By Pamela Haines
When I was a harried and exhausted mother of young children, I discovered a song by Joan Baez that spoke of my life experience with such compassion and hope that it always made me cry:
All the weary mothers of the earth will finally rest/We will take their babies in our arms and do our best/When the sun is low upon the field/To love and music they will yield/And the weary mothers of the earth will rest.
I am not alone. I am seen clearly by others, my love and work recognized, real help offered. Something is very right—and I can rest.
Seeing the goodness all around me, centering my life in that goodness, knowing what’s right in the world and putting my energy toward helping it grow has been a good guide. It has certainly made my life better—and probably the lives of those I touch as well. Yet my strategy of focusing exclusively on the good and the possible is feeling a little tight and frayed these days.
In a way, it has always been a protection. I know that there are forces in this world that pull us down, forces that cause us to do unspeakable things, forces that could truly be called evil. I care deeply. I know a great deal about what’s wrong. My choices have been framed by that knowledge. Yet I can’t quite bear to really take it in. I’ve been unwilling to have a life shaped by rage and despair, unwilling to join in charges of evil that seem to just stereotype, blame and separate, unwilling to carry the burden of the world. But I haven’t known another way to interact with, to contain, the depth of what is wrong.
I am no longer satisfied. It seems important enough to stretch to do the unknown and uncomfortable, and I find myself open in a new way to prayer. Somehow, in prayer, the container for the world’s pain becomes big enough. I find myself willing to engage with the evil that I’ve held at arm’s length, that I’ve refused to focus on, all my life. But who to pray for? So much of the evil in our country seems institutional and bureaucratic. It is everywhere—in exploitative and violent amusement, degraded lives, worship of Mammon, polluted environments, militaristic foreign policy—but it’s hard to pin down, too big to get a grip on. It has no name.
Yet I know the name of a man in Africa who has personally done great evil--abducting children into his rebel army, causing girls to be raped, forcing boys to kill, throwing a whole region into chaos--without even the pretext of a positive program.
What does it mean to pray for this man? When I hold someone in prayer, the words that come to mind are “bless and keep,” “uphold and support,” “open and heal.” I know nothing in this man to bless or keep, nothing of his actions to uphold or support.
As I work in the garden, meditating on this puzzle, the mustard seed comes to mind. If there is a mustard seed of goodness in him, then that is what I will love, that is what I will ask to be blessed and kept. There has to be at least that much goodness in him, and I know experientially that a seed can grow. I pray for the mustard seed to be watered and broken open so it can grow. But where will the water come from? My mind turns to the second verse of the song:
And the farmer on his tractor and beside his plow/Will stand there in confusion as we wet his brow/With the tears of all the businessmen/Who see what they have done to him/And the weary farmers of the earth shall rest.
A voice inside me insists that the water will come from “the tears of all the businessmen who see what they have done to him.” There is some intimate connection between evil-doing, oppression, and grief. What if hardness of heart is an indication of the need for tears of grief to soften that hard shell? Does the end of oppression require the grief of those who oppress? Then this man would need to grieve the evil he has done. But perhaps the process could be started by my grieving the evil that had been done to Africa.
We are all caught in the coils of oppression; none of us are innocent outsiders; none of us are free. He is an African man who is doing evil to those around him. I am a white woman whose European ancestors did enormous evil to Africa; an international economy headquartered in my country continues to violate his continent. I am not directly to blame, but neither am I uninvolved.
I will continue to nurture goodness, continue to challenge oppressive institutions, and work for change. There are hundreds of ways to act, all valid. But I think we need more than action. We need open-hearted grief, turned toward healing and change. If this man—and these institutions—cannot yet grieve, and turn and open, then perhaps I can. Perhaps my prayers and tears, and the tears of all of us, can help in the healing of weary evil doers as well as those who suffer under their hands.
Pamela Haines is a member of Central Philadelphia (Pa.) Meeting.
When I was a harried and exhausted mother of young children, I discovered a song by Joan Baez that spoke of my life experience with such compassion and hope that it always made me cry:
All the weary mothers of the earth will finally rest/We will take their babies in our arms and do our best/When the sun is low upon the field/To love and music they will yield/And the weary mothers of the earth will rest.
I am not alone. I am seen clearly by others, my love and work recognized, real help offered. Something is very right—and I can rest.
Seeing the goodness all around me, centering my life in that goodness, knowing what’s right in the world and putting my energy toward helping it grow has been a good guide. It has certainly made my life better—and probably the lives of those I touch as well. Yet my strategy of focusing exclusively on the good and the possible is feeling a little tight and frayed these days.
