Category: violence

We Will Remember Them

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They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
~Lawrence Binyon from “For the Fallen” (1914)

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who died
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
~John McCrae “In Flanders Fields”

When you go home tell them of us and say –
“For your tomorrow we gave our today”
~John Maxwell Edmonds from “The Kohima Epitaph” 

November pierces with its bleak remembrance
Of all the bitterness and waste of war.
Our silence tries but fails to make a semblance
Of that lost peace they thought worth fighting for.
Our silence seethes instead with wraiths and whispers,
And all the restless rumour of new wars,
The shells are falling all around our vespers,
No moment is unscarred, there is no pause,
In every instant bloodied innocence
Falls to the weary earth ,and whilst we stand
Quiescence ends again in acquiescence,
And Abel’s blood still cries in every land
One silence only might redeem that blood
Only the silence of a dying God.
~Malcolm Guite “Silence: a Sonnet for Remembrance Day”

To our military veterans here and abroad –
in deep appreciation and gratitude for the freedoms
you have defended on behalf of us all.

No one is left untouched and unscarred in the bitterness of war:
those of you who died in service,
those of you wounded in service,
those of you who bore visible and invisible scars all your lives.

You are heroes to the cause of freedom.

As G.K. Chesterton said,
“Courage is a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.”

My father was one of the fortunate ones who came home, returning to a quiet life of farming and teaching after three years serving in the Pacific with the Marines Corp from 1942 to 1945. Hundreds of thousands of his colleagues didn’t come home, dying on beaches and battlefields. Tens of thousands more came home forever marked, through physical or psychological injury, by the experience of war and witness of death and mayhem all around them.

In my medical training in the 1970’s, I cared for veterans hospitalized for mental health care after serving in WWII, Korea and Vietnam. I witnessed for myself the sacrifices of these soldiers, and the limits of our therapies.

No matter how one views wars our nation has fought and may be obligated to fight in the future, we must support and care for the men and women who have made, on our behalf, the commitment to be on the front line for freedom’s sake.

Even our God died so we could stop fighting each other (and Him). What a waste we have not stopped to listen and understand His sacrifice enough to finally lay down our weapons against one another forever.

Support for wounded veterans:

Disabled Veterans National Foundation

Wounded Warrior Project

Be Sunlight on a Stream

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Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimful of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again tho’ cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago.
~Christina Rossetti “Echo”

The real world reverberates with echoes of our losses – so much in the news pulls us down every day. When filled with tears and sorrow, we try to retreat to the safety of our dreams rather than face fear and uncertainty.

But we can’t stay in our heads or give up hope.

There is too much the world needs from us.

Like sunlight on a stream, we become the promise of illumination of the dark depths. When doors remain closed to those who need help most, we are the key meant for the lock.

Love is that light and key. God equips us with the pulse and breath to make a difference to others. And we can make a difference: one word, one smile, one vote at a time.

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Trying to Transplant Pain

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Why should I have to deal with so-called human beings
when I can be up on the roof
hammering shingles harder than necessary,

driving the sharp nails down
into the forehead of the house
like words I failed earlier to say?

And when a few wasps eddy up
from their hidden place beneath the eaves
to zoom in angry agitation near my face

I just raise a canister of lethal spray
and shoot them down without a thought.
Don’t speak to me, please,
about clarity and proportionate response.

The world is a can of contents under pressure;
a human being should have a warning label on the side
that says: Disorganized Narrative Inside;
Beware of frequent sideways bursting

of one feeling through another
—to stare into the tangled midst of which
would make you as sick and dizzy as those wasps,

then leave you stranded on the roof
on a beautiful day in autumn
with a mouth full of nails,

trying to transplant pain
by hammering down
into a house full of echoes.
~Tony Hoagland “Wasp”

Two aerial tigers,
Striped in ebony and gold
And resonantly, savagely a-hum,
Have lately come
To my mailbox’s metal hold
And thought
With paper and with mud
Therein to build
Their insubstantial and their only home.
Neither the sore displeasure
Of the U. S. Mail
Nor all my threats and warnings
Will avail
To turn them from their hummed devotions.
And I think
They know my strength,
Can gauge
The danger of their work:
One blow could crush them
And their nest; and I am not their friend.
And yet they seem
Too deeply and too fiercely occupied
To bother to attend.
Perhaps they sense
I’ll never deal the blow,
For, though I am not in nor of them,
Still I think I know
What it is like to live
In an alien and gigantic universe, a stranger,
Building the fragile citadels of love
On the edge of danger.
~James L. Rosenberg “The Wasps’ Nest”

When will we ever learn?

