Pray for Peace — While Moving Our Feet, As the Proverb Teaches Us

I’m reminded of a story of a young Baptist minister, who having gained fame and fortune in the North, was asked to come home, South, to deliver a sermon. Well, he could hardly refuse.  So he decided to take his young son along with him, to teach him something about his history, his culture.  Well, he went down there and he delivered the sermon of his life, he had the congregation rolling from one emotion to the next. When he was finished, his old pastor came up to him and said, “ John, that was a mighty fine sermon, the finest sermon I’ve heard in a very long time.  I wish we could give you something, but we’re just a small congregation.”  John waved off the old pastor and said it was payment enough just being home.  As he’s leaving the church, John notices there’s a poor box in the back.  He reaches into his wallet, pulls out a fresh new, crisp $10 bill and puts it in the collection box. 

Halfway across the parking lot with his son, he hears a voice, “John!… John!”  (it’s the voice of his old pastor).  “Now, John, as I said, we wish we could really give you a proper gift but we just don’t have it.  But we’d like to give you a small “token” of our appreciation.”  And with those words, he hands John the crisp new $10 bill that John recognizes as the one he put in the poor box. 

Traveling home, he decides to test his son.  He says to his little brown eyed five year old,  “Son, there’s a lesson here.”  And the innocent faced boy looks up at him and says, “I know.”   “Well, what is it, son?”  And the little boy says, “If you had given more, you would have gotten more!”

For forty years now, we, as a people, have wandered in the desert… enduring the heated glares of war, greed, power grabbing, wealth grabbing, lies from on high, over consumption of food water and oil, neglect of our sisters and brothers, street violence, hatred itself and disrespect of our environment.  But I believe we are on the brink of finding our way out of the desert.  I believe we are moving closer to a calmer, cooler, more comfortable and peaceful place before too long.  But it will take some strong prayers for us to get there… And as I am sure you have heard many times, I believe when we do pray, as the ancient West African proverb reminds us, when we do pray, we must move our feet.

There is a tendency to think of our Baltimore City as a very violent place: those impressions are fed by the morning paper and the evening TV news… At St. Frances Academy and Community Center a few weeks back, we were feeling a little overwhelmed by the type of drug trafficking that haunts too many of our inner-city neighborhoods.  Sister Marcia Hall, the Oblate Sister of Providence, who was then principal of St. Frances, remarked in passing that she felt alone, abandoned even, trying to deal with the crime that was breeding crime in the streets in front of the school and moving increasingly onto our campus. 

Men counting huge wads of cash walking up and down our streets, adults lurking on the children’s playground directly across the street  from school guarding and serving up the drugs they were hiding there and men visiting the statue of Our Lady of Fatima, just within our walls, hardly to pray for peace in our time as they should have been doing but to stash drugs at the feet of the Blessed Virgin.  

There was an open air drug market growing on East Chase Street directly in front of the school.  It was a new situation for us, because there had traditionally been a buffer zone observed one block in every direction of the school.  No drugs were sold within that buffer area, no fighting or killing occurred within a block of the school and the convent. 

But some new drug dealers came into the area, offering free samples on the vacant lot next to the convent and standing in front of the school’s front gates to peddle their wares… Drug sales attract guns and guns breed violence.  The neighborhood where St. Frances Academy has been located since 1870 was suddenly transformed from a peaceful place to a place where cash, drugs and weapons were openly flourishing in an unholy marketplace.   We marched throughout the area one day back in May and reclaimed the buffer zone, naming it a “Peace Zone”.  Some of the sign we posted, after we stopped on certain corners, are still up.  The area is now clean and clear once again.  The drug dealers are gone—peace reigns.

But the drugs were there because the neighborhood looked as if it would welcome them… Perhaps as much as 80% of the housing locations in the area surrounding the school are vacant lots or vacant buildings and the median household income in the immediate neighborhood is $10,100.   Drugs and guns bring violence but the Mahatma Gandhi reminds us that “Poverty (itself) is the worst form of violence.” And at the same time, "True compassion," Martin Luther King, Jr. declared, "is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

All of the forces that come together that produce so much abandoned housing, so many unemployed folks standing around, hunger, so little healthcare, such strained schools and so many drug sales are the structures in place that need demolition, the abandoned houses are symbols of those in society we’ve neglected.

In our names, America is waging war in the pursuit of trying to achieve security in our so-called homeland.  We are fighting for peace with precious lives destroying and being destroyed by other precious lives.  We are throwing every possible dollar into weaponry and bombs so that we can someday live free, we say.  We have changed the family life and the country-sides of Afghanistan and Iraq forever with our quest for the American way of life. 

But we must end the madness immediately!  We must stop the killing now, no excuses, no delays, no more federal appropriations, no protracted exit strategies.  

The violence of our wars overseas, perpetuates the violence of the poverty in our neighborhoods.  The utter loss of so many lives through war is the worst sin.  The diminution of so many lives through neglected domestic spending for housing, jobs, schools, health insurance and food among other human needs is just about as sinful. 

The government seems slow to act to do what needs to be done: stop the violence and give life to the poor, the jobless, the elderly and our children.  That is where our prayers must come in…  Perhaps many of us have prayed for peace since before the wars began, but have we moved our feet when we prayed?  Have we walked to the mailbox with enough letters to the White House and the Congress urging them to do the will of God by stopping the violence and not the will of war-makers?  Have we participated in any demonstrations to show that we believe with all our hearts what the sign has been telling us, that “War is not the answer”?   Have we done what we could, including marching the streets, to reclaim the neighborhoods where death and destruction are overwhelming so many? 

Just as an example, we should pray for the likes of what they’re getting in Oakland, California. I’ve heard the leader of the “Green the Ghetto First” movement, brother Van Jones, speak here in Baltimore a couple of times, most recently at Morgan State University ending their Green Week activities.  According to its website, “the Oakland Green Jobs Corps will be a complete job training pathway for Oakland residents with barriers to employment. It will provide wraparound services including case management, soft skills, hard skills, and vocational training. Participants will finish the program with paid internships in renewable energy and energy efficiency projects”.  We should be praying and acting to implement a Green Corps in Baltimore City, especially to engage the jobless and those currently under-employed.  I’ll be working on the exploration of that for next year’s MLK Day, if you want to help.

Yes, when we pray, we must move our feet, as Jesus did… as Gandhi did, as King did, as Oscar Romero, Mother Theresa and Mother Mary Lange, the founder of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, did.  And I dare say, we must move our feet when we pray before, on and after Election Day on November 4th of 2008. 

We must be prepared to leave the desert.  We must be ready to see things more clearly and to have more energy.  We must be willing to have our thirst quenched with the truth of love, sharing and caring… of nonviolence, of the need to be more courageous for peace and justice sake. 

There is nothing wrong with falling on our knees.  There is nothing wrong with prayer alone.  But things seem so overwhelming sometimes… so we must summons the ability to pray courageously.  We must pray for miracles as the little girl in Central Africa that we heard about earlier did.  And when we do, God will hear us and help us…all we need do is “pray”to paraphrase another African proverb, “as if it is impossible to fail!” …and while moving our feet!

Please be ready… a change is coming!

Therefore: peace.

                                                                          Ralph E. Moore, Jr.

                                                          Director of the Community Center

                                                                          St. Frances Academy

                                                                                 6/22/08