WHEN will we learn the lesson Chief Sealth taught that
the earth does not belong to us but we belong to the earth?
Kyrie eleison

WHEN will we come to know that we are a part of the earth not apart from
the earth and understand that—as the psalmist has it—the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof?
Christe eleison

WHEN will we realize that we live and move and have our being
because this planet in this solar system in this galaxy in this universe
so graciously and willingly shelters and feeds and slakes and clothes
and cools and warms and enchants and bedazzles us?
Kyrie eleison

WHEN will we—upon realizing the above—return the favor, respond in kind?
Christe eleison

WHEN will our international anthem no longer be a wailing lament but a humble, full-throated, heartfelt hymn of thanks and praise to the One from whom all blessings flow and in whom all Oneness resides?
Miserere nobis

WHEN will we learn to thumb our noses at and turn our backs on the three tenacious temptations, the three archetypal P’s—
some self-serving form of Power, Possessions, and Prestige—
to which virtually all social ills can be traced?
Miserere nobis

WHEN will the decent, hard-working, life-loving, other-enjoying many
no longer be the chattel or bullied or targets or collateral damage or
innocent victims of the few pompous, immature, greedy, insecure,
megalomaniacal, wounded wounders of the world?
Miserere nobis

WHEN will humans STOP glorifying war and sanctioning violence?
Miserere nobis

WHEN will the barbarian brutes of the world put their heads together and form a rockpile over the war to end all wars (presuming it doesn’t end everyone) rather than over the graves of the incalculably precious images of God they had their automated battalions, tanks, bombs, and missiles remove as easily as wiping away water spots from a window?
Grant us your peace

WHEN will Americans STOP twisting the original intent of the 2nd Amendment, STOP marketing murder, STOP selling the means of killing for profit, STOP teaching boys—directly and indirectly—to associate guns and weapons with strength, power, entitlement to dominate, courage, virility, and Rambo-like machismo?
Grant us your peace

WHEN will Americans, especially American men, who self-identify as
Christians, STOP letting contortionist interpretations of the 2nd Amendment
and their fascination with the tools of violence and their Cain-like propensity
to use violence trump Jesus’ vision, teaching, enactment, and call to nonviolence?
Gant us your peace

WHEN will we realize, not only that it doesn’t take military schools to teach discipline, cultivate virtue, and form men and women of integrity, but also that it is a contradiction of the mind-body-spirit formation involved in the Christ-life and taught by Jesus in the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount?
Gant us your peace

WHEN will we STOP letting professional sports—especially
Professional football—associate sports with patriotism and STOP associating patriotism with militarism and STOP associating militarism with nationalism
and STOP associating nationalism with Republicanism and STOP associating
Republicanism (or any other political party) with God?
apresúrate a salvarnos

WHEN will Catholic and other Christian schools stop perpetuating the same
lies listed above as if they have anything remotely or congenially to do with
the Christ-life?
apresúrate a salvarnos

WHEN will we have as many US Service Academies that are Peace Colleges than are Military Colleges and won’t that be a sign of hope and a happy day?
apresúrate a salvarnos

WHEN will we “wage peace” as fully, passionately, courageously, and selflessly as we have waged war in the past and continue to do so in the present?
apresúrate a salvarnos

WHEN will the Christian community wholeheartedly and unanimously promote the making of peace (7th Beatitude) and the keeping of peace as constitutive, non-negotiable dimensions of the Christian life, stressing that THIS is the most edifying, courageous, selfless, dangerous, and loving way of giving and losing one’s life.
dona nobis pacem

WHEN will we stop connecting peace with warm-fuzzy, pie-in-the-sky, Pollyannaish naivety and weakness and realize it takes way more courage and integrity to stand in the way of a tank for the sake of justice and peace than to drive one and fire its cannons and pretend it will do anything but cause more terror and violence and killing?
dona nobis pacem

WHEN will the Christian community learn how to offer, teach, and promote the way of peace as passionately, compellingly, excitedly, and potentially fulfilling as do the MAD Men who are peddling and pushing the allure and benefits of the military-industrial complex?
dona nobis pacem

WHEN will we ever have a war when no one comes, where no one shows up, where messages are posted on white paper plates tacked on sticks stuck in the ground saying: “THE WAR WAS CANCELLED. Everyone welcome at the Festival of Life down the road and around the bend (It took more than one paper plate).
dona nobis pacem

WHEN will we spend as much time, money, imagination, dialogue, and effort learning how to make and sustain peace and prevent war as we spend on making war in reaction to others equally addicted to warfare?
O God, come to our assistance

WHEN will we STOP using sacred words like Trinity to name desecrating things like the detonation of the first nuclear weapon, STOP building chapels to look like fighter jets, STOP inscribing military weapons with bible verses, STOP conflating the prophet Isaiah’s words “Here I am, Lord. Send me” with any nations call to arms, STOP “textjacking” scripture to justify evil realities like Nazism, colonization, racism, white supremacy, apartheid, antisemitism, American exceptionalism, misogyny, abuse of women, and heterosexism?
O God, come to our assistance

WHEN will we STOP killing people who kill people in order to show that killing is wrong?
O God, come to our assistance

WHEN will we ever learn ♫♫♫ when will we ever learn ♫♫♫ ?

© Dan Miller. All Rights Reserved.