Hurtling

"Sometimes I feel that my life is a series of trapeze swings. I'm either hanging on to a trapeze bar swinging along or, for a few moments in my life, I'm hurtling across space in between trapeze bars."--Danaan Parry, Warriors of the Heart 

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about...
Pablo Neruda, "Keeping Quiet"

"If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change." --Buddha

For as long as I can remember, I have thought of my life as a journey, like Odysseus's journey from war to home or Luke Skywalker's journey from clod to Jedi-knight. In this paradigm, my tumors and other troubles are like the one-eyed, man-eating Cyclops or the menacing Storm Troopers. In this paradigm, I must overcome these antagonists in order to continue my journey. If I defeat them, I too will be a hero. In this paradigm, I know the way.

Now, however, I am wondering if my life is more like the still moment in a poem than like the journeys of an epic hero. In this paradigm shift, I wonder if I should sit still and watch closely rather than trying to defeat my anti-heroes. I wonder if I must sit still and breathe and look around.

Sitting and watching. Just being. It's hard work. I don't know the way.

For sure, I need to begin by learning to breathe again, learning to breathe in order to be instead of breathing to run somewhere.

I feel like there's some truth in this, but it's hard for me to get my mind around it.

It seems like there's so much to do. I do believe that this world needs to be a kinder place, and I have committed my life to justice for more through my work in education and my connections with poor communities.

If I am just being, how do I work for justice? That's a conundrum. I am swinging on that trapeze, preparing to let go of the bar that I have held so safely through so many hard times, and now I think it's time to let go. I vaguely perceive a new bar swinging towards me, but I don't know if I'll catch hold and if I do, I don't know where it will take me.

Time to Celebrate?

"Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones."--The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. as quoted by President Barack Obama in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. 9 Dec. 2009

For me, this morning's newspaper headline photograph of Americans celebrating Osama bin Ladin's death eerily echoed the images of Palestinian children celebrating in the streets after the September 11, 2001 Al-Quaeda attacks in the United States. As I remember the Palestinian images, the celebrants there were younger and less white, but the enthusiasm in the wake of death struck me as wrong then, and it strikes me as wrong now.

I wrestle with the notion of a just war and wonder if violence is ever justified.  I am tempted to think that war is always wrong. I also wonder, though, if someone with the power to intervene should resort to violence when innocent civilians fall victim to the whims of chaos or despots. Shouldn't the powerful defend the weak?  Could it be wrong to defend those innocents being tortured and killed in lands like Darfur or Rwanda? Perhaps war is sometimes just, but that's complicated.

Perhaps, at times violence is justified to defend those who are weaker from those who are stronger. Perhaps. I wrestle with this issue, but I know I cannot be joyful when I hear that a man was killed.

There are of course practical reasons for reserve: on the radio today, full of talk about America's victory over bin Laden, several people spoke about the spirit of bin Laden that lives on. Said one al-Quaeda enthusiast: There is not one bin Laden. There are thousands. If you kill this one, we still live to fight this mission.

Surely this man who dodged the American manhunt for almost a decade has supporters who have hidden him so effectively for so long. It seems logical that he made a plan for his demise and the continuation of his vision in case of his death. Certainly, he had already named his successor, and the organization has continued to move forward while bin Ladin has been in hiding.

Though bin Laden's death may be an important symbolic victory over the forces that have killed so many in the United States and elsewhere, it's hard for me to imagine that this is a practical blow to al Quaeda. I am more perplexed by the moral argument than by what seems a spurious practical argument.

The path to peace would be something to celebrate, but I don't see that we're any closer to walking this path.

In my high school English classes, I have taught teenagers terrorized still by the violence they experienced in times of war and chaos, and I would celebrate to know that children will no longer suffer, but I cannot imagine that bin Laden's death signals such hope.

I cannot celebratge simply for retribution.

I wonder if I would feel differently if members of my family had been killed on September 11, 2001. Perhaps I would. I can understand the argument that such a violent death is necessary for building a more peaceful world, even if I cannot make that argument myself.

Cheering for a violent death, though? I cannot cheer. I keep hearing, "Vengence is mine, saith the Lord," and I sigh, a bit confused, for a world where such death is cheered. If such violence is necessary (and I'm not sure what I think about that), then this reminder that brutality is on the road to peace does not make me cheer. It just makes me sad. It makes me wonder, darkly, if there is a path to peace.