Friday 1 February 2008

I think this is a powerful piece by Thomas Merton - a good way to end the week.



All forms of necessity can contribute to man's freedom. There is material and economic need. There is spiritual need. The greatest of man's spiritual needs is the need to be delivered from evil and falsity that are in himself and in his society. Tyranny, which makes a sagacious use of every human need and indeed artificially creates more of them in order to exploit them all to the limit, recognizes the importance of guilt. And modern tyrannies have all explicitly or implicitly in one way or another emphasized the irreversibility of evil in order to build their power upon it.



Point the finger at another evil and we are able to build a greater evil as we think we are creating something new and better. We have this great need to be delivered from "evil and falsity" and yet, as we can see within the campaigns that are going on right now in our country...it is so very easy to slip into the ways of that which we do not want to be the way. Another item to look at is the conflict we face in Iraq and surrounding countries. We know that evil will continue. And yet, we use such an understanding to validate evil from our side. What an interesting way to play in the world! Rather than be a part of something radically new (I know if you use the word radical people get afraid), we use the evil of another to help us bring forth what is evil in us. Nothing changes and the only model for life that we have from all sides is that of violence and untruth - sounds like tyranny to me.



Connection: It is too easy to wage war. It is too easy to frame the day in violence. Then again, we are not called into something that is comes easy. We are called into a complete turn around that involves risk and rest.



Come, Spirit of Life. Come and remind us of how easy it is to become a part of a tyranny of hopelessness and fear. Continue to life up our eyes to your promise of new life within your peaceable Reign. Amen.