It Doesn’t Have to be this Bad
This spring both the Easter message of the triumph of life over death and the associated bacchanal of candy and consumption have been eclipsed by the Fifth Anniversary of Bush’s GWOT - the most costly, most brutal war in history.This year, when our president celebrates his expensive orgy of devastation in Iraq with “no regrets,” when waterboarding is hailed as a tool to manage terrorism, and spying on citizens is praised as patriotic, when 20 children die every minute for lack of food or medicine, when our nation is on the brink of a serious financial crisis, when our profligate use of fossil fuels is threatening the very planet we live on, just how should we celebrate the triumph of life over death?
It’s hard not to be discouraged. People in Portage County have been resisting Bush’s war for years:
- After the bombing of Afghan civilians in December 2001, Kent musician Sue Jeffers started holding weekly anti-war vigils. At first only one other person turned up; by the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war nearly 50 people were participating in the vigils.
- In 2003 neurobiology professor Ted Voneida organized Portage Citizens Against the War and placed a “No War in Iraq” billboard on Rt. 59 in Ravenna Twp. Ted has continued his campaign with 43 letters to newspapers and counter-recruitment activities in schools.
- In 2005, following the atrocities at Abu Ghraib and Fallujah and the dubious re-election of Bush, some hundred and fifty Portage County Democrats, formed the Portage Democratic Coalition to work for change within the political system.
- A few months later Kent Quaker Karl Liske painted the word “Truth” on the sidewalk in front of a military recruitment center and was charged with criminal mischief. Karl stood by his rights, and the charges were dropped.
- In August of 2005 a hundred people gathered on the steps of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Kent for a Candlelight Vigil in support of Cindy Sheehan’s effort to bring home our troops.
Yet for all these activities, there is no end in sight to the war in Iraq or the injustices, domestic and global, that beset the human family. Somehow, we need to break out of repetitive celebrations of past events and create new beginnings. There are some hopeful signs:
- In 2007, after Kent teacher Kevin Egler put up “Impeach Bush” signs on a public highway and was charged with littering he went to City Council and won a change in the littering law so that political speech was protected.
- This past week presidential hopeful Barack Obama took a firm grasp of the poisonous and paralyzing issue of race and held it up to the nation to deal with as adults - non-violently and creatively. He challenged us to put aside trivial religious pursuits and engage with one another about the inequalities and injustices of race in our society, and about the savage punishments visited on the poor by wars and capitalism.
- Friday March 28 the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Kent will offer an anti-war program of readings and music. Highlight of the concert will be a performance of a 2004 work by Cincinnati composer Rick Sowash: “Trio #13 in E-flat Minor: Passacaglia and Fugue Dedicated to the Victims of Bush and bin Laden”. Sowash explains:”Trio #13 is one of my most passionate outbursts. I am OUTRAGED by the very idea of war, any war. As a Christian-in-the-making, a regular choir-singing member of Cincinnati’s famously liberal Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church, I deplore the hypocrisy of our self-styled Christian president and our Congress who so easily shunt aside the central teachings of Jesus, to wit: Blessed are the Peacemakers, Turn the Other Cheek, Do unto Others
“The piece is furiously angry, but there are also places of tranquility and even humor, my way of saying, “It doesn’t have to be this bad, the world is a beautiful place after all, and life is good, worth preserving and protecing.”
“At the center of my artistic creed lies the notion that the very best art gives us a reconciliation of opposites. In this piece, I set up E-flat minor and A major as opposites and then structured a reconciliation between them.”
At Easter 2008 we don’t have to invent oppositions or opponents. But we must start structuring reconciliations. If life is once again to triumph over death we must resolve our differences and end the domination of society by war, deadly weapons, torture, hunger and injustice.
Perhaps our affluence and the influence of obscene wealth on the global economy has made us deaf to the miseries of our neighbors, blind to alternative visions for the future, and resistant to any hopes for a better world. But I don’t think so, nor do my neighbors here in Portage County. Voices are rising all over our nation, all over the world, saying “No More War: “It doesn’t have to be this bad, the world is a beautiful place after all, and life is good, worth preserving and protecting.”
