RJ Hamster Your Mother Said, “Look Both Ways!”
Your Mother Said, “Look Both Ways!”
When we first began to venture outside of our homes, walking with a parent or an older sibling we were being taught to look both ways before crossing a street. Look left and then look right before stepping off the curb. That seems like very good advice after witnessing six days of protesting, rioting, looting, torching and creating mayhem in many cities across America.
It might be wise to look in an additional direction as one embarks on the attempt to resolve the conflicts that precipitated the events playing out in America this evening. Some of the issues are very recent, but most are long-simmering.
Saint Bonaventure once wrote, “Anyone who does not turn to the First Principle as a result of such signs is a fool. Therefore open your eyes; alert your spiritual ears; unlock your lips, and apply your heart so that all creatures you may see, hear, praise, love and adore, magnify and honor your God lest the entire world rise up against you.”
We should frame our journey to unravel all the twists, turns and false leads that have become so poignantly visible this past week as a spiritual journey. Saint Bonaventure was a Franciscan and as such was to become the seventh Minister General of the order. It was Bonaventure who postulated that without Christian revelation we are unable reduce reality to a first principle.
Bonaventure reasoned that we have to believe that the logic of the created order is rooted in the self-diffuse goodness of God. That led Bonaventure to claim we cannot talk about reality without talking about God, and we cannot talk about God without talking about good.
Bonaventure would advise us that the leadership role we must assume is to be a self-giver which we more commonly understand as being a servant leader. We must strive for compassionate love and equality of relationships. What rules – is not domination, but love for all creation.
Thus how do we, and our leaders, prepare for the awesome task before us? We can look to Bonaventure and we can look to those who are more contemporary. Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk who was known as a Catholic mystic and thinker. For those who like to pursue such things you might find a work entitled, “No Man Is an Island”, an insightful read.
For a writer of the 21st Century I offer Daniel P. Horan, OFM. Fr. Horan is a Franciscan friar, author, theologian and teacher. Writing about discovering who we are he writes, “The decisions we make, the way we interact with others, the way we treat the environment – all these things flow from who we are in relationship to God.”
It is my prayer that we heed the guidance of these notable thinkers. Failure to do so will mean George Floyd’s tragic death will have gone for naught. We have had too many urban upheavals: Anti-war riots in Chicago, 1968; Rodney King in Los Angeles, 1992; and Michael Brown in Ferguson, 2014. Each of those events produced only palliative actions – no long term resolution.
To Be Continued …
Love, hank