In a way, it has always been a protection. I know that there are forces in this world that pull us down, forces that cause us to do unspeakable things, forces that could truly be called evil. I care deeply. I know a great deal about what’s wrong. My choices have been framed by that knowledge. Yet I can’t quite bear to really take it in. I’ve been unwilling to have a life shaped by rage and despair, unwilling to join in charges of evil that seem to just stereotype, blame and separate, unwilling to carry the burden of the world. But I haven’t known another way to interact with, to contain, the depth of what is wrong.
I am no longer satisfied. It seems important enough to stretch to do the unknown and uncomfortable, and I find myself open in a new way to prayer. Somehow, in prayer, the container for the world’s pain becomes big enough. I find myself willing to engage with the evil that I’ve held at arm’s length, that I’ve refused to focus on, all my life. But who to pray for? So much of the evil in our country seems institutional and bureaucratic. It is everywhere—in exploitative and violent amusement, degraded lives, worship of Mammon, polluted environments, militaristic foreign policy—but it’s hard to pin down, too big to get a grip on. It has no name.
Yet I know the name of a man in Africa who has personally done great evil--abducting children into his rebel army, causing girls to be raped, forcing boys to kill, throwing a whole region into chaos--without even the pretext of a positive program.
What does it mean to pray for this man? When I hold someone in prayer, the words that come to mind are “bless and keep,” “uphold and support,” “open and heal.” I know nothing in this man to bless or keep, nothing of his actions to uphold or support.
As I work in the garden, meditating on this puzzle, the mustard seed comes to mind. If there is a mustard seed of goodness in him, then that is what I will love, that is what I will ask to be blessed and kept. There has to be at least that much goodness in him, and I know experientially that a seed can grow. I pray for the mustard seed to be watered and broken open so it can grow. But where will the water come from? My mind turns to the second verse of the song:
And the farmer on his tractor and beside his plow/Will stand there in confusion as we wet his brow/With the tears of all the businessmen/Who see what they have done to him/And the weary farmers of the earth shall rest.
A voice inside me insists that the water will come from “the tears of all the businessmen who see what they have done to him.” There is some intimate connection between evil-doing, oppression, and grief. What if hardness of heart is an indication of the need for tears of grief to soften that hard shell? Does the end of oppression require the grief of those who oppress? Then this man would need to grieve the evil he has done. But perhaps the process could be started by my grieving the evil that had been done to Africa.
We are all caught in the coils of oppression; none of us are innocent outsiders; none of us are free. He is an African man who is doing evil to those around him. I am a white woman whose European ancestors did enormous evil to Africa; an international economy headquartered in my country continues to violate his continent. I am not directly to blame, but neither am I uninvolved.
I will continue to nurture goodness, continue to challenge oppressive institutions, and work for change. There are hundreds of ways to act, all valid. But I think we need more than action. We need open-hearted grief, turned toward healing and change. If this man—and these institutions—cannot yet grieve, and turn and open, then perhaps I can. Perhaps my prayers and tears, and the tears of all of us, can help in the healing of weary evil doers as well as those who suffer under their hands.
Pamela Haines is a member of Central Philadelphia (Pa.) Meeting.
That of Not God also needs love
thanks for the message concerning evil. You speak to my condition and will be helpful on my spiritual journey.
George Fox is said to have addressed the "darkness' this way:
"I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness."
We are then asked to "walk cheerfully over the earth finding that of God in every person" . I say that is way too easy. I find that I need to walk cheerfully over the earth and befriend that of "Not God" in every person. That part that "misses the mark" and is so isolated from the whole that the evil we see in the world emenates from. That is our work and it is something that I need to learn to do better.
Blessings,
Free
God causes bad things to happen ???
As a Christian I am often challenged on why “Your Good God causes bad things to happen to people?”
It’s all well and good for me to right now feel assured that it is not God who is causing these things to happen. My faith is strong today. That might sound very strange limiting “strong faith” to ‘today’ – what about tomorrow, next week, five years from now?
http://justmeintchristian.blogspot.com/2010/07/can-god-do-away-with-evil...
prayer in the darkness
Grieve, and turn, and open. That helps; I'll remember it.
Sometimes I've found it helpful to pray from the places in my own soul that are still driven by evil--not just to pray that I may be put right, but to remember that in my darkness, in my own selfishness, dishonesty, greed, fear,cruelty, I am bound to all the others who are held in the same darkness, just as I'm bound through the Light to all those who commit themselves to God; and to turn my own dark places back toward the light and pray that that turning may also be shared by others who are bound as I am bound.
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