Before joining Senator Glenn’s Washington staff in 1985, Caroline Arnold csarnold@neo.rr.com founded a successful small business and served three terms on the Kent (OH) Board of Education. In retirement she is active with civic and environmental organizations in Kent, and serves on the board of Family & Community Services of Portage County
Hello Caroline, I hope you are well. A while back I saw Ben Kingsly interviewed by Tavis Smiley. Kingsly reminded us that Ghandi was a very angry man, but learned how to channel his anger for positive results. There was someone who truly believed that things don’t have to be this bad.
Peace, Vince
“I set up E-flat minor and A major as opposites and then structured a reconciliation between them.”
There must be a New Age fantasy world you can reconcile the Taliban with the opium war lords of Afghanistan just as easily as modulating from E-flat minor to A Major.
Unfortunately, the real Afghanistan isn’t part of that fantasy world.
“…just how should we celebrate the triumph of life over death?”
Hold a demolition derby with all the remaining 18 wheelers fueled by the last of the gasoline. Then bring in a Bradly M80 and blow up everything that remains or turn it into swiss cheese with full auto mini-guns. Then you can set off C4 explosions in the center of the ring and close the evening with some star spangled fireworks, “Hail to the Chief”, and “God Bless America”. Then they turn off the lights and we all walk home in the dark to light the kerosene lamps on the kitchen table and remember automobiles. And one of the children asks, “Daddy, what’s structural steel? Can you melt it with kerosene?” “Too tired now son, ask me tomorrow.” That’s when a light bright as noontime sun lit the heavens then everything turned to ash and blew away in the 200 mph winds.
Insane asylum. Now say those two words again, very slowly. And again, one more time. That’s it. Insane…………….Asylum.
Your mind. My mind. I don’t mind. Besides, I know you’re kind. Yes, you have many levels.
Pieces of 8.
At the concert at the UU Church of Kent this coming Friday, I will be reading a selection from Henry David Thoreau’s “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience”, which influenced both Gandhi and Martin Luther King in their practice of peaceful disobedience.
Thoreau went to jail for his refusal to pay his tax which he did in protest against what he felt was an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation, Mexico, in 1847. I feel that such a reading as this, which is as relevant today as it was 150 years ago, is worth sharing because of its timeless nature in speaking against governments that invade nations without provocation.
An anecdote came to me today while driving a very beautiful tree-lined route in rural Florida. It’s a typical ritual that children of the middle/upper class may relate to. It’s that thing called “Color War” that breaks out at sleepaway camp(s).
During the summer I turned 6, my father negotiated with an upscale camp in PA to allow me to attend even though I was only 5 (the youngest there). My parents were on the brink of divorce and this was the way to get me safely out of the way. Very impressionable, but naturally intuitive, I was a sponge taking in everything that happened around me.
One day a plane flew over head (maybe a helicopter, I don’t recall) and out of it came some military style bags as if some MAJOR event was underway. Someone yelled out “Color war!” And for the next 2-4 weeks the entire camp was artificially divided into teams based on one of two colors. From there on in a fierce sense of competition was channeled into members of both teams who competed in all manner of sports and related events.
What remains with me to this day, apart from the sheer inanity of the spectacle, was how READILY people accepted these color-based designations, and how friends, on account of being “awarded” opposing team membership TURNED on one another.
This event, coupled with a Candid Camera episode that left a major impression on me (in it very enthused protestors who wore BLANK signs convinced OTHERS to take up the BLANK sign, i.e. there WAS no cause, nor one needed. People, as sheep, went along with the spectacle because they were too cowardly to ask what it represented, or to counter the enthusiasm of those soliciting them). The impressions are that people can be so easily indoctrinated. That people can turn on each other for NO good cause. The compelling factor seems to be a senes of joining with others, even if the thing being joined for is itself worthless, obscure or BLANK.
I truly believe the passion directed at teams in sporting events is a natural psychological segue into war. What that methodology doesn’t accomplish, conventional religion, particularly of the authoritarian slant, does.
I truly believe the passion directed at teams in sporting events is a natural psychological segue into war. What that methodology doesn’t accomplish, conventional religion, particularly of the authoritarian slant, does.
**********
Your eye is always on the far horizon, Siouxrose. Good for you. I think postmodernists and the truly religious both see — each in their own way — that the crux of the problem is the need for every individual to reject all forms of self-identification that divide us from our brothers and sisters. You have to get past race, tribe, nationality, all of the “ism’s,” even sex, and adopt what Martin Buber called “I and thou” thinking. Once you adopt it, your whole consciousness changes.
