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Morning Meditation
June 20, 2026
Readings:
Matthew 5:15-16 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
Excerpt from Vaclav Havel’s The Power of the Powerless (1979): Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality.…It (ideology) enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their true position and their inglorious modus vivendi… It is directed toward people and toward God. It is a veil behind which human beings can hide their own fallen existence, their trivialization, and their adaptation to the status quo.
Pope Leo XIV: War begins when people cease to see the humanity of others. Peace becomes possible when we recognize the dignity of every person, pursue dialogue instead of domination, and place the common good above power and self-interest.
Meditation by Glenn Beamer
In his address at Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney relayed a vignette from Vaclav Havel’s The Power of the Powerless about the Czechoslovakian grocer who every day place a “Workers of the World Unite” sign in his shop window. The grocer does this not because he believes it, but because he will be punished if he doesn’t appear to subscribe to socialist ideology. The above excerpt from Havel’s essay follows this vignette and is critical to understanding how God channels us to consider carefully our own individual ideas, which in turn become consequential collective endeavors by companies and unions, cities and states, sovereign nations and churches and faiths.
The ideology Havel writes about is not the liberal/conservative dichotomy that Americans subscribe to. Havel presents ideology as a continuum from patriotism, a thoughtful and genuine affection and loyalty to one’s country, and nationalism, which Havel presents as self-righteous belief in the superiority of and domination by one’s country. Jesus may not directly address this, but Matthew 5, including the beatitudes, provides substantial guidance.
After World War II, eight US Presidents, 4 Democrats & 4 Republicans, navigated the United States’ journey through its cold war with the Soviet Union. Importantly, the cold war ended with neither a military triumph, nor a grand ceremony at the United Nations. The cold war began unravelling on November 9, 1989, when a hapless East German bureaucrat, Gunter Schabowski, mistakenly announced that East Germans could freely cross the border into West Germany. Within hours East German citizens overwhelmed East German guards, and people freely traversed the wall as their compatriots simultaneously dance on it and destroyed it. No longer hidden and afraid but empowered by a bureaucratic slip-up, East Germans “Let their light shine.”. Peace came from within.
Jesus’ lesson for us today is paradoxical. We know people, our brothers and sisters created in God’s image, who suffer under oppressive governments. But we need the humility to be cautious and recognize that we likely don’t know enough to liberate them on a timetable demanded by our politics and impatience. As Havel wrote and as the East Germans demonstrated, God wants us to be liberated and live free, but genuine freedom starts with one small voice. Imposing “freedom,” really doesn’t work.
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