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Maya Angelou's poetry is a shining beacon of truth in the murky times.
As Quakers worldwide witnessed the grotesque violation of the Westminster Quaker Meeting space by the Metropolitan police, an act that had not occurred in the living memory of British Quakers, we must double down on our insistence that Quaker houses of worship are inviolable places where the police, the military and government informants are not welcome as enforcers. We must draw a line in the sand about what we will tolerate as the encroachments on human decency continue unabated. Angelou wrote: When we come to it When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean When battlefields and coliseum No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters Up with the bruised and bloody grass To lie in identical plots in foreign soil When the rapacious storming of the churches The screaming racket in the temples have ceased When the pennants are waving gaily When the banners of the world tremble Stoutly in the good, clean breeze Is it so hard to imagine that we are now at an inflection point in American history where the sapling of American democracy is now bent and ready to break. This is not the birches of Robert Frost. This tree is much more fragile. This tree is only able to bend for so long before it will be crippled and twisted forever. What does this have to do with our blessed community? Is politics, the deeply temporal realm of man, not also in the realm of spirit? Should we allow our values (and soon our children) be consumed in the "minstrel show of hate." I would argue that there is a time for quiet and a time for witness (quiet or vocal). The brave and startling truth is that "We, this people", as Angelou wrote "have the power to fashion this earth..." We, this people, on this small and drifting planet Whose hands can strike with such abandon That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness That the haughty neck is happy to bow And the proud back is glad to bend Out of such chaos, of such contradiction We learn that we are neither devils nor divines When we come to it We, this people, on this wayward, floating body Created on this earth, of this earth Have the power to fashion for this earth A climate where every man and every woman Can live freely without sanctimonious piety Without crippling fear When we come to it We must confess that we are the possible We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world That is when, and only when We come to it. And when will we come to it? The hour is getting late. We cannot stand by and wait for the oligarchs' campaign to implode. It won't. In our own spiritual discernment I urge all Quakers to:
For the entire poem of Maya Angelou https://www.best-poems.net/poem/a-brave-and-startling-truth-by-maya-angelou.html ~ Joseph Olejak
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I hear the surf in Palestine sifting through the sand
amidst the scream of missiles and the flinch of metals. Kites once snapped in wind unspooled by children’s hands. Fresh produce is now rare in Gaza’s markets. Meat, chicken, potatoes, yogurt, eggs and fruits are completely gone. Lament the loss while dialing Senator Schumer and Senator Gillibrand complicit in the genocide by shipping contraband bunker busters to Israel instead of water, food, fuel, medical supplies and kitchens to the fringed by the sea Palestinians. Crops and livestock have been decimated, there’s a stout demand for veterinary supplies, what animals will low by the manger, what star will rise in the East, how long will the Menorah’s candles last or when will the Ramadan fast be broken in the already broken evening? Who will play the flutes or read stories to the children, who will dance in the squares? Have they unearthed the railroad in the Gaza strip, repaved its airport, rebuilt her port? Fool pier that boondoggled off the coast shuttled by befuddled Army Corp of engineers, smashed by uncharted seas in untested currents. Clog every road to Gaza with trucks stuffed to the gills with food, President Trump’s number is 202 455 1111 Tuesday –Thursday ten minute waiting time and you get a live person unlike Schumer or Gillibrand. ~ Bob Elmendorf  Photo by Joseph Olejak "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord"