All we can do as individuals to try to make the world a better place, is to attempt to help our fellow men make the same leap, and, of course, to act accordingly ouselves in the meantime. When we change, the world changes. Joseph Campbell suggested that it’s impossible for utopias to be brought out of the future and presented to man. Because each of us is born in his or her own unique historical time and place and cultural space, the secret of the Garden of Paradise can only be found within ourselves. And spreading the recognition that we’re all spiritual travelers making the same pilgrimage, each in her or his own unique way, but to the same destination, is perhaps the best that we can do.
Of course, I could be completely full of beans.
WHY ZOWL: Very enlightening post. My mantra is that the circle has no sides, and provides a visual model that helps us to transcend the ancient ism divisions. No beans required.
As long as we acknowledge that all of us are within the circle and no one is excluded; none are outside the circle, even those whom we might consider to be evil.
luckylefty, i think i love you.
has there been any discussion along the lines that these “people” are psycho/sociopaths, literally? if they could somehow be identified as such (and, they are), perhaps others (who ARE those people?) would not be so quick to follow.
i’m just sayin’.
luckylefty, yes. Can you see cheney “well, we gotta picka a day-yeah nine-eleven; f ‘em, perfect, call emergency” he laughs….
Does this ring possible? The plot began in earnest, by al-queda, but quickly came to the attention of mossad/cia/cheney/kristol et al who ‘facilitated’ it, quite possibly w/o the actors knowledge?
As opposed to a conspiracy, no-conspiracy dichotomy… I wonder.
of course kerosene melts structural steel; nice post ll
We have the capacity to let the earth be the garden it was meant to be, and live in peace with each other, but we are not ready. We need a new reality of harmony with nature and each other, and things may have to get worse first.
Peace be with you, Ms. Arnold.
someone sent me this this morning…you might find it worthwhile given this discussion
Click here: The Unity of Spirit and Matter Part One
it looks like you may have to copy and paste it to google to get the film
How many armored brigades does Portage County have? Where are Kent’s WMD’s? One more addition to the axis of evil:Portage County Ohio. GWB.
Ballerina et. al — Here’s the link:
Namaste
Nice posts by luckylefty and SiouxRose. I especially liked the part about the blank signs that people would carry. This premise is like the Good Germans, the masses of people knew better but never acted on their conscience.
Nationalism is a force with plays on the fact that mobs don’t think. People are cocooning, drifting apart, so they likely feel some primeval urge to come together, if necessary by uniting in the act of killing innocents in some faraway land.
I think apathy is common as the media networks and schools dumb down, and encourage us not to care. Yet the human being is an adaptive organism, which means even as control methodologies and propaganda are implemented, some of us resist. Twisted though they may be, even the nationalism and militarism of war are efforts to overcome our disassociation with each other.
Resistance to the war is growing. Don’t expect to see that truth on the MSM. Every Winter Soldier admission leads one more convert to the truth that our interventions are wars of acquisition based on an anti-Arab agenda launched through 9/11 (no, kerosene doesn’t melt steel). The more the MSM disguises this fact, the more apparent the pro-Israel bias and propaganda becomes.
Ms Arnold:
Thank you for your eloquence and your knowingness. Many of us in Texas are so very embarassed to have the White House Resident among us. Thousands of us have also marched and vigilled, etc.
As for me, I focus on the Peace that already IS. In my Stillness, where I live, there is no war, no chaos. We are all already One in the Stillness.
It is ineffably lovely to know of such kindred spirits as yourself abide in Potage County.
AAAAAuuuuuummmmm.
Ray
”
* … Kent musician Sue Jeffers started holding weekly anti-war vigils..
* … Candlelight Vigil in support of …
Yet for all these activities, there is no end in sight ”
No shit? Standing around, being vigilant for an evening accomplished absolutely nothing? What is the world coming to?
I don’t want Dick Cheney in my circle. Guess I am just not spiritual enough.
Nor can I accept DC nor GWB etal in my circle. Now Ghandi is another story. There was a guy worth his salt.
And the Women in Black on the Broad Street over crossing. They too have my vigilence in spirit.
NZ
_I_n_s_p_i_r_a_t_i_o_n_ WHITNEY HOUSTON LYRICS
“One Moment In Time”
Namaste
“Once the apostle Paul had laid down universal love between all men as the foundation of his Christian community, the inevitable consequence in Christianity was the utmost intolerance towards all who remained outside of it.”
– Sigmund Freud