By Sister Patricia McCann

There is a great deal of flag waving and patriotic speech making these days. Some of it is understandable. It is part of a people’s way of putting some sense and meaning into almost overwhelming events: the death of young people in war, the decisions made by national leaders that will shape our future, the feeling of vulnerability that history changing events evoke.

Some of this patriotic surge is downright scary, though. It recalls other times in history when a nation’s patriotism gave way to unbridled nationalism. For people of faith, it is important to be as honest about the destructive potential of patriotism as to celebrate its good.

The dark side of patriotism usually emerges in times of national crisis, particularly ones that threaten our sense of power. At best, this manifests itself in a boorish “America is No. 1″ kind of boasting. At worst, it portrays the nation itself as the object of worship, the one whose actions are above judgment: “My country right or wrong.”

In such a framework, national behavior turns aggressive and imperialistic, and national self-interest becomes an absolute self-justifying principle. Patriotism is a moral minefield in this milieu, clouding our judgment about what is the good thing.

That complexity does not free us to abdicate moral judgment, nor does it absolve us from holding ourselves and our nation, citizens and leaders, accountable for the common good. There are guidelines to assist us in this.

Patriotism as virtue can manifest itself in a variety of ways:
* Concern for the common good of one’s country coupled with international collaboration to seek the general good for the human family;
* Efforts to build a human society based on respect for God-given human rights, justice and integrity;
* Service to one’s neighbor in building the good society;
* Willingness to accept responsibility for doing one’s part (i.e., voting, paying taxes, defending the peace, etc.).

Patriotism becomes vicious, however, when:
* We judge it our nation’s right to dominate other nations;
* We bury moral considerations under self-interest in the desire to be No. 1 in international relations;
* We see the nation itself as the sole measure of right and wrong;
* We legitimize use of the nation’s power and wealth to subjugate others.

Faith challenges us to be socially responsible people. This requires that we look to a wider horizon than our own backyard. In the days prior to the Iraq war, Pope John Paul II and the American bishops urged U.S. leaders to use other methods than a preemptive war to resolve the issues, but their pleas fell on deaf ears. How do we now responsibly pick up the pieces and assist in building a more peaceful Mideast? Or will we simply wave the flags and rejoice in the dominant role the United States can play in the world hoping that it helps to assure the continuance of our affluent lifestyle?

Have we succumbed to the dark side of patriotism, thereby blinding ourselves to an objective assessment of international reality or of our own goodness?

Yes, it is virtuous to love our country, but we ought not love it more than we love the fundamental good that our faith places before us: God, humanity, justice and peace. To turn off moral judgment under the guise of patriotism is to sow the seeds of destruction for the very principled integrity upon which our love of country is based.

Sister Patricia McCann is a member of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. This essay is excerpted from their web site here.

By Dorothea Mackellar

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror—
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die—
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold—
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A willful, lavish land—
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand—
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Source: 1885-1968, Australian poet

By Jean Vanier

We are a eucharistic people which means that we are a people of thanksgiving, people who realize that we are prodigal sons and daughters. We are not called to judge or to condemn but to be instruments of life, to give life and to receive life.

Source: From Brokenness to Community

By Elton Trueblood

Christianity gives much to its adherents, but it is always perverted when it is presented as a success story. The gospel may do a great many things for us, but is deeply misunderstood if it is interpreted merely as a psychological instrument for our help. It is, instead, a relationship which begins with a dangerous and uncalculating commitment.

Source: Confronting Christ

By Parker Palmer

The wilderness constantly reminds me that wholeness is not about perfection…. I have been astonished to see how nature uses devastation to stimulate new growth, slowly but persistently healing her own wounds. Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness—mine, yours, ours—need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life.

Source: A Hidden Wholeness

By E. B. White

I have no heroes, no saints. I do have a tremendous respect for anyone who does something extremely well, no matter what. I would rather watch a really gifted plumber than listen to a bad poet. I’d rather watch someone build a good boat than attend the launching of a poorly constructed play. My admirations are wide-ranging and are not confined to arts and letters.

Source: The New Yorker

Last week Kayla was at a writing workshop in Minnesota facilitated by Eugene Peterson, so we decided to offer an excerpt of an interview with Peterson by Christianity Today managing editor Mark Galli, published in March 2005:

Many people assume that spirituality is about becoming emotionally intimate with God.

That’s a naive view of spirituality. What we’re talking about is the Christian life. It’s following Jesus. Spirituality is no different from what we’ve been doing for two thousand years just by going to church and receiving the sacraments, being baptized, learning to pray, and reading Scriptures rightly. It’s just ordinary stuff.

This promise of intimacy is both right and wrong. There is an intimacy with God, but it’s like any other intimacy; it’s part of the fabric of your life. In marriage you don’t feel intimate most of the time. Nor with a friend. Intimacy isn’t primarily a mystical emotion. It’s a way of life, a life of openness, honesty, a certain transparency.