This election season is unprecedented with plenty of verbal kicking of various hornets’ nests, some while resting in our literal laps.

We are surrounded on every side by anger and agitation, some of it coming from our own words and activities. Some of us feel like we are precariously balanced between family members and friends, hoping not to make things worse by saying what we believe, or choosing silence.

Rather than throwing stones or spraying poison at yet another wasp nest, I walk on by, acknowledging its fragile presence, but uninterested in joining its buzz.

As the walls of this seasonal fortress are tissue-paper thin, it won’t survive the winds and rains of the coming winter. There will always be attempts at rebuilding and still I will try to avoid the agitation.

I’m not in or of them.
It’s a long time passing…

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A Painful Wuthering

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Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night’s decay
Ushers in a drearier day.
~Emily Brontë “Fall, Leaves, Fall”

It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn.
~Emily Brontë from Wuthering Heights

The loudest crows
cawing over the tops of the oaks
call me to autumn already,
and though my back is to the window,

I know the sky must be a gray wuthering,
and the curlews are crying. The wind
must be moaning as it goes sweeping
across heath and moors and the spikes
of purple heather thousands of miles away
from where my body sits; yet

I feel the gorse
grazing my ankles as I go.
~Andrea Potos “Brontean Morning” from Her Joy Becomes

I avoid watching sad movies and will close a book that is clearly heading for a weepy ending.

I don’t need to wrap myself around things that hurt when there is enough sadness and pain in the world already. Deep emotion sticks to me like velcro, even when I know the tragedy is not my own. I take it on as if it is.

As a result, the Brontë novel Wuthering Heights is not my cup of tea. I suffered through the book as well as the movie versions. It is grim with wild, destructive passions that only lead to more sorrow. I become immersed in those desperately gray “wuthering” scenes feeling the sharp thorns of the words I read that end up drawing blood from me.

But most suffering is not at all fictional. When I become aware of tragedy happening far away, when the hurricane leaves behind terrible devastation or bombs and bullets rip communities to shreds, even though there is little I can physically do to help, I can’t turn away and not look. I can’t close the book that makes me sad and uncomfortable.

I too must feel the hurt, embracing the thorns rather than avoiding them.

Jesus did just that, taking it all upon Himself. He never turned away and still, now, today, He is pierced, bloodied for our sake.

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Let the Years Be Kind

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Just down the road… around the bend,
Stands an old empty barn; nearing the end.
It has sheltered no animals for many years;
No dairy cows, no horses, no sheep, no steers.
The neigh of a horse; the low of a cow;
Those sounds have been absent for some time now.
There was a time when the loft was full of hay,
And the resounding echoes of children at play.
At one time the paint was a bold shade of red;
Gradually faded by weather and the sun overhead.
The doors swing in the wind… the hinges are loose,
Windows and siding have taken a lot of abuse.
The fork, rope and pulleys lifted hay to the mow,
A task that always brought sweat to the brow.
But those good days are gone; forever it seems,
And that old barn now stands with sagging beams.
It is now home to pigeons, rats and mice;
The interior is tattered and doesn’t look very nice.
Old, abandoned barns have become a trend,
Just down the road… around the bend.
~Vance Oliphant “Old Barn”

We will call this place our home
The dirt in which our roots may grow
Though the storms will push and pull
We will call this place our home

We’ll tell our stories on these walls
Every year, measure how tall
And just like a work of art
We’ll tell our stories on these walls

Let the years we’re here be kind, be kind
Let our hearts, like doors, open wide, open wide
Settle our bones like wood over time, over time
Give us bread, give us salt, give us wine

A little broken, a little new
We are the impact and the glue
Capable more than we know
To call this fixer upper home

With each year, our color fades
Slowly, our paint chips away
But we will find the strength
And the nerve it takes
To repaint and repaint and repaint every day

Let the years we’re here be kind, be kind
Let our hearts, like doors, open wide, open wide
Settle our bones like wood over time, over time

Give us bread, give us salt, give us wine
Let the years we’re here be kind, be kind
Let our hearts, like doors, open wide, open wide
Settle our bones like wood over time, over time

Give us bread, give us salt, give us wine
Give us bread, give us salt, give us wine

Smaller than dust on this map
Lies the greatest thing we have
The dirt in which our roots may grow
And the right to call it home
~Ryan O’Neal “North” (listen to the choral versions below)

Each of us needs a home.
Every creature needs a place to put down roots and rest their head.

