The Peaceful Crusader

[kpete]

The Peaceful Crusader

By THOMAS CAHILL
Published: December 25, 2006

AMID all the useless bloodshed of the Crusades, there is one story that suggests an extended clash of civilizations between Islam and the West was not preordained. It concerns the early 13th-century friar Francis of Assisi, who joined the Fifth Crusade not as a warrior but as a peacemaker.

Francis was no good at organization or strategy and he knew it. He accepted the men and women who presented themselves as followers, befriended them and shared the Gospel with them. But he gave them little else. He expected them to live like him: rejecting distinctions of class, forgoing honors of church or king or commune, taking the words of Jesus literally, owning nothing, suffering for God’s sake, befriending every outcast — leper, heretic, highwayman — thrust in their path.

Francis was not impressed by the Crusaders, whose sacrilegious brutality horrified him. They were entirely too fond of taunting and abusing their prisoners of war, who were often returned to their families minus nose, lips, ears or eyes.

In Francis’ view, judgment was the exclusive province of the all-merciful God; it was none of a Christian’s concern. True Christians were to befriend all yet condemn no one. Give to others, and it shall be given to you, forgive and you shall be forgiven, was Francis’ constant preaching. “May the Lord give you peace” was the best greeting one could give to all one met. It compromised no one’s dignity and embraced every good; it was a blessing to be bestowed indiscriminately. Francis bestowed it on people named George and Jacques and on people named Osama and Saddam. Such an approach, in an age when the most visible signs of the Christian religion were the wars and atrocities of the red-crossed crusaders, was shockingly otherworldly and slyly effective.

.....................

Islamic society and Christian society have been generally bad neighbors now for nearly 14 centuries, eager to misunderstand each other, often borrowing culturally and intellectually from each other without ever bestowing proper credit. But as Sir Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the British Commonwealth, has written, almost as if he was thinking of Kamil and Francis, “Those who are confident of their faith are not threatened but enlarged by the different faiths of others. ... There are, surely, many ways of arriving at this generosity of spirit and each faith may need to find its own.” We stand in desperate need of contemporary figures like Kamil and Francis of Assisi to create an innovative dialogue. To build a future better than our past, we need, as Rabbi Sacks has put it, “the confidence to recognize the irreducible, glorious dignity of difference.”

May the Lord give you peace.

read the rest at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/25/opinion/25Cahill.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Peace on earth - good will to all - kpete

[mdmc]

1. peace and low stress

:kick:r

[SalmonChantedEvening]

2. Peace shared with others is peace granted to one's own soul

May you know nothing but peace in your heart today kpete :)

:loveya:

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. in the Sufi tradition

St. Francis and the Sufi masters of the time communed with each other and learned from each other. There are stories of men journeying from the Islamic world to the West who were told by their Sufi teacher to go vist St. Francis and give their greetings to them. When the sojourner went to St. Francis, he was in prayer--with their Sufi teacher! When he returned to Turkey to tell his teacher the miracle, he found his teacher in prayer--with St. Francis!

[mdmc]

10. never heard this before

:kick:

[peacetalksforall]

4. Thank you.

[silverweb]

5. Thanks for posting this.

Francis of Assisi has been a figure I've deeply revered all my life, but it's been a long time since I've read about him. You've inspired me to seek out Donald Spoto's recent biography. Thanks. :)

[eridani]

6. Prayer of St. Francis

http://www.folsoms.net/peace.shtml

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
when there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand,
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

[mdmc]

7. too good

:kick:

[BeFree]

8. Way to go Frank!

That's the way to live. Do unto others and all that Jazz.

All you need is love.....

[mdmc]

9. love is all ya need

:kick:

[mdmc]

11. such nice words

:kick: