Saint Francis for President

SAINT FRANCIS FOR PRESIDENT

The odds for the United States don’t look good right now. Distrust, disdain, and mean spiritedness are the order of the day, regularly displayed and encouraged by the new president. Greed and aggressive corporate irresponsibility rule the incoming Cabinet. The stakes could not be higher.

I can’t imagine how compassion, justice, and rational dialogue will ever make a come-back. And I don’t see how one person can make a mite of difference, no matter how much we rally and write and call and donate. I’m down.

Pondering a Saint

This morning, I made an altar on my dining table in preparation for the upcoming Lenten season.

Lenten altar

While I created, I got to pondering Saint Francis of Assisi. I guess you could call Francis one of my spiritual mentors. On my altar is a plastic statue of the saint that I bought with my allowance when I was ten, an icon of the Saint Francis Prayer that my brother gave me, a tau cross that Francis used as his seal, and a sweet snail shell that I picked up at the Saint Damiano convent in Assisi where Francis felt his call from God.

I got to wondering what Saint Francis might have to teach us today.

Radically Countercultural

I recently preached a sermon about gentleness and described Saint Francis as the embodiment of gentleness and humility.

He’s also a good illustration of how one person following a simple call can make a difference in the world.

Saint Francis lived 800 ago in Italy. He grew up wealthy and privileged and became a powerful soldier and a knight. But because of some crushing circumstances that led him to Christ, he rejected all that and instead adopted a gentler way of being, a life of absolute poverty, service, and simplicity. This lifestyle was radically countercultural amidst the violence and aggression of medieval times.

Today he’s known as the patron saint of animals and the environment because he saw no dividing line between himself and the natural world. He rejected the prevailing Christian idea that things on earth were bad and ugly, and only “heavenly things up above” were holy.

He showed absolute reverence and gentleness for every creature and even inanimate things because he believed that each contained divine mystery that he couldn’t possibly understand. It was all God’s creation, all good, and all due respect.

Francis was way ahead of his time. Imagine if more people over these 800 years had adopted his gentle and respectful stance towards the earth and its inhabitants instead of giving way to our insatiable appetites. We would not be in the environmental crisis that we’re in, that’s for sure. We wouldn’t have mass extinctions, we wouldn’t be blowing the tops off mountains or spewing toxics and radioactivity into the air and water.

Radical Compassion

Francis spent his life serving people who were oppressed and neglected by society. He tenderly cared for outcast lepers, and he sold all his goods and used the money to buy food for poor people (his father briefly imprisoned him in their basement after he started selling the family’s stuff).

Francis saw no dividing lines; he embraced everyone and saw no one as “the other.” His friends said that he was willing to be martyred for the sake of unity and peace, when he traveled to Egypt during the crusades to try to negotiate a peace with the Muslims. He walked right through the bloody battleground and because of his bold but gentle courage, the Muslim Sultan welcomed him instead of killing him. He was later sent back to Italy under Muslim protective guard.

The humble feet of a servant: Detail of Saint Francis statue in Assisi

Gentleness as an Act of Resistance

Following in the radical, nonviolent footsteps of Jesus, Francis stood up to the abusive power structures of his time by showing a different path of humility, kindness, and compassion. His Franciscan order thrives to this day, still focused on simplicity and compassionate service.

Such gentleness is a powerful act of resistance these days. It’s subversive in the face of terror and outrage, as was Francis’s vulnerability towards the Muslims and his rejection of the church’s violent crusade. This may be just what America needs to beat the odds and end the cycle of distrust and fear.

Stand up, fight back. But with love.

“The nonviolent approach does not immediately change the heart of the oppressor. It first does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives them new self-respect; it calls up resources of strength and courage they did not know they had.”

Dr. Martin Luther King

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Make America Simple Again

The man-child president’s supporters mean all manner of things when they chant “Make America great again,” some as obvious as, “Get all these Mexicans out of my 7-11 parking lot,” and some more complicated, entailing tangled ideas of dark global conspiracies and nefarious plots by NBC and CNN.

My hunch is that many of these people — my fellow Americans whom I cannot understand no matter how much I argue with them on Twitter — just want to return to a simpler time.

A time when it was easier to maintain the illusion of control in your life.

• A time when you turned on the TV and there were only four channels and you knew the four newscasters by name and they were all trustworthy white men;
• a time before the world was complicated by all those international agreements and organizations with acronyms that don’t tell you who they are or what they do;
• a time before electronics began running our lives, adding even more incomprehensible acronyms like USB and URL and HTML to confuse us;
• a time when a man could open up the hood of his car and know where everything was;
• a time before kids took semesters abroad and went far away to college and came home for Thanksgiving staring into their phones and declaring that they weren’t going to church with you on Sunday. 

Now there’s a man you could trust

Rebellion Against Reality

I get it. I do. Life is very complicated now. I feel out of control most of the time.

I remember that simpler time, and you are right — it was easier.

I understand why you rebel against “experts” who talk about ridiculous, incomprehensible things like humans changing the weather, for Christ’s sake! And I get why you reject the idea of being “politically correct.” It means you need to pay attention to other people who aren’t like you, and listen to (and care about) their experiences. Even though you were here first and they should learn to speak English. Why can’t we just call a maid a maid and a trash man a trash man and a retarded person retarded and a colored person colored?

There are too many voices, too many opinions, too many options. Too many uppity women marching around in pink pussy hats, and you just don’t understand how they can act like that and say those terrible things.

How can they say those terrible things??

Focus, Deep Breaths

So here is something simple to remind you of the days when you thought America was great, only you didn’t know it then but you sure do now.

Just focus on the Bible. Keep it simple. Take deep breaths.

Here are two verses to meditate on. Oh, no, wait. Not meditate, that sounds kinda Buddhist or something. 

Just *think* about them. Maybe pray. Perhaps they will stir in you an image of what America *could* be.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.   (Galatians 5:22)

 

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.

(Matthew 25:25-36)

 

** A disclaimer: I know this post is a tad snarky. I’m still working towards understanding and forgiveness and those fruits of the Spirit. Give me time. I am still angry. I mean, the Doomsday Clock.