Today is Peace Sunday, and my Church experience today was the most peaceful of Sundays in my most recent memories.

My peaceful day began when I walked into Bible Study and met a Rabbi who had come to speak to our church. Her visit was part of an outreach program designed to unite people of several different faiths and cultural groups to support communities and their leaders.

My first reaction was Yes! A Jewish Rabbi has come to my church and the members of my church feel no need to try to convert her. Likewise, she has not visited to change anyone’s religious views. This Jewish Rabbi had not come to argue about the differences in our beliefs. She had come to create a different kind of connection–She had come in Peace., and the members of my church welcomed her in Peace. Amen.

During Bible Study, my small group discussed a passage from Luke 6:  24-36.

And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. Luke 6: 24 [In other words: Treat Others as You Would Like Them To Treat You.

That passage was simply the next set of verses that fell upon this Sunday’s study–as our group is moving verse-by-verse through the book of Luke. In other words, the passage had not been deliberately chosen as a reading for the day that someone outside our religious circle had elected to visit.

³⁶ Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” Luke 6:36.

Someone compared open-armed Christianity to the members of the small church who invited the stranger into the group, and the stranger truly was an enemy who ultimately shot and killed 9 members of that congregation. We as the study group were grappling with the question: How can we be merciful in all cases?

How can we be merciful in all cases?

We Pray for Grace

When the person in my study group mentioned the slaughtering of the innocents in that church in South Carolina, my mind darted back to the first time I heard Joan Baez’s tribute to that event. The bird-like voice of Joan Baez singing in the 60s is unforgettable. I thought I knew all her songs, but I only knew the songs that she sang 50 years ago when both of us were much younger. But l had not heard any of Baez’s newer songs. Her voice had become older and raspier–not the bird that she once was–but she is still a poet and a prophet.

When  I heard Baez singing “My President Sang Amazing Grace,” I wept. It was a painful reflection on our nation during this trying time in history, and there is a hint of the old hymn “Amazing Grace” filtering in and out throughout the song. What a masterpiece:

The song tells the story of how a young man entered a church in Charleston, SC.

“He was not friend, he was not kin
But they opened the door and let him in.”

The people in that church welcomed the newcomer who eventually pulled out his automatic and obliterated 9 sweet lambs.

I remember that violation in 2015, and I remember watching and hearing our president Barack Obama speak at the subsequent funeral service. His voice was not like a bird, but he sang to my heart.

Joan Baez turned that poignant moment and the tragedy before it into a song that makes me cry. My sleep last night was frequently interrupted by that song’s message. Today, I cry for all the people who have been slaughtered in mass murders, and I cry for our nation that refuses to end that devastation. But  when I heard the older and wiser Joan Baez sing: “My President Sang Amazing Grace,” I realized that the travesty of that song has not ended in other ways:

“… We argued where to lay the blame
On one man’s hate or our nation’s shame
Some sickness of the mind or soul
And how the wounds might be made whole.”

Half a century ago, Joan Baez sang Blowin’ in the Wind. Her new album is: “Whistle Down the Wind.” I am not certain, but that title suggests that like me, Joan Baez never found “The answers my friend … blowing in the wind.”

Rather, the wind has continued to howl. Our choice is whether to “Whistle Down the Wind” or succumb.

God Grant Me Grace —
And the Peace that Passes All Understanding.

Peace – What Is Peace? Peace Sunday During #Advent – My Peace Garden