The Rev. Barbara J. Pescan
Co-Minister, Unitarian Church of Evanston, IL

The Rev. Barbara J. Pescan

When they got to the prayer for the lives of all, "and help the suffering of the Egyptians, even though they are our enemies," one of the children said, "Oh, like the people in Iraq."

That's a tough one for humanity to grasp, and the closer to us our "enemies" are, the more difficult it seems — not so hypothetical, not so theoretical — when the enmity is with family, or neighbor, fellow citizen, or church member.

This time of year I always feel that if we haven't gotten it by Easter, we should all just stay home on Sundays — clergy ought to gently hush and fold our robes, congregation members put the hymnals carefully in the hymnal racks and all of us leave the building. What is the thing to "get?" That's it's just us, here. That it's only we who are figuring it out, bit by bit; and we do it oh, so slowly, in human time. The reign of love is within us and will reign — or not — by our deeds.

It seems like we ought to understand by now how we might live more lovingly, how we might treat each other more tenderly, treat our earth and its other creatures with more care. Information flies so fast it seems we also must be able to take it in, process, absorb and readjust at speed.

No. Each generation of us comes to know the world in our time, and to move in the world from that knowing. Every generation begins at the beginning — not from scratch, but from what the last generation taught. If we learn love, then, all humanity comes that much closer to living by those lights. If we learn pain and humiliation, cruelty and indifference, then all of humanity steps back.

Some days I long for a Gandhi, for Dr. King. On those days when I cannot even drive the eleven minutes to church without being angry at traffic, compassion for others and for myself seems very far away, indeed, and I one most in need of it, not qualified to pour it out for others.

Then, if I am lucky, if I let myself, I remember that somewhere near where my head is connected to my heart there is a soft spot, a place where I am aware of kindness, wholeness; aware of the unimaginable fragility and deep insistence of life for more life. We are part of that life — that persistence, and that tenderness.

In Spring, my heart is often sore. I make myself look up, though, and I think of the child making charoset and bitter herbs who knows to hold the people of Iraq in her heart at Passover. How much these children have learned in so short a time. How much they have to teach us. How deep are our hearts, and how tender.

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