One morning there is a knock on the older brother's door. Opening the door, the older brother encounters a man with a carpenter's toolbox, eager to do odd jobs around the farm. After thinking for a quick moment, the brother says, "Yes, I do have a job for you." Pointing toward the creek separating the two farms, the elder brother says, "Last week there was a meadow between our two farms until my brother bulldozed his way to the river levee, leaving this creek to divide our land. I want to go him one better. I want you to build an eight-foot fence between our properties. I won't need to see him or his farm any more."

The carpenter responds, "I think I understand the situation. Provide me the wood, the nails and a post-hole digger, and I'll get started." The older brother has errands, so after readying the supplies, he leaves for the day. All day, the carpenter measures, saws, planes and builds. At just about sunset, the farmer returns home to see the carpenter completing his task.

The farmer's jaw drops, for the carpenter has not built a fence at all. Instead, he has created a bridge stretching from one side of the creek to the other. It is a fine piece of work, complete with handrails, but not at all what the older brother had asked for. Imagine the older brother's surprise when he sees his younger brother standing on the bridge, his hands outstretched as he says, "You are quite a fellow to build this bridge after all I've said and done. I'm amazed. Thank you." The two brothers meet one another in the middle, embracing in a spirit of reconciliation.

Turning, they see the carpenter hoisting his toolbox on his shoulder. "No, wait!" says the older brother. "I have many other projects for you."  

"I'd be glad to stay," the carpenter responds, "but I have many more bridges to build."

We see what we want to see. So... what is in us that sees only a fence (or a wall) instead of a bridge? Is it that we need to guard or clutch or protect something?

I am sure that there is something about a fence that makes us feel secure; as if we are in control.

Charlie Brown and Lucy are leaning against a wall.

"If I were in charge of the world, I'd change everything!" Lucy says.

"That would not be easy... where would you start?" Charlie Brown asks.

"I'd start with you!" Lucy tells him.

I do know this: with walls we live from a place of fear.

Fear from a self that is made too small.

And the next thing you know, we project this smallness on to others.

This smallness becomes an impediment; of distrust or bigotry or prejudice or small-mindedness or bullying or intolerance.

What does it take to build a bridge where there is none? 

I continue to find solace in the story that took place after the tragic bombing in the town of Omagh, Northern Ireland (in 1998 twenty-nine people died as a result of the attack and approximately 220 people were injured; the attack was described by the BBC as "Northern Ireland's worst single terrorist atrocity" and by the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, as an "appalling act of savagery and evil"). After the attack, Daryl Simpson created a choir of Catholic and Protestant teenagers, to use music as a way to begin the healing. ("Love Rescue Me" is a U2 song sung by The Omagh Community Youth Choir -- www.youtube.Omagh )

Here's my takeaway from listening to the Omagh Youth Choir: Inside of us, each one of us carries the carpenter's tools.

Each one of us can dismantle the message of shame or disgrace or humiliation.

Each one of us can become an enlightened witness.  

Each one of us can tell others the truth, which is our truth... meaning that we return people to themselves and to the truth of themselves, that we are--in fact--brothers (or brothers and sisters).

Even after all this time the sun never says to the earth, "you owe me." Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole sky.  

Hafiz of Shiraz

Here's the deal: Love (or worth, or value, or esteem, or forgiveness, or reconciliation, or meaning) is not something you produce or achieve or acquire. 

It is not something that you even have. 

Love is something that has you. 

You do not have the wind, the stars, and the rain.  You don't possess these things; you surrender to them.  And maybe, that surrender begins with an unforeseen journey across a bridge. Across a creek that had separated and divided. 

I do know this--we cannot make this journey as long as we cling.  If we cannot let go--of our need for certitude or control or resentment or vindictiveness--we cannot find our way back. 

I love the account from Robert Benson's book "Between the dreaming and the coming true," when he talks about Sunday School teacher Hazelyn McComas ("a kind and gentle woman, a teacher, a woman of prayer, a woman whose spirit bears witness to her having spent a life seeking for glimpses of and listening for whispers of God within the ancient prayer of the Chosen People").  There is always a kid in the class who considers it his charge to trap the teacher.  Benson remembers one occasion when the teacher was challenged about the veracity of the Faith.  "I remember that she drew a breath and straitened up a bit, as though she wanted to be firm and clear, but not harsh and critical.  (She said,) 'This is what I believe: We were with God in the beginning.  I do not understand that exactly--what we looked like, what we did all day, how we got along, any of it.  Then we were sent here.  And I am not sure that I understand that very well, either.  And I believe that we are going home to God someday, and what that will be like is as much a mystery to me as any of the rest of it.  But I believe those things are true and that what we have here on earth in between is a longing--for the God that we have known and for the God that we are going home to.'"

Yes Ms. McComas...  Love is not something you have.

Love is something that has you.

I hope you enjoyed the full moon this weekend.  Our blue moon.  I spent some a part of last night on the patio, the flowers now sepia tone, the landscape basking, as if time stood still.