~ Psalm 100:1 I was cleaning out my fathers desk on Saturday. A task that I have assiduously avoided since he passed nearly 10 years ago. The desk was filled with special things my father loved like his Montblanc fountain pen and pencil set and a calendar made out of brass that had the months and dates on little cards that could be changed. I used to love playing with that as a child. The truth is I miss my father and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about him. His words are still with me. A drawer in the desk must have gotten jostled when it was moved months ago and it would not close properly. I pulled the drawer out and found a ball point pen that must've fallen out and jammed the drawer. I pushed it back in and it still wouldn't close. I pulled the drawer out again and stuck my hand in up to my elbow and found a balled up piece of paper crushed into the drawer slide. I pulled it out and immediately noticed the handwriting ... It was my father's penmanship. Here's what it said: Attitude Makes The Difference I believe that the ones we love are never far from us even though their physical bodies have moved on. This was my father speaking to me. I am sure of it. The one thing my father was a master at was recontextualizing. No matter what situation he was faced with he had an uncanny knack of finding the bright side. One of his favorite aphorisms was "what you think about comes about." We are living in a time which could be characterized as dangerous or filled with opportunity. There are forces that are looking to reshape our way of life. We can cower or we can speak up. These forces have always been with us. They are the forces of might makes right. The forces of money and power. But we have a super power -- we can make a joyful noise and raise up the teachings that make people truly great. Love. Dignity. Acceptance. Charity. This day, the inquiry I invite us to be in is this:
Jesus spoke the truth of the WORD to the ROMANS and the PHARISEES. In my way of thinking the Sermon on the Mount was the best embodiment of our values. Let us raise a joyful noise and as John Lewis said "get into some good trouble to redeem the soul of the nation." ~ Joseph Olejak  "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth"
John 1:14 The Christmas story we are so familiar with is the baby Jesus in the manger and adorned by gifts from the Maji. John is offering us another way of looking at the birth of Christ; as an incarnation of spirit into flesh. The word. And not the first time. In John 1:1 we are reminded that the word is God and the world came from the word. Powerful stuff. From a Quaker perspective what appeals to me is that the spirit of Christ in us lives in our word and His word. God made creation and he saw that it was good. The essential goodness of the world is not something apart from God as if spirit and flesh are two separate and distinct things. They are one. And the beauty of the new covenant with humanity is that the word is right there -- ready at hand -- to invoke, the use, to empower and to hold as sacred. There is one caveat ... we have been given free will and it is up to us to embrace it. My query for this Christmas day is this: How can I as a Quaker and a Christian make flesh the word of God in me? Lucky for us we have the practice of integrity to guide us. It is a way to keep us "trued up" to what really matters. As a cyclist this word "trued up" has special meaning for me. When a tire goes out of round a bicycle can easily lose its integrity. And this sense of the word integrity is super helpful. The meaning of whole and complete and in working order. Is my word in working order? Am I operating whole and complete to my word? In the sense of John 1:1 what am I creating in the world with my word? Is it good? Would it be recognized by the God of creation? Yes, powerful stuff. Merry Christmas my fellow human beings. Peace, joy and word of God in you !! ~ Joseph Olejak  "Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil"
~ Isaiah 64: 1-3 On this first week of Advent we ardently seek that God would come down from the heavens and offer up solutions to our problems. Oh that it were so! The word "rend" means to tear. It also means great emotional pain. When I think of "rend" I think of the moment when Christ died on the cross and the curtain that shielded the Holiest of Holies was torn in two. That curtain kept the arc of the covenant from the eyes of the people. The curtain symbolized the separation between God's holy presence and humanity, With the death and resurrection Christs presence is now with us always. No priest is required to intercede for us. If we are looking for a God in the clouds to come down and save us we'd have to look to the burning bush talking to Moses or Abraham being stopped by an angel from sacrificing his son. The symbolism of the rend curtain may offer some guidance on what God might do for us. When was it rend? Why then? If we look at the main teachings of Christ we find:
It is a sad fact, but modern life has made us lazy in spiritual matters. God is not a Facebook meme and God is not sending you a parcel from Amazon with the solution to your problems. Our Query in 2025 ought to be how can I prune away all the noise and begin to hear more clearly the voice of God within. ~ Joseph Olejak  "Where two or more are gathered I too am among you."