Yet, due to ravages of time,
a poverty of spirit and strength,
discouragement and discord,
natural disasters and drought,
or the devastation of politics and war —
too many find themselves chipped away until nothing is left.

It is time for restoration. It is time for renewal.

It is time for kindness:
the broken repaired,
the lonely made welcome,
the hungry fed.

Somehow, someway, we rebuild, repaint and restore
so all put down roots and thrive
and are welcomed home.

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The Oldest Tree

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Lately, when I awake desolate
feeling half-swamped
by runaway currents I name—
dread, for my children, and theirs,
and this planet—I backstroke
through time to rest my palms
against the delicate skin
of the gingko tree, the one
and only, in my home town.
Rooted in siltish sand,
come autumn, it flaunted
10,000 golden fans:
a waving descendant my uncle said,
of the oldest tree
to inhabit the earth. Memory
replays three fluting sighs
of a mourning dove, high in the canopy,
that vast fretwork alive again
with rustling endearments—yet
ghostly, too, as his unseen hand
almost rocks my skiff of a self.
~Laurie Klein “Lately, when I awake desolate”

So many reasons to awake in the night,
eyes wide open, searching the dark seas of trouble
for some sign of hope
for calm and peace in this stormy world.

Rocked to sleep again, I float among abundant
golden gingko leaves, each waving like a sail in the breeze,
before it tumbles, swirling, to the ground, forming
deeply cushioned and comforting pools of yellow.

Navigating these brutal times, desperate to
anchor within some safer harbor – I treasure
the old ginkgo as it reaches over each cherished child
with its golden cloak of love and protection.

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Throwing Away the Key

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When we look long at one another,
we soften, we relent, listen,

might forgive. We allow for silence
—and when we see each other,

are known, and in that moment
might change

though nothing has moved
or been spoken.

There are some who say
the walls cannot be broken,

but suddenly we are in a free place,
and the fields

that extend from its center
stretch for miles

as if out of the pupil and the iris
of that momentary kingdom.
~Annie Lighthart “When We Look” from Pax

The weasel was stunned into stillness as he was emerging from beneath an enormous shaggy wild rose bush four feet away. I was stunned into stillness twisted backward on the tree trunk. Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key.

Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut.

It was also a bright blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons. It emptied our lungs. It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes.

If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders. But we don’t. We keep our skulls. So.
~Annie Dillard from “Living Like Weasels”

The pupil and iris are a portal to our thoughts, our dreams, our passions and our fears. They are simultaneously window and mirror, revealing feelings we try to keep to ourselves.

Locking eyes can be one of the most thrilling, stomach-butterflies, ecstatic moments of connection. It can be tender, loving, reassuring and encouraging.

Or it can be intimidating and terrifying. I tend to avoid eye contact when passing a stranger on a dark street, or when engaged in a very stressful public interaction. I don’t want to reveal my insecurity, vulnerability, or worry through direct eye contact. While studying primates in Africa, I learned never to look a baboon in the eye as it can communicate aggression and instigate an attack.

So instead, I learned to look at my feet.

I’d much rather lock eyes and learn everything I can about you. I want to dive deep into who you are, breaking down the walls and dismantle the barriers that keep us apart from one another. Then I’m letting you in too. The black holes of our inner universe.

After all, this is preparation when we see the face of God and allow Him to lock into our eyes, knowing our truth.

No keys needed forevermore.

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A Mind Blurred

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For all
the pain

passed down
the genes

or latent
in the very grain

of being;
for the lordless

mornings,
the smear

of spirit
words intuit

and inter;
for all

the nightfall
neverness

inking
into me

even now,
my prayer

is that a mind
blurred

by anxiety
or despair

might find
here

a trace
of peace.
~Christian Wiman “Prayer” from Once in the West

We all have times when nothing makes sense. The mind blurs with stress or fear or a sense of unreality – all focus is lost and the world becomes simultaneously fuzzy and prickly.

