Christianity/Peace/Spirituality/Violence

Elie Wiesel and Questions of Faith

Posted on by stephen t berg / 2 Comments

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
and righteousness will look down from the sky. (Psalm 85)

Moishe the Beadle said to a young Elie Wiesel that every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer. (Night, Elie Wiesel)

If this is right, then, as the Beadle knew, it is our questions that draw us close to God, not our answers. And not even God’s answers. Because God’s answers–when they are not merely our own answers thrown up against the sky–dwell in mystery and misapprehension at the depths of our hearts until at some tear in time, or at the end of our life, or in the next, they bloom, and seem to have always been understood. On that soil questions and answers are indivisible.

But if this is true about questions, well, then our search must not be for the grand answer(s) but for the right questions. Because questions make a path to the garden of mystical truth where love and faithfulness spring up from the ground and where righteousness and peace kiss.

Now, this is of course a mystical move but how else can I "understand" things I can’t understand? How else can one endure the brutish side of humans and still have faith? For Wiesel, who witnessed and suffered the unspeakable, God was killed in Birkenau, and Auschwitz. And even though I believe what the young Wiesel held true, how can I argue with his giving it up? And while I believe that the life of Christ holds the key to the questions of suffering and violence, in the presence of Wiesel I could not speak a word, but only listen and grieve.

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Beauty/Spirituality

Noticing

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Squirrel on snow

I feel the pressure of accepting coffee cake because the barista is enthused about it. And so it begins.

Cone and pine

I want a day without pressure. I want a day that is kept at bay. But how? How do you keep the blur of it from flooding your early morning and washing away a delicate form in the snow, the alive sharpness of frost in air, the dark trail of wood grain in an empty chair, or the familiar smell of espresso? How do you release yourself and become intimate with a moment?

Birch and sky

The right song can wrap you in its arms and stop time. Also, a black and white photograph of an empty street, perhaps in Mexico, save for a bicycle, sews up a second. Too, the red sweatered back of a reader and her book and coffee, and above her the play of neon light on a window across the avenue. And now the mocha voice of Ray Charles in Georgia, slows the blur. A second of swagger here would break the rhythm but there is none from Ray, not on Georgia.

Mary Margaret O'Hara 

But then, I suppose, it’s not time stopped in its tracks that we crave. It is rhythm. Because rhythm is the willing handmaiden of awareness. And noticing is living.

Grosbeak 

It is possible that the big reason we have been dropped into this world is to simply notice it, notice it in all its radiance; and to be mindful of all its creatures, in all their broken glory.

Lawnchair and driftwood

Noticing…like the very same barista who anticipates my direction and hands me the washroom key without me asking. Not a moment pressure there.

Driftwood and poly-twine 

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Peace/Spirituality

Peace Pilgrim

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"On January 1, 1953, at age 44, Mildred Norman Ryder adopted the name PeaceMildredRyder Pilgrim, put on a pair of canvas sneakers, donned dark blue slacks, blouse, and a tunic – on which she had sown her new name – and set out to walk the length of the USA leaving from Pasadena, CA. She chose blue for her clothing because it is the international color of peace. She chose Pasadena because she wanted to set off walking ahead of the Rose Parade where thousands of people could see her. On that first trip, in the midst of the Korean War, the Cold War, and at the height of the McCarthy era, she walked 5,000 miles from California to New York, from coast to coast and from border to border, sharing her message of peace."

A quote from Mildred as to the timing of her walk.

The world situation is grave. Humanity, with fearful, faltering steps, walks a knife-edge between abysmal chaos and a new renaissance, while strong forces push toward chaos. Yet there is hope. I see hope in the tireless work for peace of a few devoted souls. I see hope in the real desire for peace in the heart of humanity, even though the human family gropes toward peace blindly, not knowing the way…I think that those of us who have found the way to peace, should be shouting it from the housetops.

For almost three decades, from 1953 to 1981, Mildred crossed the USA seven times, including two trips to Hawaii and Alaska, as well as Mexico and Canada. (See Marta Daniels’ article on the Peace Pilgrim)

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Uncategorized

Change

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From my loft downtown I see two flags, a Canadian flag just above an Alberta flag. Both reach then hesitate, then sag and sputter in an uncertain breeze. This is the way of flags animated by breezes confused by tall buildings. This too, it seems, is the way of memory. Through a scene, a smell, a piece of music, a taste, a long ago moment unfurls and then retreats.

Twenty years ago, the blue Alberta flag on the court house in Mayerthorpe was periodically extending itself in a wavering air current. Framed by my office window in the grain elevator I can still see the flag and the brown foreground. I see grass lodged, fallen like a skirt at the feet of naked shrubs. And I see the train track, with its creosote soaked timber-ties embedded in gravel and two straight lines of grey steel running far north. Above it all was a brilliant blue sky with a wisp of white cloud left over from the previous day’s canopy.

RedDeerfieldWhy this flag inspired memory? Twenty years ago I was dreaming about making an exit. After 12 years working for the Alberta Wheat Pool I was fit and ready for a change.

Perhaps it’s this early stage of the year that has me wondering about change. Or, perhaps it’s deeper. Either way it’s not like change is an option. To refuse to change is to age at a rapid pace. The only option, it seems to me, is cooperation with one or more particular possibilities, out there on the horizon of change.

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