Through All The Cycles and Seasons

This is the text of the sermon I preached at the congregation I serve, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian Universalist, on Sunday, September 25, 2016.

Everything 

Turns, 

Rotates, 

Spins, 

Circles, 

Loops, 

Pulsates, 

Resonates, 

And  

Repeats. 

Circles 

Of life, 

Born from 

Pulses 

Of light, 

Vibrate 

To 

Breathe, 

While 

Spiraling 

Outwards 

For 

Infinity 

Through 

The lens 

Of time, 

And into 

A sea 

Of stars 

And 

Lucid 

Dreams. 

That was Suzy Kassem poem, "Circle of Life." 

The Autumnal Equinox was this past Thursday. It's one of the markers of one of those turnings -- the turning of the seasons: spring into summer, summer into fall, fall into winter, and winter into spring again.  The cycle of these seasons has continued, unabated, since the earth tipped 23 1/2 degrees off its central axis about five hundred and seventy million years ago. "Everything turns, rotates, spins, circles, loops, pulsates, resonates, and repeats."   

Most of us are at least slightly tilted off our axis, too.  We, too, go through cycles and seasons.  Ours are not as measured and consistent as the earth's, of course. Roughly speaking, it always takes 24 hours to pass from day through night, and 365 days (give or take) to cycle through the seasons, whereas for us a season might last days, or decades.   

When I was a kid, the singer-songwriter Harry Chapin was telling us that all his life's a circle, and we nodded and sang along: 

All my life's circle / sunrise and sundown/ the moon rolls through the nighttime / till the daybreak comes around.  All my life's a circle / but I can't tell you why. /Seasons spinning round again/ the years keep rollin' by. 

 That sounds kind of right, doesn't it?  Except that it's not. Not exactly. A circle is too neat. Too ordered and orderly. We don't mark the same circuit days after day, year after year -- coming back to the same places we were before, covering the self-same ground to get there.   We live our lives not in ever-repeating circles, but in spiraling cycles. We come back to some of the same places, sure, but coming back to them again we find that they're ever so slightly, and sometimes quite drastically, different because, hopefully, we're different.   Because over the course of our last trip around our own internal sun we've changed.  Grown.  Become someone new.  When Thomas Wolfe said, "You can't go home again," he didn't mean that you couldn't literally, physically return to the place you grew up in, but that if you do you'll find that it's no longer quite the same "home" it was, nor are you the same "you." 

And yet ... 

My brother Paul went to a lecture by the Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield.  At one point Kornfield asked, "Do you ever look in the mirror and, seeing the face that's looking back at you think, 'that's not me'?"  Paul, who had just passed one of those "milestone" birthdays had to say he knew the feeling.  So do I.  Maybe you do too.  "Well," Kornfield continued, "that's because it's not."  Despite all the outer changes that lead our kids and grandkids to look at pictures of us when we were there age and say, "Really?", something stays the same within us.  Something remains unchanging through all of those outer changes ... and all the inner ones, too. 

Those inner changes are what I was thinking about when I said that most of us were slightly titled on our axes.  We may start off spinning straight and smooth, but we don't stay that way for that long.  All throughout our lives we experience things that knock us for a loop, knock us off our feet, knock us off our axis.  Heartaches, failures, illnesses, deaths, the "thousand and one slings and arrows that flesh is heir to."  Yet it's not just the hard stuff, either, that throws us for a loop.  There's a reason people say to "be careful what you wish for."  Those great things, too -- finding that the love of your life loves you, too; aceing that test, that course, that degree; getting the job you'd hoped for; marriage; babies -- all these things tilt our worlds.  And we wobble 'till we find a way to establish some sense of stability in this new position.  We don't, any of us, come round and round again to the same place, at the same time, in the say way.  Spiraling cycles, not static circles -- that's the reality of our lives. 

And yet, through it all, something remains consistent -- something, some one.  There's an "I," a "me," that moves in and through all of those changes.  Even when I look back over my life and see how differently I thought, felt, and behaved in the past, it's still "me" who's noticing the ways I've changed.  This "me" is who is looking out at the face in the mirror, thinking that the image isn't me. 