If that happens here in these pages, through these words and photos I share, it is because I need reminding: things often don’t make sense to me when tragedy, pain and suffering happen to people on the other side of the earth, or just down the road from here, or to those I love.

Or to me.

It still makes sense to God. He has clear vision I will never have.

He doesn’t make bad things happen; He grieves it too.
He is the focus when all else is blurry.

God calls to us out of the haze that obscures. Only then peace begins.

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Under the Sheen

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So many want to be lifted by song and dancing,
and this morning it is easy to understand.
I write in the sound of chirping birds hidden
in the almond trees, the almonds still green
and thriving in the foliage. Up the street,
a man is hammering to make a new house as doves
continue their cooing forever. Bees humming
and high above that a brilliant clear sky.
The roses are blooming and I smell the sweetness.
Everything desirable is here already in abundance.
And the sea. The dark thing is hardly visible
in the leaves, under the sheen. We sleep easily.
So I bring no sad stories to warn the heart.
All the flowers are adult this year. The good
world gives and the white doves praise all of it.
~Linda Gregg, “A Dark Thing Inside the Day” from The Sacraments of Desire

Sometimes, hard-trying, it seems I cannot pray–
For doubt, and pain, and anger, and all strife.
Yet some poor half-fledged prayer-bird from the nest
May fall, flit, fly, perch–crouch in the bowery breast
Of the large, nation-healing tree of life;–
Moveless there sit through all the burning day,
And on my heart at night a fresh leaf cooling lay.
~George MacDonald from Diary of an Old Soul

My cracks seem to expand with age:
do they not heal as quickly
or am I simply more brittle than before?

I know how my eyes leak over the beauty of the morning,
my heart feels more porous
then world events break me to bleeding.

Yet the Light pours in the cracks
to illuminate wounds old and new.
Let the world know, let the world know,
after a hurt comes healing.

May I become the perfect offering.

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The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be

Ah the wars they will
Be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
Bought and sold
And bought again
The dove is never free

You can add up the parts
but you won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
~Leonard Cohen from “Anthem”

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Spiking the Summer Air

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Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of men
Thistles spike the summer air
Or crackle open under a blue-black pressure.

Every one a revengeful burst
Of resurrection, a grasped fistful
Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up

From the underground stain of a decayed Viking.
They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects.
Every one manages a plume of blood.

Then they grow grey, like men
Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear,
Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground.
~Ted Hughes “Thistles”

Sheep will not eat it
nor horses nor cattle
unless they are starving.
Unchecked, it will sprawl over
pasture and meadow
choking the sweet grass
defeating the clover
until you are driven
to take arms against it
but if unthinking
you grasp it barehanded
you will need tweezers
to pick out the stickers.

Outlawed in most Northern
states of the Union
still it jumps borders.
Its taproot runs deeper
than underground rivers
and once it’s been severed
by breadknife or shovel
—two popular methods
employed by the desperate—
the bits that remain will
spring up like dragons’ teeth
a field full of soldiers
their spines at the ready.

Bright little bursts of
chrome yellow explode from
the thistle in autumn
when goldfinches gorge on
the seeds of its flower.
The ones left uneaten
dry up and pop open
and parachutes carry
their procreant power
to disparate venues
in each hemisphere
which is why there will always
be thistle next year.
~Maxine Kumin “Why There Will Always Be Thistle Next Year” from The Long Marriage

Summer will grow old
As will the thistle, letting
A clenched bloom unfold

To which the small hum
Of bee wings and the flash of
Goldfinch wings will come,

Till its purple crown
Blanches, and the breezes strew
The whole field with down.
~Richard Wilbur “A Pasture Poem” from Anterooms

Thistle is armored, deeply rooted, and relentless in its self-defense, very much like enemies facing off in the human wars of our current and past history.

Highly invasive, thistle produces downy tasty dancing seeds ready to soar far in their effort at world domination. Generation after generation of thistles persist due to these vulnerable ballerinas’ flight to the next available patch of soil.

Unlike thistle, may we thrive with determined persistence, without need for spikes and thorny spines that attack and draw blood. May we instead exude a vulnerable softness and grace — fluffy and tender as a baby blanket meant to cradle and nurture rather than maim and cripple.

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