They say peace...

...They dress the wounds of my poor people
As though they're nothing
Saying "peace, peace"
When there's no peace

Now can a bride forget her jewels?
Or a maid her ornaments?
Yet my people forgotten me
Days without number
Days without number
And in their want
Oh in there want
And in their want
Who'll dress their wounds?
Who'll dress their wounds? - "Something Beautiful"

God sings those words in Sinead O'Connor's new song "Something Beautiful." This song is so utterly packed with theology. It begins with tender praise, a plea for an offering to be accepted. It slips gently into confession and unworthiness. And then it turns about and offers these last plaintive words. The words of a loving God, a spurned lover, lamenting for the beloved.

It seems every day a different part of this song speaks to my soul. Today I think of peace. How often do we indeed extend a hand and say the word without meaning? A friend once asked me how someone could serve with us at the altar and a few minutes later be whispering and plotting. They say peace, but there's no peace. We do indeed forget God. We turn away, full of our own pride and confident that we are right. Only our own will becomes important, only the knowledge that we know best. And then we invariably wound.

I am no saint, I too am far too prone to turn my face away from my God and forge my own path. But I wonder, for those who have become a hard unmoving wall, who strike out from the shadows, who whisper and conspire all the while saying "peace," who will dress their wounds? They drive away, they divide and splinter. They conspire against a priest, or they drop bombs on civilians and 'insurgents' alike. In the name of right. They 'hate the sin, but love the sinner.' They claim Truth and power for themselves to the exclusion of all else.

We have the capacity to make something beautiful. It seems to me that we are only truly and fully happy, only at peace, when we are doing just that. When we create something of beauty, when we nurse the seed of love and glory within our hearts into full flower. When we fulfill the promise God placed in us at our creation. A promise of beauty and love.

So why then do we wound? Why do we call out false peace? Why do we forget the One in whom we must live and move and have our being? Here in a little church in a small city, or in a stately white house, or the fields of Iraq, or the gold encrusted palaces of Rome, or in the fist of a thousand Bible wielding pulpits. They say peace, when there's no peace.