When French philosopher Rene Descartes wanted to get to the very bottom, the bedrock reality of what is knowable, he peeled away layer after layer of things we think we "know," yet which we really only guess or assume.  I "know" that I'm standing behind this pulpit, speaking to all of you, yet I might actually be lying in my bed, and you all might be characters in a dream.  There's no way, really, to know for sure.  Piece by piece Descartes took apart the edifice of our certainty.  Yet just before he came to the conclusion that there was nothing we could actually claim to know, no reality that we could count on as more than a mere perception, he realized that someone was thinking all these things.  He couldn't know for sure what he looked like, how old he was, where he lived, who he loved, but it was self evident that someone was thinking, and that, whatever else might or might not be true of him, he could know for certain that he was, as he put it, "a thinking thing."  Cogito ergo sum.  I think, therefore I am. 

Many, maybe even most of us probably don't feel comfortable with such a reductionist idea that our essential existence is as "thinking things."  Yet the idea that there is an "essential existence," a "core reality," an "I," a "me," that moves through this life I know as mine -- that probably seems to us self evident.  Yet what is that thing?  Who is, what is, that "I," that "me" who's asking these things?  Who is, what is, that "I" who's listening and thinking your own thoughts about all of this? 

These are important questions, because when our axes are titled in ways we're not yet used to or prepared for, we need to know where to go to find our center.  When we're buffeted about by the winds of change, we need to know what we can hang on to.  For some of us, of course, the answer would be "God," yet that's really not much of an answer because "God" is just a word, a poetic shorthand, and using it doesn't really tell us all that much about whatever it is we think we're referring to when we use it.  So the question of what, precisely, is our center, our anchor, our grounding point remains an open one. 

A few days ago I noticed a full-page ad in Entertainment Weekly for a book called The Forgetting, by Sharon Cameron.  The ad was nothing more than an image of the book's cover, and the words, "What isn't written, isn't remembered.  Even your crimes."  Who wouldn't be intrigued?  It's the story of a young woman named Nadia, who lives in the city of Canaan, where every twelve years every person completely loses every one of their memories. All of them.  After "the forgetting," as its called, people don't know their names, don't recognize their families, can't remember a single thing from the moment of waking up.  So everyone has a book with them at all times, and everyone dutifully writes down everything about their lives, so that when they awake from the forgetting they can remind themselves of what they've forgotten. And over and again they are reminded of these words from what's called "the First Book of the Forgetting:" 

"At the first sun rising of the twelfth year, they will forget.  They will lose their memories, and without their memories, they are lost.  Their books will be their memories, their written past selves.  They will write in their books.  They will keep their books.  They will write the truth, and the books will tell them who they have been.  If a book is lost, then so are they Lost.  I am made of my memories.  Without memories, they are nothing." 

 Can you imagine?  No memories of who you are that are older than 12 years ago?  You may know, the way we know facts from a text book, that this person is your spouse, and these people are your parents, and this stranger you're looking at is your best friend, but you don't actually remember them, not directly, not for more than the past twelve years.  

Some of us come uncomfortably, painfully close.  Anyone who's had any association with Alzheimers or other forms of dementia know well what it's like for someone to lose their memories of who they've been and become "lost."  Yet the situation in Canaan is different, I think, because during those twelve years you are completely lucid, living your life forming new vivid and vibrant memories ... which you know you will forget in no more than twelve years.  The people of Canaan live stuck in a repeating cycle, and are aware of both the reality of their situation and the limits that confine them. 

For the people of Canaan, they live just as you and I do, but they have no "I"  that has traveled with them throughout their lives, no touchstone for when the axis gets tilted. There's nothing to hold on to.  Except, their book. 

Everyone carries their book with them at all times -- tied to them, in fact.  They know that their books are, in that great phrase, "their written past selves" and that "the books will tell them who they have been."  Even in this strange world, people need that.  Need something consistent amidst all the inevitable challenges and changes of life.  Need a sense of identity that can tell them who they've been, who they are, and who they might be.  For the people of Canaan, who have no connection with their past, their books provide them with a "written past self" that helps them navigate the present and points them toward a future. 

What is that identity for you?  What is it that you hold on to when your feet are swept out from under you?  Who is the "you" who looks out at the face the the mirror? 

