Peace? Not on the Web, on TV, or the news? How about . . . in your heart?

And so, peace.

You won't find it on the streets, where criminal illegal aliens -- too many of them murderers, rapists, human traffickers, drug cartel operatives -- hide behind hordes of victimized innocents, families seeking better lives, driven by desperation and the winks and lure of corrupt American business and politics to skirt immigration law, as all are belatedly being rounded up.

Blame can go back generations, greed crosses political and corporate lines and national borders. But the faces of victims are still haunting, and this gallery is seemingly endless. Justice is not only not balanced, but it is messy, and painful, beyond understanding.

Past political failures in our nation's capital, while primarily of one party and presidents who spent their terms putting off the inevitable push back on radical islamic apocalyptic visions of nuclear explosions over Israel, have been met with what could be the beginning of a planetary end game -- our nation's attempt this weekend to destroy Iran's nuclear arms dreams.

We pray, hope, wonder if the end game will be met with Iran folding its mushroom aces. . . or if the horror has just begun.

"For when they shall say, 'Peace and safety,' then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child . . .,'" is a verse (1 Thessalonians 5:3 KJV) I recall from my childhood Bible study. (End Times verses, often out of context, were a big thing in Pentecostal Fundamentalist 'The End is Near' theology).

Well, we'll see. Fear makes headlines better than hope, so in a way, it makes sense it only took minutes for a particular news organization to report rumors that maybe Russia would give nuclear warheads to Iran! 

And of course, they also reported that with the Biden administration having let in millions of unvetted illegal immigrants -- thousands believed to be on terrorist lists -- we can expect "sleeper cell" attacks.

Last bit might be more likely, I don't know. Hope neither is, but we have had more than a few of those so-called "lone wolf" attacks over the past weeks, months, and years.

So, back to that peace thing.

Not on TV. Not on the radio. Not during rush hour on "road rage" plagued freeways. Locally, not in our neighborhood parks during community celebrations -- we've had a number of deadly gang-related shootings here in Utah, and during a "peaceful protest" downtown in Salt Lake City.

Peace, then in your heart? 

Tougher and tougher to find.

But still possible.

A walk along a forest trail, hand-in-hand with your loved one. The water cascades from streams nearby, bees float amid flowers purple, gold, orange, gold, silky white, emerald, and nestled in wreaths of green. The air is filled with perfume of pollen and pine; sunlight and shadow dance thrown tree limbs and rock.

Or, a candle is lit, bee's wax slowly descending its shaft as wisps of incense rise in a smoky circuit to saintly icons on the wall. Your prayers, whispered at first, are swallowed in silence echoed in your mind, and eternity.

Peace, and your focus finds the stars.

beauty, steps, breaths, and ancient prayers -- perspective, and peace

Here, I've learned, is what to do if you wake up in a funk today.

I recently did, and decided to follow my parish priest’s (Fr. Paul Truebenbach’s) recent prescriptions for depression: prayer, exercise, focus on needs of others.

So, there I was, in the early morning trek through the icons of nature, the words of the Trisagion and Creed on my lips, as I hiked through and around forest trails, flowers, wildlife, and streams around the Wheeler Farm Historic Site.

For me, the beauty, steps, breaths, and ancient prayers culminated in perspective, and peace.

Faith: A choice, a yearning to be more than an evolutionary dead-end

Take an evangelical, fundamentalist preacher's kid and mix him with a liberal arts education. 

Season him with more than a few decades of living, and you either come up with an agnostic, a metaphysical schizophrenic, or a believer, stripped down the basics of his faith.

I confess to, at times, flying like a confused, sometimes angry or at least disheartened moth, too close to the flames of the first two fates. The journey to faith — my own faith, not necessarily that of my parents — has been occasionally exhilarating, often painful, and all too human.

It has been, philosophically, an eclectic odyssey. That likely was inevitable, considering my History and Journalism double major and a minor in Psychology, followed by a career in journalism (a petri dish for cynicism, as professions go).

Ultimately, it is human nature that convinces me my faith — albeit skinned of what I concluded were doctrinal and theological assertions created not by an infinite God, but by finite human minds — makes more sense than pure secular humanism.

I could (but don't worry, I won't) write reams on why I find this so. Let a couple observations suffice:

— The fact that our species has not ceased warring with itself since it began, committing genocide on ever-larger scales, makes me bitterly laugh at the idea we are the pinnacle of sentient evolution on Earth. 

 

We may boast how much more sophisticated and civilized our high-tech, educated society is now compared to our stick-wielding, tree- and cave-dwelling ancient ancestors, but we continue to produce the same rotten fruit.

It's still about territory and resources, and who has the right — or might — to claim them. And since such brutal calculus always makes our "better angels" wince, we still use politics, religion, culture and racism as excuses and justification for dehumanizing and dismissing the Other.

— Yet, we desire to be more. I would argue that we were created for more, but are broken. Despite all the pain and madness humankind inflicts on itself and its planet, goodness persistently bubbles up within individuals, and reform movements. 

Changes for the better, history teaches us, are as finite as our bodies . . . yet we continue to reach down to the fallen with one hand, even as we bludgeon our enemies with the other.

So, faith. Because without it, without the saving grace of our Maker, we will remain stuck, either as an evolutionary dead end, or a creation to be ultimately redeemed, reborn and perfected.

I prefer to believe the latter.

Memorial Day: Only the names of our wars and the victims' faces have changed

Memorial Day.

 This time, every year, I am once more 17, a pallbearer at the military funeral of my childhood friend, Lee Olemacher.

 Lee, a year ahead of me at Cheney High School, was drafted. The Vietnam War was supposed to be "winding down." The "Vietnamization" of the war, the White House called it. Our boys soon to come home while their boys shouldered the responsibility of defense.

 Sound familiar? Maybe we should call it "Afghanistanization," which may work better than the "Iraqization" of our wars, which has left a violent, sectarian, divided mess.

 But nonetheless, that autumn day in 1972 we laid Lee to rest in a flag-draped coffin, Taps were played, the honor guard fired the empty, somber salute. A folded flag was given to a mother grieving for her only child.

 Lee was a rare innocent, who took simple pleasure in a smile, a rough pat on the back, teaching kids to play baseball as a Little League coach. 

 Forty year ago, now. Had he lived what could he have accomplished? How many lives touched, enriched? I am almost 60, a graying, aging man with memories, good and bad, sweet and bitter. Lee is forever young, we'll never know what he may have become.

 Since Lee, tens of thousands more American men and women have died in service to their country. A new generation of maimed and wounded -- physically, mentally, spiritually -- come back to our shores.
Forty years, and still we war, still we hate, still we thing violence would serve the good, or we are forced into violence to meet violence . . . and the cycle goes on. 

What version of God or gods, ideology, political system or economic advantage is worth the blood we have shed, or been forced to exact in return from those who shed blood?

When will be beat our swords into plowshares and learn war no more?

Happy Memorial Day? Rather, I wish for us a Contemplative Memorial Day, and the commitment to work for peace, love and the dignity of our brothers and sisters one life, one family, one community, one city, one state, one nation, one planet at a time.

God bless, and empower us all to dream of, and help make better times.