Bombs fell across Iran over the weekend. The assault continues. The impact of these attacks have been felt across the globe. Loss of life, and military machinery in Iran itself, and an array of anxiety, grief, anger, fear, and in some cases celebration, in Iran and other parts of the world. An almost immediate reaction for me was a memory of comments I heard from some of the Japanese students I lived with 50 years ago while on a two-year teaching fellowship in Kyoto. “The US would never drop the Atomic bomb on Germany” they said, “because it was a country of white people. The US dropped it on us because we were yellow.” While history demonstrates that the bomb wasn’t ready until after Germany had surrendered, nonetheless they had a point. A few months later, after a difficult gathering which exposed the stark difference between the American and Japanese cultures, a Japanese student, my most cherished and trusted friend, came to me and said, “I will never forgive you for Hiroshima”. Some thirty years later, vestiges of the war lived on. Accusations of racism persisted, with more than a bit of merit.
As we react, sort through, and try to figure out how best to respond to what President Trump is calling the Iran War, I, along with so many others, seek to draw upon faith. I have read and heard many invitations to pray. I appreciate these invitations — and find that they speak to a deep need. But I am discovering that I not only need to pray, but to pray with intention — which will lead to action.
The first intention is to pray for a swift end to the hostilities that are destined to take more and more Iranian, American and other lives, and threaten to widen the theater of war. This intention reminds me of the gratitude that Archbishop Desmond Tutu expressed in the beginning of a sermon he delivered to a congregation I served in Worcester, Mass. He thanked us, because he said our prayers ended apartheid. He could not offer proof of the world’s prayerful intervention, but I trusted Bishop Tutu — and his extraordinary courage, witness, and faith. The prayers, he said, made a difference.
The second intention is to pray for the most life-giving outcome possible. Many have expressed that they hope that the attack will be a success. I recoil at the term because for me success is a transactional word, and it ends up dividing us into a binary of winners and losers, and can evoke a level of triumph that ignores or dismisses the pain and grief. that always accompany war. I try to avoid using success in this contrext. When it comes to war, my faith perspective leads me to acknowledge that one side may prevail, but that at a humanity level everyone loses. That said, a prayer for the most life-giving outcome involves getting to the roots of this reckless, illegal, immoral and impulsive action by the President, and ensuring that it never happens again.The prayer for the most life-giving outcome will inspire actions involving resistance undertaken for the purpose and strategy of bringing war to an end, and for an accounting — of all sides — to take place.
The final prayer intention, and perhaps the most important, is to pray that I, that we, not fall prey to the temptation to divide ourselves across religious, racial, ethnic or political lines. As a young boy my friends and I played Cowboys and Indians. We all wanted to be Cowboys, because they were the good guys; the Indians were the bad guys. There was no ambiguity about this. Years later, our play evolved into makeshift World War Two war games. We were the American soldiers, fighting against phantom the German or Japanese infantry; and we used all the slurs available to us to describe the bad guys, terms which were not only permitted, but in some cases were encouraged.
There is a chorus of voices surrounding us, led by the President, that seek to lure us into seeing the world as a binary between us and them. Good guys and bad guys. We have already heard him claim that Somalis are garbage, Haitians eat pets, Mexicans are often rapists. No ambiguity at all. It feels like we are being challenged, if not coerced, into playing a version of those dehumanizing games of our childhood. My prayer – for me – and for all of us, is to resist those slurs, demonizations, and racist put-downs, and instead to lift up everyone – everyone – in prayer, in solidarity, in partnership, in whatever ways we can, to demonstrate that we are all valued members of the human family. To move from the transactional enterprise of success and failure, winners and losers – to the humane and needed call for healing, hope and harmony.
