May oh eleven

Looking like she came straight from heaven

Without Love

If there is love, there is hope to have real families, real brotherhood, real equanimity, real peace. If the love within your mind is lost, if you continue to see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education you have, no matter how much material progress is made, only suffering and confusion will ensue.

- The Dalai Lama

Strength to Love

One day we will learn that the heart can never be totally right if the head is totally wrong. Only through the bringing together of head and heart – intelligence and goodness – shall man rise to a fulfillment of his true nature.

- Martin Luther King Jr., from Strength to Love, a collection of Dr. King's sermons.

When Violence Kills Itself

I’ve always heard the old adage, “violence is a weapon of the weak.” But after events like the Virginia Tech massacre, it’s easy to think that violence has ultimate power. After all, we’ve learned history through the lens of war. And we read the news through acts of violence rather than the hidden acts of love that keep hope alive.

But there is a common thread in many of the most horrific perpetrators of violence that begs our attention – they kill themselves. Violence kills the image of God in us. It is a cry of desperation, a weak and cowardly cry of a person suffocated of hope. Violence goes against everything that we are created for – to love and to be loved – so it inevitably ends in misery and suicide. When people succumb to violence it ultimately infects them like a disease or a poison that leads to their own death. Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus with a violent kiss, ends his life by hanging himself with a noose. After his notorious persecutions, the Emperor Nero’s story ends as he stabs himself. Hitler passed out suicide pills to all his heads of staff, and ended his life as one of the most pitifully lonely people to walk the earth. We see the same in the case of Columbine, the 2007 Amish school shootings, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and this recent Virginia Tech massacre – each ends in suicide.

Violence is suicidal. Suicide rates of folks in the military and working the chambers of death row execution are astronomical; they kill themselves as they feel the image of God dying in them.
It is in moments like these violent times that grace looks so magnificent. It is in the shadow of such violence, as was the case after the Amish school shooting, that the victims' grace to the murderer’s family shines so brightly. Sometimes all the peacemakers need to do is practice revolutionary patience, and steadfast hope – for the universe bends toward justice, and the entire Christian story demonstrates the triumph of love. And it makes it even more scandalous to think of killing someone who kills – for they, more than anyone in the world, need to hear that they are created for something better than that.

I am reminded of a letter I got from someone currently on death row. After reading some of my writing, he wrote to me to share that he was a living testimony against the myth of redemptive violence (the idea that violence can bring redemption or peace). This fellow on death row told me that the family of his victim argued that he should not be killed for what he did, that he was not beyond redemption, and so he did not receive the death penalty for his crime. “That gave me a lot of time to think about grace,” he said. And he became a Christian in prison. Another story of scandalous love and grace.

So in these days after Easter, even as we see the horror of death, may we be reminded that in the end love wins. Mercy triumphs. Life is more powerful than death. And even those who have committed great violence can have the image of God come to life again within them as they hear the whisper of love. May the whisper of love grow louder than the thunder of violence. May we love loudly.

Shane Claiborne

what i got.



i've been told i'm worthwhile yet still not enough,
and in endless nights of restless dreams
i think, and dream of mislead touch.
i flaunt this fear like the scars on my heart,
undecided in action, writhing in unspent words.
i don't know to smile at the beauty
or shrink from it's accompanied lust.
Like the flower stem stripped from it's petals,
we're devoid of identity for "loves me, loves me nots".
and in the end, i've begun again
rebirthed to the Earth from which i come.

To treat you right and maintain promises of well kept hearts
is the purpose of my existence in your life.
and still the unexplainable tensions of isoloation death
breeds fear and spite and manic strife within.
the dream is more than matching; its something you've defined.
Little knowing, self effacing interest oiled machine.

hearts and rules made for broken,
watch the pebbles trip.
i throw my soul into the wind
and pray for angel's grip.

the mountain top which i've seen, means more when i sit below.
hidden in the valley's of moments of haunting memories
which you ask me to live without?
How to give and take and care and slave
for unverified affection vowed,
could be the secret to your pacification
my gifts and soul and worth, raw exposure doubt.
You'll live in memories cherished as gifts
and all the "want you's" of moments past.
and no matter what is said or done
every rare gem of you stays in me 'til breath last.