outlook.com.