Fear and Loathing in the Valley

I spoke with Sr. A today.  I gave her a brief but complete review of the fear, loathing, and total lack of trust I feel for Muslims.  I told her how I hoped that Mission would help me but on the face of it, it only made things worse.  A little knowledge of history and clear information about Islam can be dangerous to the soul.  Prayer and struggling with this fear can come through only one Healer.

Sr. A told me she struggles with the same troubling feelings.  She sits before the cross and is speechless.  In her anger and pain she asked “why is this happening”?  She knows the sisters kidnapped from Mosul, Iraq.  One especially is her good friend.  It is deeply personal for her.  For me – I am more distant – I pray they are  saved and fear for them as a Catholic, as a woman, and as a fellow human being.

I told her that I had gotten to the point that my only solution for my inability to love as God tells us to love is to simply tell myself – as I react to persecution stories – that I love, that I will love.  Even if I am not feeling it, I will tell myself that I love.  Thus, I open my heart to love and with time, it will fill with real love.

It is so hard to consider the distance between a Muslim who is just an ordinary person, perhaps my neighbor, and a Muslim who bombs, crucifies, desecrates holy places, kills other Muslims, and persecutes and/or kills all Christians and Jews.  The list is endless.

In growing up in Baghdad, Sr. A was in the only Christian household in her neighborhood, surrounded by Muslims.  Interestingly, they were respected, were treated well, and one woman would only allow Sr. A (as a girl) to care for her children.  She did not trust her Muslim sisters of the neighborhood.

Once, when asked by a man, why Christians did not respect Mohammed even though Muslims respected Jesus, Sr. A told him he was looking at it from the wrong direction.  If he thought Mohammed was not respected, it was because of his followers’ own actions as taught to them in their Koran.  Jesus taught us to love all.  No exceptions.  

That cannot be said of Mohammed and Islam.  By your actions, you will be known.  Faith and works are inexorably connected.  There can be no love without the backup of actions that show love.

I went to Sr. A sensing that she would have the words to help me.  Remarkably, I had words that also helped her.  This was so unexpected that I realized that perhaps I was farther down the road to what God requires of me of loving and accepting than I knew.  So, as I close, I say this prayer:

Dear God –

Protect all suffering people, feed the hungry, free the religious prisoners guilty of nothing but holding their faith to their hearts.  Protect and free Miriam and her family in the Sudan, protect and free the kidnapped orphan children and nuns of Mosul, Iraq.  Open the hearts of men to allow Christian refugees to leave exile for the West.  Protect all children from the Hamas/Israeli conflict so that there are no more kidnaps and killings. 

In Christ’s name,

Amen.