What gives the plot of The Forgetting its push is Nadia, because she, for some reason, didn't forget during the forgetting.  She remembers.  And remembering, she wants to understand why things are the way they are, and how -- if -- they could be made right.  While the book is written for ages 12 and up, I have to say that I had a hard time putting it down, and really wish it hadn't come to an end.  The plot twists felt completely real, and were completely unexpected.  It was, as my mom hated to hear people say, "a good read." 

What would be in your book?  Who is the "you" you come back to, the "you" who is you, the "you" you can count on when you can't count on anything else.  What, for you, precedes "ergo sum" -- you ... what ... therefore you are?  Our Unitarian Universalist faith doesn't give us the answers to these questions.  It does tell us that they're important to ask. 

There is a danger in what we've been thinking about this morning, that I feel I have to address.   We can get too attached to our anchors, hold too tightly to those things that ground us, limit ourselves by being too bound by what we've been.  It is all too easy to say "this got me through the last axial tilt, so I'd better not let of of it.  Even a little."  We can become almost superstitious about it, like the athlete who insists on wearing the same socks to every game because he was wearing them that time they won.  We can use this sense of "who I've been, and who I am" to fix ourselves in place.  Yet are not meant to be fixed in place.  We are meant to be in orbit -- moving, turning, rotating, spinning, circling, looping, pulsating, resonating, and, yes, repeating, yet never quite exactly in the same way. 

The author of The Forgetting address all of this too, having her heroine write in her book near the end, 

"We are made of memories.  I've read those words every day of my life.  Today I decided that they're true.  We are who we have been.  But it's my choice today that is the memory of tomorrow. It's my choice that determines what I will become.  Not the memories of the past." 

We live our lives not in ever-repeating circles, but in spiraling cycles. We come back to same of the same places, to be sure, but coming back to them again we find that they're ever so slightly, and sometimes quite drastically, different because, hopefully, we're different.   Because over the course of our last trip around our own internal sun we've changed.  Grown.  Become someone new. 

May it be so for us all. 

Pax tecum,

RevWik

***** 

Preachers all know the experience of having to cut a passage (and sometimes more than just one passage) from their sermons.  Sometimes the whole thing is too long.  Sometimes this passage isn't entirely on point.  Often it's one of the passages we really love.  (The sacrifices we make for the congregations we serve!)  Here's one from this past Sunday's sermon:

In 1765 the French literary critic Antoine Leonard Thomas wrote an essay in praise of Decartes and wrote a slightly expanded version of all of this.  It should probably be emblazoned on the walls of Unitarian Universalist churches everywhere. You see, Descartes had not been merely thinking when he had his epiphany.  Specifically, he was in the process of doubting -- doubting everything.  And when he got to the point of doubting his own existence, he realized that the act of doubting required a Doubter and that, in this case, he was the Doubter.  Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum -- I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am. 

Do Villains Have Secret Identities?

On Sunday I preached a sermon that used the classic superhero motif of identity/alter-identity as a way of exploring the issue of identity in our own lives.  On the way out of church two people had two very intriguing comments.  One asked, "and how many identities does the Joker have?"  As I thought about it I realized that a great many of the comics' villains have only one identity.  The Joker is the Joker.  He had once had another identity, but now all he is is the Joker.  Same with the Penguin, Two-Face, Mr. Freeze, Harley Quinn, Victor Zsasz, Killer Croc, Bane ... the list could go on and on.  Yes, Catwoman is Selina Kyle, and there are a few other, yet even those who do have an alter-ego rarely are depicted as having a secret identity.  It seems that everybody knows that Edward Nygma is The Riddler and that Jonathan Crane is the Scarecrow.

I can think of several reasons for this.  First of all, the stories are generally about the hero with the villain serving primarily as the hero's foil.  The villain exists to give the hero something to do, to provide the necessary challenge that every hero must face.  (See Joseph Campbell's concept of the monomyth if you have any doubt that all heroes must have trials to face and obstacles to overcome.)  To the extent that this is true, then, the villains don't need to be as fully fleshed out as the hero.  It's true that if you stay with the characters for a while they are shown to be more than cardboard cut-outs, and there are certainly more than a few stories told from their points of view.  Yet predominantly it's not their internal struggles that we care about.  And in terms of these archetypal mythological figures helping us explore our own lives?  We're more likely to identify with the hero than the villain.  I relate to the Batman -- or his first protégé, Nightwing -- far more easily than I do to Poison Ivy or Clayface.  

