"Weapons That Heal, Food That Endures"
Judgment on David, perversion of sun, illusion of invincibility, releasing scourge deadly to world as faithlessness to his own house; credit him with allowance of hearing to prophet, unbound to tell us what we want to hear, scandalous to self-invested perspectives; credit him with discernment of outrageous rich man, protecting own abundance, accumulation, seizing the little to poor man's name, deserving to forfeit a life, for restoring semblance of one in wronged other; but credit him not with failure to find his own face in prophets self-shattering mirror of words, far sharper than swords, so slow, if ever, to sight sliver of self stealing sustenance from all the rest.
Violence, vengeance, rape, retribution: Nathan before us, upholding our image: Thirty thousand nuclear weapons, one hundred thousand times more explosive than Hiroshima, Nagasaki; not even to mention six hundred thirty-nine million "small arms" squeezing life out of our children. "We live in a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. It is a world that has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. We have solved the mystery of the atom and forgotten the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount. We know more about war than we do about peace, more about dying than we do about living." (Omar Bradley) And more about killing than we do about dying?
Colman McCarthy, Center for Teaching Peace, "looking for world where it becomes a little bit easier to love, a lot harder to hate -- where learning nonviolence means we dedicate our our hearts, minds, time, money to a commitment that forces of love, of truth, of justice, of resistance to corrupt powers are seen as sane! Forces of fists, guns, armies, bombs are seen as insane!" Where, it is dreamed, child care is fully funded, new weapons require bake sales! One student's essay in full -- "Q. Why are we violent but not illiterate? "A. Because we are taught to read."
What life is worthy of calling to which we are called? Memory we are to leave? What food will perish? What will endure? "The first thing to be disrupted by our commitment to nonviolence will not be the system but our lives." How to be both forceful, nonviolent, at once? Morally forceful? Persuasively so? Gandhi's "weapon of the strong?" Leaving to David the swords, learning from Nathan the words, more dangerous, more transfigurative, than any sword -- "with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."
Military history of Japan as offensive as any other, no one with any room to talk, nonviolent elephant in every closet, so much to forgive, to be forgiven, only way anything new might happen? Each hearing Nathan, "You are the one!" One counted upon to get it -- and get beyond!
I too, born in World War, have lived and written against this particular stupidity and pointless, hopeless pain in my agonizing days. Has even a single life thereby been saved? Who can say? Except that doing so saved mine. Oh, I could tell you about saved lives . . . Yes, poetry saves lives. All wars begin at home within the warring self. No, our poems cannot stop war, not his or any war, but the one that rages within which is the first and only step. It is a sacred trust, a duty, the poet's avocation. We write the poetry we must. (Sam Hamill) And live the poetry we write?
Today is like a bomb in each of our gardens, like Jesus, warning even now, never knowing just how, when, for what, our souls are required; preferring procuring such properties in world as might protect us from world! But there is a bomb in our garden, not leaving of its own volition, going by so many names, disguising deadlinesses, set to go off any time -- taking everyone possible with them? Any one bomb threatening all, Cain's genocide wiping out half their generation.
There is a bomb in my garden. I know I should call someone but imagine the hubbub: men in mackintoshes leaving boot prints in the peas, their heels pasted with scraps of tender lettuce, and I would be shunted off, barred from my home while others muck about in what is mine. No, I think I'll just let it be. Clean the exposed parts, buff it up, perhaps. Build a gazebo; plant roses. Listen to it tick. (Meg Jeffers) Jesus' story applied to each of our souls, to the Soul of the World -- Listen to us tick . . .
Just know we should call someone -- about Anne Frank, experimentation, extermination, concentration camps; about Sadako, radiation and "atom bomb sickness;" about Agent Orange, Depleted Uranium, "all this poison with half-life the age of the Earth." (Ellen Bass) How desperate, and how capable, capturing nuclear niceties, of healing, nurturing, saving, sustaining; yet with a bomb in our garden, our hearts, and nobody left to call about it but us.
Imagine! Half trillion dollars on weapons a year, distributed in and by us, governments in our names; some one-fifth world's scientists researching solely for military; relative peace some five hundred of thirty-six hundred recorded years human history; some three and a half billion of us (human beings) killed, murdered, in some fourteen thousand wars in short life of this species on planet, for whom all Species, Earth Herself, Sources, Resources, suffer -- no bullet random, no damage collateral, no anger extraneous.
Rich Fool: I need to Supersize My Economy! Lower taxes, drive-up interest, squander past, borrow future, tear down perfectly good barns, build even larger ones to replace them, hoard all goods, all grains -- as if to take them with me? As if Progressive enough, Successful enough, to outgrow the use of my soul? Consciousness? Conscience? Jesus: Not so fast! Never know what crisis, what call coming next, only that one, or more, coming; in all choices choosing for children or selves; "And a little child shall lead them." "God," if ever, no longer needingto sort who is to punish, who is to blame; rather, "like those who lift infants to their cheeks," longing to lead us to kindness, wrap us with love, bend to us, feed us, choose us over war.
No comments:
Post a Comment