Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places,
Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ, who wept at the death of a friend.
“Stop crying and don’t tell mom.”
These were the first words I remember in my life. I was two years old and crying in a teepee in Teepee Village at Ghost Ranch, long ago replaced by others building on the way toward Box Canyon, when I heard these words by my oldest brother as I cried on his lap.
Oh, Ghost Ranch! One of the thin places in Celtic jargon where there is scarcely a separation between heaven and earth. Ghost Ranch, part of my vocabulary since I started forming words and a deep part of my memory bank. Ghost Ranch, once a place of trauma for it was there twenty years ago that I and my family received the news that my other brother Ray was killed in an auto accident. And now, Ghost Ranch is just over an hour away, a place of great beauty where a prophet’s voice can be heard, and the red rocks and mesas offer healing.
This Sunday, the Rev. Tim Hart-Andersen, chair of the National Ghost Ranch Foundation Board upon which I serve (and father of Westminster church’s pastor Madeline Hart-Andersen), will be giving a Minute for Mission at the 11 am service followed by a presentation in Pope Hall on the latest news of the Ranch and how we can support it. A light lunch will be provided, and I hope you will join us!
But back to the teepee. . . I often wondered why I was crying in the first place and asked my brother not too long ago about it and he claims he had nothing to do with my tears and was being a nice and kind older brother. I’m still not quite convinced.
I was crying as any other kid is apt to do, but the crying of children means more to me now. Stop crying, I was told, but who am I to tell others not to cry when people are dying in the Gaza-Israel war? How can I stop crying when we are told that a good portion of those killed are children?
US Rep. Rashid Tlaib from Detroit was censured a few days ago for speaking out against the atrocities in this war and one phrase stays with me: “The cries of the Palestinian and Israeli children sound no different to me.” These cries shouldn’t sound different to any of us, in any place across the world. Oh, my children, our children, I wish I could help you stop crying.
Stop crying, my brother told me once, but I can’t help it, and I can’t help but cry out against the killing, the inhumanity of one side against the other, the trauma that dictates our actions, the cycles of violence that keep going round and round, and round.
But no, I won’t tell mom. She died in 2016 after years of struggling with Parkinson’s. I don’t want her to know all that the world is going through today. She would be heart broken. But I also want to tell mom we want the killing to stop, we want to save the children, that we’ll keep trying, we’ll keep crying, and will keep crying out till peace is heard throughout the world.
Start crying and tell mom, and everyone else, that we can’t do this anymore, to anyone, let alone our children.
Grace and peace,
Harry