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I’ve done a lot of travelling and reading in the past two days and a lot of thinking in the past five or six weeks.Yesterday I drove 250 miles one way to Auriesville Shrine. I’ll write on more of that later. I got a nice photo today of the sunflowers that grow near the Abbey. I suppose the monks include them in their delicious sunflower bread. There must have been ten acres or more of sunflowers. They were beautiful.

Peace.

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christian, mystics, genesee abbey, ursula king

This lovely poem comes from this month’s Peace and Justice Newsletter of the Secular Franciscan Order.

Prayer for Peace (2003)

O one God of all peoples and nations,

You created the earth and the cosmos,

in their beauty and also in their frailty.

All cultures and religions are on their way to
you,

the origin of all that has been created.

You want all to be for one another not a threat,
but a blessing.

Our one world should be, by your will,

a peaceful home for all.

You chose the Orient to make known to all

your many names.

Abraham is a father in faith for Jews, Muslims,

and Christians.

He listened to your call
in the region between the Euphrates and Tigris,
the present day Iraq.

In a special way, you promised life and future to the old and new People of Israel.

As Christian men and women, we thank you

for our Lord and Brother Jesus Christ.

He is our Peace.

He came to knock down walls and to give to

all, without distinction,

life and a future.

We know ourselves to be in communion with

the Churches of the Orient.

They witness to the Gospel of Jesus,

to the liberating power of his non-violence

and to his Resurrection.

We also pray to you

in unity with all our brothers and sisters of other religions, especially those who have their

origin in the Middle East.

In all of them you instilled the hunger and thirst

for justice and a deep desire for peace.

All are in mourning for the victims of hatred

and violence.

All are called to collaborate in the construction

of a new world.

We, therefore, beseech you:

Have mercy on all the victims and on all the

offenders.

Put an end to the spiral of violence and hatred.

Let all of us, especially those who bear

responsibly,

be ever more convinced that the way to peace

is not that of war and violence,

but of building peace through non-violence and

justice.

Let your peace flow like a river through all our

deserts.

Lord, give us strength and endurance

to pull down the mountains of

misunderstanding,

to fill in the trenches of hatred

and to level the paths towards a more just and a

more peaceful world order.

Let the arms of destruction be laid down soon,

and let the melody of peace and reconciliation

resound throughout your entire creation.

O one God with many names,

make us all instruments of your peace.

(Brother Hermann Schalück, OFM)

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prayer, peace, secular franciscan, ofm

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned before that I am a pilot and here is one of my favorite poems about flying. It was written by an American, John Gillespie Magee, who fought in died in the famous Battle of Britain during World War II.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.
Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds—and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air,
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew.

And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

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pilot, world war 2, poetry

John Bunyan once said, “it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.” So in the past couple of weeks I have been without words and feeling a bit exasperated about all that I have been witnessing on the world stage. Yesterday’s reading from Jeremiah 7:1-11 has awakened the Holy Spirit and I am no longer without words. Part of that reading is,

“Put not your trust in the deceitful words:
This is the temple of the LORD!
The temple of the LORD! The temple of the LORD!”
Only if you thoroughly reform your ways and your deeds;
if each of you deals justly with his neighbor;
if you no longer oppress the resident alien,
the orphan, and the widow;
if you no longer shed innocent blood in this place,
or follow strange gods to your own harm,
will I remain with you in this place,”

The scourge of terrorism is an awful thing. The killing of anyone innocent or not can never be condoned. The scripture says, “vengeance is mine, I will repay says the Lord.” God is the judge not us. No matter how perfect we believe our judgement it is forever flawed. As followers of Christ we are called to be peacemakers not war mongers or war makers. Mahatma Gandhi said, “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind,” and so it does. Therefore our bombs and missiles in Israeli hands are in fact weapons of terror just as much as the Katusha rockets of the Palestinians.

One of the best quotes of the 1960’s and 1970’s was, “fighting for peace is like fornicating for virginity.” It’s a fools errand and like the sage wisdom of the Prophet Jeremiah,

“But here you are, putting your trust in deceitful words to your own loss!
Are you to steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury,
burn incense to Baal,
go after strange gods that you know not,
and yet come to stand before me
in this house which bears my name, and say:
“We are safe; we can commit all these abominations again”?

