Praying for Iran

So I get these gut check notices. Iran was on the list. I think I am supposed to hate Iran. I think Iran is “supposed” to be an evil arch enemy of ours and others. I hope I got what I supposed to be thinking right. Seems to me that they have whacko leaders but the people do not rise up to put them down. From memory, Iran is ready to explode. Not their bombs but their people will. To my mind the head dudes pay people to jump up and down in the street chanting “death to America”. They say the same about Israel I think. Something about being Satan I think.

Truth be told I do not follow the news much. I just get turned off by the oldest or newest pop culture star criticizing a US Supreme Court decision. It just does not make me want to read more. So I check headlines and move on to check my local weather. A hot one today. I will shade my Romaine lettuce and tomatoes. Funny but it is a good day to spread manure, maybe I should check more in on the news.

But that is not my story. I felt a deep need and desire to take some time off today to pray for Iran. These notions do not come with a handbook or an article or YouTube explaining why. They just come at me. Perhaps back in the ‘80’s I could still pray for God to smite someone. But I lost that somewhere in the ‘90’s when I took a look and realized that maybe I should be the one being smote. Whatever the case I gave up revenge praying a ways back. Like an addiction, at some point you hit your rock bottom and swear the stuff off.

If I spent the last forty years preaching and studying and praying on it I could not figure it out. Oops I guess I have spent the last forty years on just such a journey. And here is the answer, there ain’t one. Why the heck was I seeing public squares and Mosques filled with rage? What the heck did I do wrong recently? Well that last one I can answer.

I have been loving and praying for those I cherish and who love me back. How easy is that? I simply have not prayed for those who hold me in contempt and hate and revile me in quite some time. I fell into a love fest blender of feel good. Bad on me friends. Love is not really designed to work that way.

Impertinent bastard I am. Now let us not go all crazy ape excrement here. I only have so much time and effort and I spend the vast majority of it loving people. It is just how my life has developed after so many wrong turns. I had to do the whole 3 steps deal. Accept love, love yourself and then love others. Brutal for a sworn brute. Still brutal a couple of days a week. It is like I was raised to be angry. (which I was not)

The idea of a “smack down” is great. My 9 year old gives me one several times a week. I get all high and mighty and he sucker punches me pointing out my hypocrisy. The kid is way too smart in that area. Try telling him to “do as I say and not how I do” and the next soccer kick gives you a black eye, both literally and figuratively. I guess I taught him how to be a theological brute. My bad.

So there was this deal that said “pray for Iran”. I am not a weirdo in that sense. I would have no idea if that was God talking. To my understanding God would rather push me into peril in order to love than speak to me. I understand that there are fine folks God does talk to. Just not me. I also understand some not so fine folks think he does talk to them. Does that bring us back to Iran?

Alrighty now, from my reading from the Old Testament. God had people massacre other peoples. Do not look at me but from India to America to Russia people having been wiping out other people since they were hunting Wooley Mammoths. That is some crazy stuff. So why would I pray for Iran? I understand the leaders want to wipe out whole groups of other people. Now that is some more crazy stuff. Wouldn’t it be even more crazy if they did it in the name of a religion. Oops again, I think that is the deal there.

So I reckon I was bad for not praying for them. What was I not thinking? How can I possibly let a man be evil and not pray for him to be good? Even if I do not know exactly what either of those are. Sometimes I am just lazy in my love. Complacent? Does my son need my prayers more than an Ayatollah? Sometimes I get skewed.

There is this desire of mine to take the speck out of your eye before the plank out of mine. It is peaking at 100 degrees outside. I would say the bay and the library. I wonder if the rich people just stay inside with air conditioning. Never met one in the library or swimming in the bay. Can’t even recall seeing one praying. I am sure they do, I just don’t see them. I maybe need to get my eyes checked for money blindness.

I guess along those lines I do not see the suffering of folks in places like Iran. Shame on me. They are there and I know it. Perhaps I am teaching my son to do as I say and not as I do. It would appear it is time for my boy and I to talk about big and bad evil. This old guy does not want to do it. The hardest part is teaching about that strange and mysterious concept of being doing bad and “being” bad. Some few and very few folks are bad. Most of us just screw up and do bad things. Power over anything is intoxicating. Mix that in with an ego unchecked and you have some sick stuff. On the other hand put that in with complacency and apathy and everything goes to hell.

Seems likely that prayer of the good kind is the sending and receiving of love. Yes we must receive it in order to give it. Just like a bank account. Have you ever donated money to a charity knowing your check would bounce? “Please don’t send love and prayers if things are not well with your affairs.” I wrote that but I think it may just be wrong. Seems like having it altogether before praying for another person is an excuse somehow.

Some folks equate prayer for another as a strictly religious think. How wrong can they be? Pulling in the love resources of our existence and sending them to another is just common spiritual sense. Sending out a wave of love blessings could never be a religious act. But I accept religion can and should help us do that. My Lord that I pray to is Jesus Christ. I have studied that Dalai Lama, Buddha and Sitting Bull all said that was at least a good thing.

“We may not place a restriction as to where we send love, the only rule there which is sacrosanct is that we send it.” Here is my ending on this. I just prayed that people would pray for the people of Iran.

(Westerners translate our notion here so that it is the same in Islam as in Judaism)

Shalom