Child wounded in bombing
of Gaza
The Gospel read this morning at our religious service was the one in which the apostle Thomas missed an earlier appearance of the Resurrected Jesus and said he would have to touch and feel the wounds of Jesus to believe he had resurrected from the dead. Jesus appeared to his disciples again and this time Thomas was present. Jesus told Thomas to touch and feel the wounds in his hands and side. Thomas did and became a believer.
I like this Gospel story because it reminds me how often we doubt the presence and power of God, but when tragedy strikes, when we feel and touch the wounds of life, we suddenly become believers. Sometimes it takes some direct experience of pain and suffering, or at times by solidarity with others, to grasp the significance of our faith in the resurrected Jesus, to believe that dying and death will end in resurrection and new life.
After being stuck in traffic driving a friend to visit his mother in an assisted living place outside of Milwaukee I had a chance to work in the garden and get some Soil and Sun therapy. The frustration of being delayed in traffic was released in working with soil under the sun. The Soil and Sun therapy is healing for the wounds of daily life.
I received another email today from a good, well-intentioned ‘peace liberal’ trying to avoid holding our Congressperson accountable for war spending. Again this person misrepresented our actions to hold the congressperson accountable and then attacked the misrepresentation. I have answered these false accusations over and over again and probably should just let this one go. However, these wounds of the truth must be challenged, however be it in a loving and respectful way.
What I find most difficult about these ‘liberal peace’ persons who try to justify war spending by liberal politicians or tax cuts harming the poor is that they do not seem to feel the wounds of war and of neglect of the poor. When we support war spending and allow our congresspersons to support more war spending and neglect persons in need we are causing wounds and deaths to our brothers and sisters in the military, in Iraq, Afghanistan and the USA. Real people are suffering real wounds. Like Thomas we need to touch and feel the wounds to believe.
Technology and mass communications have, in my opinion, desensitized us. Making a congressperson publicly accountable for voting for an 82 billion supplementary war spending bill is called showing “a lack of public decency.” The insanity of violence and war seems to be the new norm for sanity.
I suffer a curse and blessing that when I am true to myself I feel a small part of the pain, death and destruction that war spending and neglect of those in need causes. To avoid touching the wounds I sometimes get angry, get busy hoping the wounds will go away, or like many persons do, just ignore the wounds. But like Thomas all these methods do not walk and the only thing to do is to touch the wounds and believe in the hope of the resurrection and new life.
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