Pax Vobiscum!

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peace, Jeremiah, war, terrorism

It was really great to reunite with the members of my high school class last night. Now that we are all 50+ we have mellowed a bit and it was an enjoyable evening. There were about 35 couples and some singles there last night. In the last 35 years we’ve lost ten of our classmates to Sister Death and many more to Sister Lack of Communication. Nonetheless, we enjoyed a great meal and an opportunity to see and greet each other. Peace.

I was a bit hasty in my praise of Fedora Core 5. After downloading the updates which included a new kernel version, my Intel 2200 no longer functioned and after a number of starts and stops I’ve reverted to Centos 4.3. There is a lot to be said for stability. Centos is enterprise Linux and though it doesn’t recognize the Intel 2200 out of the box, it is a simple matter of installing the correct firmware and the problem is solved. Fedora Core 5 offers no easy solution to this problem. I’m downloading Fedora Core 6 on Bittorrent right now and later I’ll try it. Peace.

Curiousity killed the cat and satisfaction brought him back. I’m a curious cat and last night I decided to rebuild my laptop with Fedora Core 5. I downloaded the ISO with Azureus from Bittorrent. This morning and afternoon I’ve been rebuilding the computer. I’ve used many version of Linux and written about some of them here, but I’m still basically a Red Hat guy. I know it’s a personal thing, but Fedora is still my favorite distro. I like Ubuntu and I’ve used Centos for some special projects. I’ve had some experience with Suse and Mandrake, but I keep coming back to Fedora. I’ll tell you one thing I don’t like about Fedora 5. I don’t like the inability to use the ‘right-mouse-button’ to launch a terminal window in Gnome. Why did they change that. I thought that was default in Gnome. Oh well, I’ll have more to write about my experience in the days and weeks ahead but there are many postives with Fedora and it feels like coming home now that it’s installed.

Fedora didn’t recognize my Intel 2200BG wireless card out of the box like Dapper Drake did. I had to install the IPW2200 rpm to see the wireless network. You’d think it would, but that’s characteristic of all the Red Hat and Fedora distros I’ve seen. I also had trouble with Flash installing properly until I Googled my way to this article. Follow the advice on reconfiguring SELinux. That solves the Flash problem.

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linux, fedora, Intel 2200 bg

Tonight I’ll be reunited with many of my high school classmates. It’s our 35th class reunion. I’m looking forward to it. We graduated from high school in war time. Vietnam was grinding up human lives and nearly all of my classmates went to college. Many went to avoid the draft. Some volunteered for military service. It was a crazy time. I was thinking of one of those who joined the US Navy right out of high school. He won’t be there tonight. He died about 15 or 20 years ago. Monte Austin and I were in Boy Scouts together and later in the US Navy together. Our paths crossed many times during our lives. One of the other people who won’t be there tonight is Buddy Gethicker. He died tragically during our senior year in an automobile accident. Bud was two years younger than the rest of us and was filled with an enthusiasm that was unparalleled. I can still remember him painting his arm green and cheering our basketball team against rival Springville High School.

In June of 1971 over two-hundred of us walked across the stage. We were full of hopes and dreams like most high school graduates are. Tonight we gather in a local restaraunt not far from the stage we crossed to celebrate our lives and those memories. I’m grateful for the last thirty-five years and for the memories of our class. Peace.

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class reunion, 1971

Think differently. Dare to make a difference in the society around you. There are three kinds of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who wonder what happened. Live boldy and make a difference.

Yesterday was the 33rd anniversary of my father’s death. There were lots of memories and lots of things I wish that I’d have said to my Dad had I known the future. He was only 46 when he died. That seemed old to me then and young to me now. On my way to the chapel I said a prayer for my Dad and hoped that he was enjoying heaven, wherever heaven is. I attended Mass yesterday afternoon and even got to distribute the “blood of Christ” at the Eucharist. There was something special about being a part of communion on that special day. There was for that instant and that hour a communion with my Dad and a closeness with my eternal father. Deo gratias.