Last week in these observations I asked I really do not have many answers except to Love your friends and well as your enemies, just consistently and persistently ‘do the right thing’ and keep on speaking truth to power no matter what the consequences or how weak a messenger one may be.

Maybe there are no answers. The first shall be last, the stone rejected by builders will be corner stone, meek shall inherit the earth, the poor are blessed, the weak shall be strong and the strong weak, the mighty will fall down and the weak will rise, the poor are blessed and rich condemned, the more you give the more you get are all paradoxes of life that have no easy answers.
My deceased son Peter and my garden have taught me a lot about paradoxes. To my son life was a paradox: what was important mean little and something little was powerful. In the garden it is often the smallest seed that produces the most fruitful plant.

But being consistent and persistent at living the Gospel as, one’s conscience tells one to do, can be very tiring. When I am doing a good job at it I can hardly get up in the morning. When I falter, false energy keeps me awake. The only real test if I am doing the right thing I can find is not how good I feel about something but how calm and natural I feel about it. If agitating others agitates me inside than I must question it. But if I am moved by the spirit when I talk and act there is calm inside.

I starting to realize what we call nonviolence, protesting, accepting all opinions, petitions, writing emails and even some actions of civil disobedience is just more noise keeping the message confusing? Unless people have ears to hear and eyes to see we are just spinning our wheels in this kind of nonviolence in word and actions.

What I call “creative nonviolence”, the message of the Gospel, does not appeal as much to reason as to the heart. It starts with our own hearts and just radiates out and finds a community on fire with living Gospel message.

We need new tactics and strategies to go with the creative nonviolence of the Gospel, ways of proclaiming in word and deed, the Gospel nonviolent love. Some of us are brainstorming on tactics and strategies. All I know so far we need to creative, willing to endure suffering and insults and support each other. Some say we need to build a new way of life inside the crumpling shell of the present way of life. Until we can do this creatively we need to throw wrenches into the well oiled machine of present to slow it down. We cannot stop decline of empire but only slow it down so we are ready when the empire falls. A friend of mine wears a button that says it all: “The Meek are getting ready.”

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