Of course, as in any dream, all the archetypes in these stories are intended to reflect dimensions of the human condition.  This is as true of the villains as the heroes.  The disinhibition of the Joker, the quest for power of Bane, the conflicted nature of Two-Face -- all of these reflect experiences we know.  So perhaps there's another reason that so many villains have only one identity.  Perhaps that's the reason they're villains.

In my sermon on the heroes I said:

Superman needs Clark Kent.  The Batman needs Bruce Wayne.  And you and I need those parts of ourselves that we would rather not acknowledge.  We need to be our whole selves, not just those parts we think are acceptable or that project what we think we should be like.  Years ago the Catholic priest Henri Nouwen popularized the phrase, “the wounded healer” as a way of capturing the idea that it is precisely our wounds, our woundedness and our weaknesses, that are our greatest strengths.

That’s not exactly intuitive, is it?  Not, apparently, logical.  Not even, if you’re anything like me a good bit of the time, all that believable.  Yet apparently it’s true.  Superman and Clark Kent need each other; Bruce Wayne and the Batman need each other.  And you … well … you need …you.  We can’t split off part of ourselves and still be whole.

Perhaps the reason that the villains are villains -- aside from whatever origin story they may have -- is precisely because they don't have an alter ego.  All they are is chaos, or greed, or unrestrained power, or manipulation, or revenge, or vanity, or what-have-you.  So perhaps they too tell us that we need to have at least some kind of balance in our lives; that our whole selves are needed.  Perhaps they provide cautionary examples to us.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

  

PS -- I'd said that two parishioners left the service on Sunday with intriguing feedback.  I'll deal with the other in my next post.

Death to Clark Kent

“A mask may reveal as much as it conceals.”

~ Unknown

 This a version of this sermon was originally preached at the First Universalist Church in Yarmouth, Maine in 2005.  This version was offered at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian Universalist in Charlottesville, VA on Sunday, January 11, 2015.  A podcast will be posted here so that you can listen if you prefer.

Our Opening Words are from the Gospel of Quentine Tarrentino, Kill Bill, Vol. 2.  Bill speaks:

“An essential characteristic of the superhero mythology is, there's the superhero, and there's the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When he wakes up in the morning, he's Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man. And it is in that characteristic that Superman stands alone. Superman did not become Superman, Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red "S", that's the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears, the glasses, the business suit, that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He's weak, he's unsure of himself... he's a coward. Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race.” 

* * *

Even a cursory look around my office—and even more so if you could see my office at home—you will discover something very important about me: I am into comic books and super heroes.  (Big surprise, right?  Nikki Skaggs even embroidered superhero logos on the back side of this really beautiful stole.)  I recently cataloged my comic book collection at nearly 2,000 issues, and I have a little  more than fifty action figures.  (Most of them variations of the Batman.)  And let’s be clear – I’m not one of those white-gloves and tweezers kind of collectors who keeps everything in its original packaging so as to maintain its maximum value.  Oh no! I read my comic books and, since I’m among friends, have been known to play with my action figures from time to time.  I’ve even started making stop-motion videos with them.  So yeah, I’m a comic book geek.

Yet this morning I want to use the superhero as a window through which to explore something really quite relevant to us—you and me—and not just something for folks who’s super powers include fitting into incredibly tight spandex outfits.  Before we get into that, though, I want to quibble a bit with the reading we heard as our Opening Words.

You see, as I said, I’ve read a lot of comic books.  And believe it or not, a great many of them explore real philosophical issues (in-between super powered smack-downs of course).  And one of the favorites, the one that was the core of our opening words, is the question of identity.  Just who is the Batman:  is he the man or the mask?  Over and over throughout the years Peter Parker has thought about, and tried, opting out of the super hero biz, but again and again the question comes up – can he simply throw away the costume and live a normal life, or is he somehow destined to be Spiderman?  This kind of exploration is actually in a lot of comics — the ones, at least, by the good writers.  And with all due respect to Mr. Tarantino, the current consensus is that while Superman may in fact be a “strange visitor from another planet,” his true identity is the simple Kansas farm boy, and millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne is really just a more or less convenient persona into which the Batman retires at the end of a shift.  Still, his essential point remains correct:  part of the classic superhero myth involves the interplay of identity and alternate identity.