Doesn’t the mystical tradition suggest otherwise?

One of my favorite stories is of Teresa of Avila. She’s sitting in the kitchen with a roasted chicken. And she’s got it with both hands, and she’s gnawing on it, just devouring this chicken. One of the nuns comes in shocked that she’s doing this, behaving this way. She said, “When I eat chicken, I eat chicken; when I pray, I pray.”

If you read the saints, they’re pretty ordinary people. There are moments of rapture and ecstasy, but once every 10 years. And even then it’s a surprise to them. They didn’t do anything. We’ve got to disabuse people of these illusions of what the Christian life is. It’s a wonderful life, but it’s not wonderful in the way a lot of people want it to be.

Yet evangelicals rightly tell people they can have a “personal relationship with God.” That suggests a certain type of spiritual intimacy.

All these words get so screwed up in our society. If intimacy means being open and honest and authentic, so I don’t have veils, or I don’t have to be defensive or in denial of who I am, that’s wonderful. But in our culture, intimacy usually has sexual connotations, with some kind of completion. So I want intimacy because I want more out of life. Very seldom does it have the sense of sacrifice or giving or being vulnerable. Those are two different ways of being intimate. And in our American vocabulary intimacy usually has to do with getting something from the other. That just screws the whole thing up.

It’s very dangerous to use the language of the culture to interpret the gospel. Our vocabulary has to be chastened and tested by revelation, by the Scriptures. We’ve got a pretty good vocabulary and syntax, and we’d better start paying attention to it because the way we grab words here and there to appeal to unbelievers is not very good.

This corruption of the word spirituality even in Christian circles—does it have something to do with the New Age movement?

The New Age stuff is old age. It’s been around for a long time. It’s a cheap shortcut to—I guess we have to use the word—spirituality. It avoids the ordinary, the everyday, the physical, the material. It’s a form of Gnosticism, and it has a terrific appeal because it’s a spirituality that doesn’t have anything to do with doing the dishes or changing diapers or going to work. There’s not much integration with work, people, sin, trouble, inconvenience.

I’ve been a pastor most of my life, for some 45 years. I love doing this. But to tell you the truth, the people who give me the most distress are those who come asking, “Pastor, how can I be spiritual?” Forget about being spiritual. How about loving your husband? Now that’s a good place to start. But that’s not what they’re interested in. How about learning to love your kids, accept them the way they are?

You make spirituality sound so mundane.

I don’t want to suggest that those of us who are following Jesus don’t have any fun, that there’s no joy, no exuberance, no ecstasy. They’re just not what the consumer thinks they are. When we advertise the gospel in terms of the world’s values, we lie to people. We lie to them, because this is a new life. It involves following Jesus. It involves the Cross. It involves death, an acceptable sacrifice. We give up our lives.

It involves a kind of learned passivity, so that our primary mode of relationship is receiving, submitting, instead of giving and getting and doing. We don’t do that very well. We’re trained to be assertive, to get, to apply, or to consume and to perform.

This impatience to leave the methods of Jesus in order to get the work of Jesus done is what destroys spirituality, because we’re using a non-biblical, non-Jesus way to do what Jesus did. That’s why spirituality is in such a mess as it is today.

One test I think is this: Am I working out of the Jesus story, the Jesus methods, the Jesus way? Am I sacrificing relationship, personal attention, personal relationship for a shortcut, a program so I can get stuff done? You can’t do Jesus’ work in a non-Jesus way and get by with it—although you can be very “successful.”

One thing that I think is characteristic of me is I stay local. I’m rooted in a pastoral life, which is an ordinary life. So while all this glitter and image of spirituality is going around, I feel quite indifferent to it, to tell you the truth. And I’m somewhat suspicious of it because it seems to be uprooted, not grounded in local conditions, which are the only conditions in which you can live a Christian life.

The author of over 30 books, including the contemporary translation of the Bible called The Message, Eugene Peterson was the pastor of Christ our King Church in Bel Air, Maryland, for 35 years.

By William Stafford

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

Source: The Way It Is, New & Selected Poems

By Richard Rohr

Jesus didn’t want his community to ‘have’ a social ethic; he wanted it to ‘be’ a social ethic. Their very way of relating was to be an affront to the system of dominance and power; it was to name reality in a new way. They were to live in a new symbolic universe. This radical idea is given in a simple clue found throughout the New Testament: Jesus’ presence with others at table.

Source: Jesus’ Plan for a New World

By Bruce Larson

I don’t happen to think the Risen Christ promised to be quantitatively more present with two or three people than with one–or that he is present in a special way. But I am convinced he means that if I choose to live out my Christian life alone, there are great limitations to what God can say or do or be in my life…. But if I have chosen to be accountable to a few people, to meet with them and talk about life as I see God unfolding it to me, then God has a chance to hold up a mirror and show me who I am.

Source: unknown