Tag: war

The Future Flowering

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hydrangeaaugust

wwurec

 

We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots, and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering, and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hard heartedness, all indifference, and all contempt is nothing else than killing. With just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a young person. Life is waiting everywhere, the future is flowering every­where, but we only see a small part of it and step on much of it with our feet.
~Hermann Hesse, from Vivos Voco, 1919

Hundreds of thousands of people have the choice of living (and likely dying) oppressed in the midst of conflict, too often with the risk of being enslaved and raped, or to try escape to an uncertain fate on the other side of a border, a fence, a turbulent sea.

So many of us are here, living in countries that sustain and grow us, because we descend from people who escaped war, or hunger, or extreme poverty. Many of us worship a God who was a refugee Himself from a king who sought Him dead.

Can we extend a hand of hope to millions who also want to put roots down in safety so their lives, and their childrens’ lives, may flower?   Even if it means less soil for us all, are we not the privileged gardeners to prepare the ground so all people may flourish?

 

herb9151

seattleflorist12

woodlandred

seattleflorist2

We Will Remember

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poppypink

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)

sunset111142

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

poppy

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.
~John McCrae from “In Flanders Fields”

 

Tower of London Poppies representing the fallen soldiers from the UK and colonies in WWI
Tower of London Poppies representing the fallen soldiers from the UK and colonies in WWI from BBC London

 Courage is almost a contradiction in terms.
It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.
~ G.K. Chesterton 

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Solidarity and Silence
	


	
					

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madrona


 


We hear so much today of the word solidarity. It has become a part of our vocabulary in the past twenty or thirty years. Today our solidarity with brothers and sisters of our faith, and of other faiths, in a part of the world where there is clearly an effort to eliminate them is something that we simply cannot in conscience ignore. 


Often we are asked: “How was it possible that in human history atrocities occur?” They occur for two reasons: because there are those prepared to commit them, and then there are those who remain silent. And the actions in Iraq and in Syria today are happening to women, children, men—their displacement not the least. Things happening to them is something that we really are not free to ignore, and sometimes all we have to raise is our voice. . . .


I ask myself: Where are these voices? Where the voices of parliaments and congresses? Where are the voices of campuses? Where are the voices of community leaders? . . . Why a silence?

 ~Cardinal Donald Wuerl at the 2014 convocation at the Catholic University of America


frontyardwalnut 


“Silence in the face of evil,” he said, “is evil itself. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

 ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer

	


				
	






	
	

		
Balanced Upon a Broken World
	


	
					

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sunset831149


butterflythistle




This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight;


The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves;


The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves,


And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows.


Under a tree in the park,


Two little boys, lying flat on their faces,


Were carefully gathering red berries


To put in a pasteboard box.


Some day there will be no war,


Then I shall take out this afternoon


And turn it in my fingers,


And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate,


And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.


To-day I can only gather it


And put it into my lunch-box,


For I have time for nothing


But the endeavour to balance myself


Upon a broken world.

~Amy Lowell “September 1918”




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Revengeful Resurrection
	


	
					

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thistled


thistlebugs


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”


thistlefur


thistledownwwu

	


				
	






	
	

		
To Give Life’s Best
	


	
					

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For Memorial Day 2014, as the sky cannot stop raining tears for the losses suffered by a few to secure a future for many:


rainygrass2


In great deeds, something abides. 

On great fields, something stays. 

Forms change and pass; 

bodies disappear; 

but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls. 

And reverent men and women from afar, 

and generations that know us not and that we know not of, 

heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, 

shall come to this deathless field, 

to ponder and dream; 

and lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, 

and the power of the vision pass into their souls. 

This is the great reward of service. 

To live, far out and on, in the life of others;

this is the mystery of the Christ,

–to give life’s best for such high sake

that it shall be found again unto life eternal.

~Major-General Joshua Chamberlain at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 1889


rainygrasses

	


				
	






	
	

		
Not One Would Mind
	


	
					

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tiredtrillium


photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten


There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

 And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;


And frogs in the pools, singing at night,

 And wild plum trees in tremulous white,


Robins will wear their feathery fire,

 Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;


And not one will know of the war, not one

 Will care at last when it is done.


Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,

 If mankind perished utterly;


And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

 Would scarcely know that we were gone.

~Sara Teasdale “War Time  There will come soft rains”


photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten


tulippetals


walnutapril

	


				
	






	
	

			


	
					

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It is now my fifty eighth Memorial Day–what I wrote two years ago still is true: I see this as a day for weeping, so the rain coming from the sky is fitting.


Hankerings


On my fifty sixth Memorial Day, I need to be reminded not to forget the sacrifices made by my fellow countrymen.  This is not a vacation day.  This is a day meant for the hard work of painful remembrance.  This is a day to slog through the mud of the battlefields, the searing heat of the deserts, the dripping humidity of the jungles, the icy snowbanks of wintertime battle fronts.



I do not want to forget what it means to get up each morning clothed in liberty, and fall asleep each night without fear.  We are meant to cry this day, to weep over the loss of life over the  generations, the losses in battles that continue to this day.



The cost of staying free must not bankrupt our souls even as it taxes our resources.   Once we forget, if even one of us forgets, then the battle comes…


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