And see?  That’s where it gets relevant for us.  After all we, too, wear a variety of masks in our day-to-day living.  Don’t we play a multitude of roles, finding ourselves to a greater or lesser extent revealing or concealing our “true selves” depending on the situation?  I’ve had stay-at-home mothers come to talk with me, once their kids had grown up and were spending more and more time out of the nest, talk to me with great concern because they felt that they had played the role of “mommy” for so long that they no longer knew who they were “in real life.” 

And don’t we, at least sometimes, find ourselves playing a role that really feels removed from who we really are?  Able to bend steel with our bare hands we feign difficulty opening the lid of a mayonnaise jar.  I’ve had women and men talk to me about the difficulties of having to hide—or, at least, seriously downplay—parts of who they are while at work, for instance:  everything from people who pretend not to be as smart as they really are, to people who’ve had to deny the existence of the person they love most. 

You know what I’m talking about – right?  We know what it’s like to play more than one role.  Do you ever wonder which one is you?  Which one is the real, the authentic, the true you?  It can be hard to know, can’t it? 

This sermon this morning is an update of one I preached ten years ago in another congregation.  That one was suggested by a Worship Weaver I was working with then.  He brought that Tarrentino reading to my attention, and suggested the title – “Death to Clark Kent.” I think the title was his way of expressing that yearning we all feel to be ourselves—just ourselves—no games, no masks, no roles; to simply be our full, complete selves all the time.  This is no new longing.  It’s a frequent form of the hero’s journey – the discovering of one’s true identity – and it’s a goal described in a lot of the world’s spiritual literature. 

Again and again Lao Tsu and Chuan Tzu talk about the “self free person,” the person who plays no roles, who simply is.  Tilden Edwards, one of the founders of the Shalem Institute, speaks of Jesus as one who was “always discovering his identity, [and who was not] possessed of one.”  Or, we might say, possessed by one – forced into a role rather than freely and organically discovering himself in each and every moment.  This was, in its simplest terms, the idea behind the “go and find yourself” movement.  There’s this fantasy that Superman could throw off his glasses and funky suits, could get rid of the geeky and gawky Clark Kent and be, once and for all, the Man of Steel he was meant to be.  And if he could do it, maybe we could, too.

I have to admit, though, that I wonder about this quest.  There’s no question that in my lifetime I’ve played a lot of different roles, and I know I've even played roles that have not felt completely authentic, but I’m not so sure it’s all that easy to know which “me” is me.  I’m a parent, a partner, a pastor, a prestidigitator, a published author, a pain in the neck (who apparently really likes alliteration), and each of these – all of these – is me.  I’m courageous and cowardly; I’ve been incredibly insightful and incredibly off the mark.  How do I determine which version of me is the “real” me?

My friend Takeo Fujikura told me something about his language that I find really profound.   In Japanese, he said, there is no single first-person pronoun, no way to say "I."  Or, to be more precise, there is no single single first-person pronoun—there are, if I remember correctly, something like seven.  He said that this is because Japanese culture recognizes that there is no single "me."  (As Walt Whitman said, "I contain multitudes.")  The “me” I am with my parents is different than the “me” I am with with my friends, and both are different than the “me” I am with my kids.  The “me” I am in the break room is different than the “me” I am when I’m called into the boss’ office.  I mean, yes, it’s all “me.”  But …well … you know what I mean, right?  You’ve known those differences, too.

The cover of our Order of Service has on it the cover of JLA #51, which is the beginning of an absolutely fabulous four-issue story arc featuring the Justice League of America.  As my fellow comic geeks know, there have been many iterations of this super team, but at time of this story it consisted of the big guns:  the Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, and Martian Manhunter.  Now, if I can resist going into way too much detail, let’s just say that in this story there’s a sixth dimensional creature with the ability to grant wishes.  (And if you think that sounds weird try reading the book of Revelations sometime!)