~ Math 18:20 When I think of a bulwark I think of massive structures. Giant fortifications and enormous earthen levees come to mind. Towers to keep out threats. Something we build for protection. A wall garrisoned with troops and heavy artillery. Oddly enough levees fail and walls are breached, so what exactly is the bulwark of our spirituality? Some questions that have arisen in this inquiry are:
Our modern age is full of things that former generations didn't have to deal with. In times past there was work, family, god and allegiance to some fiefdom or lord or city-state. Now the attacks on our spiritual body are numerous, pernicious and constant. Two that come to mind are TV and the internet; both of which are Pandora's boxes that deliver a host of attacks deep into our psyche about everything from peer pressure, medical ailments, legal problems, the economy, politics, war, race, and on and on. Most of which cannot be verified and are quite honestly a stream of lies. How many of us are glued to traumatube? These information streams (if you can call them that) also have embedded inside them a horrific idea -- materialism. That somehow the fundamental substance of our nature can be reduced down to the known. Molecules, atoms, and the working of physics. We have been so trained to think (no, far too generous a word) that if we only knew more about prions, quarks, or this or that molecule that science will save us. TRUST THE SCIENCE. The new god. But not everything is reducible to the sum of its parts. This idea is absurd on its face and yet we continue to tear things apart trying to find "THE THING" that is important when the whole is what we ought to be focused on. The conjunction and interplay of the parts. Let's take water for example. Hydrogen and Oxygen separated are explosive and dangerous elements yet together they are essential to life. There is a syzygy at work we don't understand. It is observable and common knowledge but ask a chemist why and they can't really offer an explanation; only abstract theories why things are the way they are. I propose that what holds us together spiritually is community. More than a bulwark. More akin to threads in a mycelial network. It is intelligent beyond our understanding and contains many nodes of knowledge. When two or more are gathered in a spiritual community another being is present. Yes, there is some individual work to be done. For that alignment of the temporal and the spiritual the individual must say "yes" and acknowledge that there is more going on than meets the eye. Once that psychological barrier is breached whole other worlds can open -- and do. ~ Joseph Olejak  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarred_tree#/media/File:Aboriginal_carved_trees,_photographed_by_Henry_King_(ca.1889_and_1894).jpg For the last year I have watched in horror as humanity has inflicted one wound after another on the body of the earth and on certain segments of humanity. The maps of Gaza are a hellscape. https://www.npr.org/2024/10/09/g-s1-27175/israel-hamas-war-gaza-map
I have reflected upon these wounds and prayed often about what can be done to heal them. If healing is even possible. As Quakers we believe in restorative justice and maybe that is the problem ... in the areas where war crimes are being committed there has never been a true reckoning of the parties; only force delivering oppression. The wounds never heal. One thought I've had is about wounds that are bound up too early; they fester and open up again often worse than the original injury. Our political bodies have failed us. By taking sides in conflicts they have caused extreme polarization. In doing so they subvert the natural healing process of conflict and perpetuate it. Like the recent phrase by Robert Work, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, "de-escalation through escalation." It is as if he tore a page out of 1984. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. The wound stays open. Each wound inflicted is another insult that leads to another wound in a perpetual process of hurt, pain, and scarring. In the human body a scar closes a wound and then gradually disappears over time. I cut my hand as a child when a horse I was leading spooked and slammed a barn door on my hand. For many years that scar was a visible reminder of the pain, but also of what I did wrong. Never lead a horse with a lead line wrapped around your hand. It was a lesson. And yet that cicatrix faded over time. I can't even see it today. My point is I had the injury, I felt the pain, I suffered and learned the lesson and now the scar has served its purpose and is gone. But is humanity learning? Or do we just keep believing in the dark fairy tale that might makes right? That somehow we can kill our problems out of existence. That maybe genocide is the answer. The question then arises "where does the genocide stop?" Can any voice become a target of genocide? We could remember the words of Martin Niemöller "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me." —Martin Niemöller If this is the case, we must come to understand that some wounds will never heal and that is a tragedy of untold proportions. I fear that the emotional wounds of war may never heal because the post traumatic stress of those events are burned deeply into the psyche of those who experienced those disasters. The healing that might be available to the next generation is a life without fear of man made disasters. For that we must demand an end to war and remain steadfast in our faith. Christ has given us an assignment to love. We must be as fierce in the completion of that assignment as the warmongers are in adopting an ethos of destruction. It is the only way. In the end all wars end across a conference table. How about we skip the carnage and just get to an agreement? The sooner the better. ~ Joseph Olejak  IMAGE is AI generated from Meta AI using the phrase "rest in peace departed soul. find comfort" I spent the last three weeks supporting my partner through the loss of her mother. This post is about the human journey. A journey all of us will take at some point in our lives.
