Civility and compassion: How do we get there?

Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so
move every human heart [and especially the hearts of the
people of this land], that barriers which divide us may
crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that our
divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The preceding prayer for soical justice is from the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church, USA. It states very succinctly the pangs I feel as I continue to hear people, individual people, persons (I must emphasize that the words do come from real live people) who appear on television, speak on radio programs, make speechs to groups they wish to persuade, write columns, blogs and tweets; who can not resist the rush of power that must come from verbally crushing their self defined enemies. While at the same time calling for civility in discourse, rhetoric that would once upon a time be restricted to trade books that were only sold in those kinds of stores, spews from their peers through all media outlets with the force of raw sewage.

I heard someone say recently, that nowadays telling the truth may be thought of as activism. I believe this. What I also believe is that someday, being honest, striving for moral values, politeness, common couth shall we say, will once more be in vogue. I realize that such things take effort on the part of those who practice them, which may explain to some degree why the current culture prefers to go in the other direction. But, how far in the other direction are we as a society willing to go? Can anyone make a point without using threatening, brutal sexual imagery to punctuate it?  Is that supposed to make us all cringe in fear of these hooligans?

When there is no foundation, nothing substantial can be built upon it. Our culture has eschewed building foundations on any thing other than the sands of the lowest comon denominator.  Vulgarity is cool.  Right? Its all part of the vanilla, no-one-gets-their-feelings-hurt group think. (As long as one is cool, of course). We see the fruits of this everywhere. Even as I write this little rant, I almost feel obliged to apologize for myself and hope that no one will take offense to my standing on such a perilous platform as criticizing the coolness of the peeps. Sorry, I can't. My voice is just as relevant as Charlie Sheen's, though far less interesting, I am sure.

So, if our leaders want to bring civility to the fore and we want to live in peace with one another and act in unity rather than acrimony, what do we do? Certainly not what we are doing now. Does the prayer above even make sense?  Does it even have a chance?

Of course it does. I believe we can heal. I believe we can make it there. And I believe it because it is the message of Jesus. The World, 2011, isn't the first point in time when things have been so unruly, but we could make it the beginning of the end. Jesus' teachings and words still ring true and still hold hope in their consistency.  It is simple, we do not have to hate each other and in God's love, there is no fear.

"What is the good of drawing up, on paper, rules for social behaviour, if we know that, in fact, our greed, cowardice, ill temper, and self conceit are going to prevent us from keeping them? I do not mean for a moment that we ought not think...What I do mean is that all that thinking will be mere moonshine unless we realise that nothing but the courage and unselfishness of individuals is ever going to make any system work properly...You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you can not have good society." C.S. Lewis

Good men and women, its time to be heard.