So, this creature hones in on Superman's thought in a moment of frustration that he wished he and the others didn’t have to live with two identities.  And, suddenly, there is both a Superman and a Clark Kent, a Batman and a Bruce Wayne.  Over the course of the series, each of these figures begins to change, to transform, and not in particularly pretty ways.  Superman, without the humanizing influence of his adoptive parents, becomes more violent and coldly authoritarian.  Batman, without the driving passion of his grief over his parents’ murder, becomes unfocused and ineffectual, an empty shell.  Clark Kent, on the other hand, without the cape and tights, becomes the coward he portrays.  And Bruce Wayne, without the Dark Knight, begins to lose his mind because there’s no outlet for his raging grief.  Similar difficulties befall each of the heroes, until they finally realize that they each need to reunite their now separate selves. 

Which brings us back, quite nicely, to one of my favorite theological positions —“both/and.”  A number of years ago I read about a psychologist at Harvard who was studying why it’s so hard for people to change behaviors they themselves find objectionable.  Even though there are aspects of their personalities or behavior that they really and truly would like to change, no amount of effort seems to have any lasting result. Maybe you’ve heard about people like that.  I think I saw a movie about people like that once.

Anyway, as part of her study this psychologist had people make a list of the behavior traits that disturbed them the most.  She also had them make a list of the behaviors that they were most proud of. What she found was remarkable – the two lists were almost invariably mirror images of one another.  Let’s say that a person was bothered about never being on time and rarely following through on commitments; at the same time, though, this person would take great pride in being free and spontaneous.  Somebody else who thought that their rigidity was problematic also thought that their discipline was a positive.  The psychologist posited that people have so much trouble riding themselves of their most negative traits because they are so intimately tied to their most positive ones.

Superman needs Clark Kent.  The Batman needs Bruce Wayne.  And you and I need those parts of ourselves that we would rather not acknowledge.  We need to be our whole selves, not just those parts we think are acceptable or that project what we think we should be like.  Years ago the Catholic priest Henri Nouwen popularized the phrase, “the wounded healer” as a way of capturing the idea that it is precisely our wounds, our woundedness and our weaknesses, that are our greatest strengths.

That’s not exactly intuitive, is it?  Not, apparently, logical.  Not even, if you’re anything like me a good bit of the time, all that believable.  Yet apparently it’s true.  Superman and Clark Kent need each other; Bruce Wayne and the Batman need each other.  And you … well … you need …you.  We can’t split off part of ourselves and still be whole.

But does that mean we’re condemned to be, to stay, as we are right now?  Does that mean we can’t – or shouldn’t – try to change?  To improve?  To grow?  There’s another comic book arc in which Superman loses his powers but still wants to fight the bad guys.  So he goes to the Batcave and undergoes a kind of superhero boot camp.  Clark Kent wants to be a hero even if he’s lost the “super.”  Change is possible, but it can’t simply be done by negating or rejecting those parts of ourselves we find unlovable.  A Christian colleague and friend likes to say, “God loves you exactly as you are, and loves you too much to let you stay that way.”

The key to change, the key to growth, the key to living as our true and authentic selves is learning to recognize and appreciate the strengths in our shadows (and the shadow of our strengths) and then to integrate the two.  Near the end of that JLA story line, the two aspects of the heroes join, but not fully.  They coexist, yet still remain less than integrated – two heads, four arms, torsos joined like victims of some awful transporter accident on the Enterprise.  And, of course, in this state they are virtually useless (as well as, you know, in agony).  And many of us get stuck in this in-between place when we first try to acknowledge our “dark side” yet are not quite ready to embrace it.

It’s Wonder Woman who finally saves the day since in truth we are always wholly ourselves and Wonder Woman is, in essence, the Spirit of Truth.  The narrator has this to say,

“The Spirit of Truth.  The only force on earth that has even a chance of galvanizing her friends and allies … of forcing ten men to acknowledge that they are but parts of a whole … useless, crippled, fragments who cannot coexist apart … who must for once … just once in a world of never-ending battles … stop fighting … and surrender … to each other.”

Stop fighting and surrender.  Good advice, and a quest worth pursuing.

Pax tecum,

RevWik