A few observations: For the dying they are led through a portal to a place we can only imagine. Reports from the portal are few and far between. The forces of nature at some point will take all of us through that door and transform us into something else. An existence we can only imagine, but one that remains far from our understanding -- for those left behind there is the task of living. If we can successfully deal with the pain of loss, living gets easier. For the last three weeks I've been a witness to that process. There are some learnings to share about the left behind. How to honor the dead and ourselves. How to get complete with the loss of a loved one. I wish I had more reports to share about what happens when we cross the veil, but thus far I am still in a place of wonder. When my friend Walter passed away in 2000 he said with his last breath "why didn't anyone tell me this place was so beautiful." FEEL: For starters I'd like to lead with the notion that there is no “toughing out” loss. There are tender places in us that must be honored if we are to move past loss and allow the pain of being separated from the ones we love into something else. There are no formulas for this process, each person is different, but having a good cry is an excellent starting place. If you witness a child deal with loss the very first thing they do is cry. It is the natural reset button for human beings. And there is no shame in being human. Men have a tough time with this. Not enough generosity has been granted to men to show their emotions. There is a cost to stuffing our feelings. The body keeps the score. Unreleased feelings come out in other ways such as physical pain, illness and other emotions. MAKE ROOM FOR A PROCESS: All religions and even secular folks have a process for dealing with loss of a loved one. I know when my father died it was sudden and happened out of state. There was so much to deal with and so little time to organize a service. I deeply regret not having a memorial service for my father. Conversely, when Sharon's mother (Lynn) died they organised three separate events for friends, acquaintances and family. Hundreds of people showed up to share their experience of life with Lynn. I watched as hearts melted. It was as important for them as it was for Sharon's father, Ian, to hear and feel all the love. I also got to see first hand how the pain of loss got soothed and cared for through memories. It was quite beautiful. ORGANIZE NOW FOR WHEN THINGS SETTLE DOWN: The wee hours are when the pinch of loss will be felt the greatest. Make sure you have people around you. If you don't have family nearby then join a club or group so you can get some human interaction. Meals are a great way to feel connected. Friends love to eat and spend time over a meal. It is easier to fall apart than come together, but come together anyway. Routines can help when there's still no purpose. At some point we find our WHY, but till then fake it till you make it. YOUR WHY: Without purpose there is no point to life. Find it. Your why. Yes, but how? That's the small voice. Keep listening. It's there. It might be just a whisper, but keep your ear to the ground. It probably sounds like an inaudible string of something vaguely remembered. Keep on trying to figure it out. Wait? What was that? It sounded familiar. Like something I had long forgotten. Please. Come again? ... ~ Joseph Olejak Pater Noster
I’ve forgotten how I knew it was the night, but approaching footsteps followed by a knock told us he’d come, who turning left, then right, would instruct our souls that could not fly, in flight. The Pater Noster that we’d memorized, he brought in a book to my brother’s bed, and sitting on the wide rail that ran beside, with each sentence he filled his head, until the words took meaning in their tide. And I was next who’d heard the broken prayer, though I kept myself hidden from his point of view, with maybe just a look or two across to my brother and his sayer who held in thought what I was now to do. When the prayer was over and the text was closed, from my walled in bed he rose, ascended the stairs and shut the door, more alone than ever before. ~ Bob Elmendorf |
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