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I am not sure that I can find words of comfort as I contemplate the far too commonplace violence that erupted again this past weekend.  It is unusual for me to not take a look at the headlines in the morning, but I didn't yesterday.  I didn't learn about the horrific shooting in Australia until Aeneas prayed for the victims.  Immediately my heart hurt.

The rise in violence in our world should give us profound pause.  The rise of anti-semitism should make us stop and be still.  We, as Christians, are children of the God of the Jews.  We are siblings.  And when our sisters and brothers are being slaughtered simply for their faith and culture, simply because the world cannot give up it's scapegoats, we should be alarmed into deep and abiding prayer.

Moments like these often make us angry, sad and susceptible to feelings of hopelessness.  Let me suggest two ways you can act in the face of this utter tragedy.

Tomorrow at 7:30 some of us will gather at the church for the Longest Night service.  Often we think of this service as place for our private or individual grief, and it is.  But it is also a place for us to hold our communal grief.  I will be praying about what unfolded this weekend in Australia and I will be lighting candles in remembrance of the victims and as a signal to our own attempts at peace.  Join us if you can so that as a community we can grieve, pray and hope together.

Another suggestion is quite simple.  Look inward.  Look for the places in your own heart of intolerance, anger, grievances you hold onto and refuse to forgive.  Sadly, these are the seeds within all human beings that, from time to time, erupt into the violence that we see on the news.  We can only tend to our own hearts.  So let us do so and ask God to give us the strength, the courage and the mercy to do so.  May your Christmas journey be one of forgiveness and hope so that our world might be changed.

T.S Eliot wrote his famous poem Ash Wednesday in 1930.  The memory of the First World War was not far away and the shifts in the world were headed in ominous directions.  He was searching for transcendence, struggling in a world that pulled people down into places of darkness.  I leave you with this stanza as a prayer and invitation.  May the stillness God invites us into change us into people who bring more love and hope into this world!

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly

But merely vans to beat the air

The air which is now thoroughly small and dry

Smaller and dryer than the will

Teach us to care and not to care

Teach us to sit still.