Peace on (our bleeding) Earth

Our country is bleeding.

The first time I realized this, I was twenty. Two planes had just torn through the twin towers in New York City. I had come out of a class at college, and was walking through the student center, when I passed a classmate who looked like he had seen a ghost. He couldn’t tell me what had happened. I walked a little further down the hall and into a lounge where people had gathered around a TV. My sheltered belief that I lived in a safe country in a relatively safe world, was shattered.

The news and our leaders turned our attention to an enemy half the world away. Terrorists, they said, are our enemy. Soon, my college campus was warning us not to go into the nearby city. Security ramped up everywhere, especially in our airports. We had to keep our enemy out.

And over the past sixteen years, with a few exceptions, including one in my home city of Boston, we’ve done just that. We’ve kept the foreign terrorists out.

But the wounds of our country have multiplied. Gaping sores all across our fifty states have opened up without any terrorists other than our own to blame. Racism, sexism, gun violence all point to the fact that we are bleeding. Only, the wounds aren’t all new. In fact most of them are older than you and me.

Three years ago, the news coming out of Ferguson seemed shocking. But the more coverage I watched, the more I realized it was not just about one person. It was not an “all of a sudden” problem. It was about a whole community feeling profiled and targeted for years. The wound was old, but now it was infected. It was extensive, and deep. And it was on the news, making a way for others to tell a similar story. All across the country, scar tissue ripped open, and old wounds started to bleed.

Later that same year, the news broke about Bill Cosby, and like many people, my childhood heart was broken. Because who of my generation wasn’t raised in the Cosby house? But then, this year there was Weinstein, Spacey, Louis C.K, and Matt Lauer. Women and young men are bravely coming forward. They have been sexually objectified, manipulated, and assaulted. And it is not just an entertainment issue. It is systemic wherever power has gone unchecked. For generations, people have felt the deep wounds of sexual assault. But now their stories are on Facebook and the news. Now they are open, and they are bleeding.

Last month, a young man went into a church and put bullet holes in people. Taking out whole families, he left a gaping wound in a small Texas town that could be felt across our entire nation. And once again the wounds of Columbine, Sandy Hook, Orlando, San Bernardino, Las Vegas, and too many others opened.

Our Country is Bleeding.

And our enemy is ourselves.

Last year, we elected a president who promised to make America great again. The only problem is that many of these wounds run so deep. They make me wonder—were we ever fully great? When we have treated people of color, women, non-heterosexual people, and others, so poorly. When we have forgotten or ignored the fact that EVERY person is created in the image of God—that EVERY person has value and deserves to have a voice. When we’ve forgotten that America isn’t just people who look, think, believe, and act just as we do. America is all of us, and we have been wounding ourselves forever. Ever since the first Native American was cheated or killed. Ever since the first slave set foot on our land. We have been bleeding.

We have ignored it for so long that the bandages of denial, oppression, and silence can no longer hide the gushing. We can no longer do nothing. We can no longer say our enemy is foreign, for it is clear our enemy lies within.

It’s that time of year, when Christmas carols call for Peace on Earth. The very words that the Angels spoke when announcing Jesus’ birth. But I am realizing more than ever that bringing Peace on this Earth is not the job of our politicians. Changing the social landscape of our culture, and bringing about healing to old wounds, begins with us. It begins by seeking out peace and friendship in our neighborhoods and towns with people who aren’t like us. It begins by valuing and listening to each others’ stories. And it requires that we take ownership for things for which we may feel we aren’t directly responsible.

Peace on Earth doesn’t have to be a dream or a nice phrase we say at Christmas. But it does mean we need to get to work. It does mean we can no longer wait for things to change on their own. Because, as they say, change begins with us.