The Stones Themselves ...

If these were silent, the stones themselves would cry out loud ...

Witness for peace at Lafayette Park in front of the White House. Sunday, Sept. 16, 6:00 p.m.

A liturgy of peacemaking including the laying of more than 4,000 stones at the gates to the White House representing the Iraq War dead. Their voices have been silenced; the stones themselves will bear witness.

The time has come to break silence!!

"Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. ... Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr. "A Time to Break Silence"

This gathering is being convened by a group of metro-DC area clergy and laity in response to the call to commitment from the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq -- the group that put together the peace witness at the National Cathedral last March. I hope some of you can join us in front of the White House on the 16th. Peace. See listing.

The Way of Doubt

Since we just marked the 10-year anniversary of the death of Princess Di, I reckon we just marked the same for Mother Theresa. In one of those coincidences of time that almost make believe in "God-the-body-snatcher," two of the most recognizable women of the age died on the same day.
It struck me at the time that so many people so publicly and emotionally mourned the death of a woman they wanted to be like but, by dent of commoner's birth, could not be, while a relative few were so moved by the death of a woman whom they could certainly have been like but, by dent of culture, would never choose to be.
Now, as the loud remembrances of Dianna's death are marked by the publication of check-out line picture books, Mother Theresa is remembered through her own words of deep doubt -- again, an all too human response to her own calling and her own faith.
The way of faith and doubt remains open to us all; the way of royalty -- not so much.